Beerdome

Over a quarter of total sales from returning customers thanks to email

Beer lover Ronald was ready for another challenge. Marjolein explains, “Craft beer makes his heart beat faster and he ordered all his beers online. He saw a lot of opportunities there and wanted to do better.” In 2017, he took matters into his own hands: he started Beerdome.

From bedrooms full of beer to full business premises

“We opened the webshop in May 2017,” says Marjolein. “At that time we had one bedroom that was completely filled with beer. And that started with one bedroom, but it soon became two, and then three. By the end of 2018, it was time to move the inventory to a commercial building near us.”

The growth continued, and shortly after the move, Ronald decided to quit his regular job and focus entirely on Beerdome. Although Marjolein supported Ronald from the beginning, she scaled down her hours with her employer. “Since mid-2021 I have also been working full time for Beerdome and in the meantime Ronald's little brother also works here. So it's a real family business!”

Corona: for Beerdome not just a beer

Beerdome saw the light in 2017, when Corona was just a Mexican soft beer. But by 2020, when the entire country went into lockdown, Beerdome was going nowhere but up. “Where a lot of companies were actually experiencing difficulty, it was the opposite with us. People were sitting at home and they did want to have a beer. They found us and at one point our warehouse was even almost empty. Customers just kept ordering, ordering and ordering.”

Although Beerdome did little marketing at the time, new customers still knew how to find their webshop. “They actually did come. It was a bit of word of mouth, I guess,” says Marjolein.

Once Marjolein and Ronald got a taste of this rapid growth, they wanted more. “We wanted to at least stay at the same level, preferably grow. From then on, we really asked the question: 'How do we get customers?' We couldn't quite figure it out ourselves. We tried some with Facebook ads, but little came out of this.” So in 2021, they decided to partner with ON.Digital Marketing [gold partner of Reloadify, ed.].

Sustaining growth with marketing

“Our question was mainly: help us grow. In terms of SEO, they did a lot for us and they also quickly suggested e-mail. They then tipped Reloadify for email marketing.”

Marjolein had been sending emails from the beginning of Beerdome. “We used Mailchimp ourselves. But... The newsletters didn't look very nice and we didn't send them very often. When ON.Digital arrived with Reloadify, I was a little skeptical myself at first,” says Marjolein. “Because you have a program you use. So why switch? But after a while we saw the advantages. Plus, it just works much easier.”

“Reloadify just works much easier.”

Approaching new customers versus getting customers to return

Beerdome sees a distinction in approaching new visitors, and getting existing customers to return. “On Facebook and Instagram we run ads. Surely that is often to attract new customers.” And once the new visitor has become a customer? Then he is contacted via e-mail. “Email is an important part in customer retention. For example, we send out a newsletter every week, which generates a lot of sales.”

“Email is a key element for us in customer retention.”

“When ON.Digital suggested setting up automations, we immediately believed in it. We saw the benefits of that and we now see that it actually works.” Automations were set up for shopping cart abandonment and to win back lost customers.

“The triggers and automations that are now in place. And those are running now, I don't have to do much with that myself.” Marjolein now writes the weekly newsletter herself. “We get a hundred new beers every week, and it's easier to do the newsletter myself then.”

ON.Digital still supports Beerdome with its marketing strategy. “They are really supportive in that area, though. We have regular meetings, in which we figure out the next steps and actions. They are really the ones who take us in tow.”

A quarter more sales in no time thanks to Reloadify

The results of Beerdome's emails don't lie. “By now, a quarter of our sales come from email. I think that's pretty cool!” said Marjolein.

“Because our assortment is always rotating, we often have something to tell our customers. 'Hi, we have new beer, check it out!'” laughs Marjolein. “On that front, e-mail really works very well, I think. The real beer lover knows that we have something to report regularly and looks forward to our message.”

And the biggest advantage? “Creating an e-mail doesn't take much effort. You put in an hour of work, maybe a little more. And then you already have a newsletter, which can go right out the door. Then this one can start doing its job!”

Learn more

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