ECOMMERCE CASE STUDY

Scaling a €1.5M Dutch Ecommerce Brand to €100K+ MRR in the United Kingdom

THE BRAND

Smellacloud: Feel Good, Smell Good, Be Happy

Smellacloud is a fast-growing ecommerce company in the health and wellness space that provides a range of high-quality aromatherapy products. Their core product lines include aroma diffusers, essential oils, de-stress herbal tea, and skintox.

Founded by Tamsyn Graanoogst and Robert Marousseev, the core philosophy behind Smellacloud is to supply the world with sustainable and affordable aromatherapy.

As they say, “we believe that relaxation is THE SUPERPOWER that enables people (that’s you) to achieve what they truly want in life.”

Smellacloud’s early success is attributed to the founder's passion to improve people’s overall wellbeing via aromatherapy. They have also embedded a customer-first approach to their business from the getgo:

Quality products from ethically sourced manufacturers
Fair prices by cutting out the middleman and expensive marketing
Superior customer support to make shopping online stress-free

Smellacloud's commitment to high-quality, affordable products and their customer-first approach speaks for itself. For example, their Dutch website (geurwolkje.nl) boasts 3,329+ 5-star reviews, with more happy customers raving about their products every day.

THE CHALLENGE

Expanding Operations & Increasing Sales in the U.K.

“We opened a webshop for the U.K. in February 2020,” says Robert Marousseev. “Sales started at £500 in the first month and slowly grew to £1,500 by June."

“Our market tests proved that the U.K. was interested in our aromatherapy products. However, we were shipping everything from our warehouse in the Netherlands. This limited our ability to provide the same fast delivery and quality experience as we do for our Dutch customers.”

In June 2020, Robert opened an office in London and established Smellacloud’s supply chain in Swindon.

“Setting up Smellacloud in the U.K. was a matter of paperwork and following mandatory processes. The problem we had was translating our website's pages and message to a new, English-speaking market.”

“Dutch is our native language and capturing our brand's core message and personality was easy. The real challenge was to convert our brand's message into English to capture the U.K. market as well as to outrank competitors on search Engines."

INFO

Company: Geurwolkje - NL
Smellacloud - EN
Founded: 2019
Founders: Tamsyn Graanoogst
Robert Marousseev
Website: geurwolkje.nl
smellacloud.co.uk
HQ: Amsterdam, Netherlands
MRR in U.K. LAST UPDATED: 02.01.2021: £15K+

THE SOLUTION

Update Website to Connect with U.K. Audience + Elevate Brand Messaging

In late May, Copy Ads Content was hired to upgrade Smellacloud’s website with a new message strategy and SEO optimized webpages.

Our first project was focused on realigning Smellacloud’s message with the U.K. market.

We started by reimagining Smellacloud’s overall brand message to give it a fresh feeling based on the core personality developed in Dutch. After finalizing their new messaging strategy, we applied these ideas to their Homepage, About Page, and Product Pages.

With the new pages updated, Smellcloud invested in influencer marketing and remarketing ads to accelerate sales. Over the following 2 to 3 months, we achieved a boost in sales from $2K MRR to an average of around $6K MRR.

“Our new growth provided more financial opportunity to invest in the Smellacloud website,” says Robert. “We had ideas to create dedicated pages that told a deeper story about the origins and quality of our products.”

After conducting some keyword research, we made the decision to target relevant keywords for Smellacloud's product about pages:

The goal was to provide more information for potential customers to make a confident purchase decision. In the long-term, we will be using these pages as part of a greater SEO strategy to drive new customers to the website.

"Jef successfully helped us, in a very professional way, capture our brand's voice and personality for the English-speaking side of our company."

- Robert & Tamsyn

NOVEMBER 23 TO 29

2020 Black Friday Campaign Results

+65%

EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS

£2510

SALES VIA EMAIL

£3899

BLACK FRIDAY AD SALES

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THE RESULTS

Accelerated Growth + Record Sales Black Friday Campaign

“At the time of hiring Jef, Q4 was right around the corner. This was always our best time of year to drive sales and growth for our brand. It was only natural to ask Jef to help us with our Black Friday Facbook Ad campaign."

Smellacloud's success comes from a mix of influencer marketing, Facebook Ads, and word-of-mouth marketing. Since their product offers both aesthetic appeal and a sensual experience, many customers share social media updates with the hashtag #Smellacloud.

This meant Smellacloud has a massive database of infuencer- and user-generated content to refurbish for their marketing and advertising campaigns.

When we started Smellacloud's Black Friday campaign, we ran an initial test using variations in images and ad copy.

In the first 24 hours, Smellacloud's Facebook ads generated £15,500.03 in combined sales from their Dutch and U.K. store.

After making a few adjustment to the U.K. ad campaign, we were able to generate £3,899 in sales from ads and £2,510 from email marketing.

"Working with Jef on our Black Friday Campaign resulted in a huge success. Compared to our Black Friday results in our first year for the Dutch store, we exceeded our sales projections and goals by a large margin.

"In fact, the main reason why we couldn't sell more during Black Friday was due to a shortage in stock. And Jef was quick to help us capitalize on this by providing updated popup copy that drove email subscriptions by 65%."

Smellacloud's ad campaign was so successful, they ran out of stock in the first 48 hours. We used the following popup to generate new email subscribers and send a back in stock email with a 21% discount store wide.

THE FUTURE

Smellacloud: Global Ecommerce Leader of Aromatherapy Products

Smellacloud's venture into the U.K. is just the beginning of a larger plan for future global expansion. While the Dutch side of the Smellacloud brand maintain strong sales records, Robert and Tamsyn aim to scale their U.K.-based operations to €100K MRR by 2022.

"We plan to use our experience growing Smellacloud from €0 to €1M in the Netherlands to become the leading brand for aroma diffusers and essential oil products in the UK. We're also excited to be working with Jef to us reach our sales target over the next year."

For updates on Smellacloud's ecommerce case study and their growth in the U.K., sign up for Copy Ads Content's Newsletter.

"There are plenty of copywriters who can translate your vision, but few who can improve it the way Jef did for us."

- Robert + Tamsyn

KLIK OM GETUIGENIS TE LEZEN

Smellacloud's Testimonial

"Jef's ability to put himself into the shoes of our customers, see where the need lies, and create a message that effectively addresses our target group is an art."

We, as an organization, are very satisfied with our collaboration with Jef van de Graaf. Jef successfully helped us, in a very professional way, capture our brand's voice and personality for the English-speaking side of our company. His ability to think alongside you, ask the right questions, and implement them properly is second nature. But above all, his ability to put himself into the shoes of our customers, see where the need lies, and create copywriting that addresses our target group effectively is an art. There are plenty of copywriters who can translate your vision, but few who can improve it the way Jef did for us. Thank you on behalf of Team Geurwolkje."

Robert & Tamsyn, Co-Founders, Smellacloud