How Saint Jane Beauty pivoted to ecommerce and grew their brand during a global pandemic

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Saint Jane Beauty is a luxury skincare brand named after the real-life Saint Jane de Chantal. This small but mighty company is inspired by her compassion, empathy, and healing-centric approach.

“When the pandemic hit we were in our toddler stage. We weren't sure what the pandemic and being on lockdown meant for our business.” – Daniela Maron, VP of Marketing at Saint Jane Beauty.

As all physical stores shut down, Saint Jane Beauty was able to use email marketing and their website to successfully pivot their ecommerce marketing strategy and grow the business.

Why Drip?

As a small, all-hands-on-deck team, Saint Jane Beauty needed a marketing tool that was easy to use yet powerful. Drip allowed them to grow through easy-to-build emails, sign-up forms, and personalized customer data.

“For us, it was about the flexibility that Drip could give us. We’re a small and growing brand so we need tools that help us grow.”

Navigating a Zoom first world

As a brand in its second year, the Saint Jane Beauty team wasn’t sure if the strategies they had in place pre-Covid made sense once the pandemic hit. They needed a tool that would accommodate them as their strategies changed, and help them grow in the new Zoom first world.

“We persevered but made some tweaks because of Covid. When we launched our lipstick collection, we pivoted the messaging to talk about everyone’s new reality. We talked about how to look your best for your Zoom meeting.”

CBD marketing challenges

To make matters more complicated, Saint Jane Beauty uses CBD in its formulas.

CBD stands for cannabidiol, and it’s the second most prevalent of the active ingredients found in the cannabis plant. Because of this, there are tight regulations when it comes to selling products that contain CBD.

Navigating through the online advertising limitations was a major challenge for the brand. To help solve this, they relied on their email program even more.

“Drip has been amazing because we can speak to CBD in a really informative and educational way. Which is so, so important, because there’s so much bad info about CBD.”

Overall, they were able to successfully pivot to all online, using Drip to run their email marketing strategy and communicate with their customers.

“Emails were a real communication point for us. On how to use our products, and what to do at home. People were happy to receive emails that weren’t news focused.”

Powerful Shopify integration

Another huge plus in taking things 100% online? That Drip integrates seamlessly with their ecommerce platform - Shopify. Having a tool that could take that customer data from Shopify and help them create and define their email marketing strategies was a big win for the brand.

“Drip really helped us define our email marketing strategies, and hone in on best practices as a new and growing brand. Now we really understand what works in our emails on a granular level.

Saint Jane Beauty’s Welcome Email Series

In addition to needing a tool that was flexible and would help them grow, they loved Drip’s automated pre-built workflows (or playbooks as we like to call them).

“The automated workflow has been a really great growth driver for us. A welcome email is so easy to do - before it was a heavy lift - with Drip it’s so easy.”

Drip provides pre-built playbooks for the latest and greatest ecommerce strategies like abandoned cart, welcome series, post-purchase, and winback. Not having to start from scratch made it quick and easy for Saint Jane Beauty to set up their email marketing automations.

Drip’s welcome series playbook turned out to be one of the biggest drivers of growth for the brand.

“The welcome series really allowed us to break out our key benefits and highlight and educate people on them. So they know what Saint Jane is really about.”

Drive email signups with their popup form

To get people onto their email list, Saint Jane Beauty captures traffic from their website with a popup form and offers a special discount for their first purchase.

“Initially we started with a basic offer of 10% off. We looked at our competitive landscape and came up with something that had a little more juice. An offer that spoke to the kind of brand we are.”

Ultimately, if you can get someone’s email address you’re one step closer to owning the relationship—and to driving that first purchase. Using Drip’s automation, Saint Jane Beauty was able to turn those signups into loyal customers and grow their business.

Brand growth through welcome series

Automating the process of welcoming customers to their brand, and educating them on their products allowed them to grow and bring in revenue while focusing on other tasks.

If there’s one marketing strategy that Daniela Maron recommends to other ecommerce marketers looking to grow, it’s the welcome email series.

“The welcome series is really important because it’s their first introduction to the brand. You have to really captivate them, and keep them in it.”

Advice to other ecommerce marketers?

“Don’t put everything in one email and hope for the best,” Daniela Maron advises. “Sometimes you want to say everything in one email, but what I’ve learned is that you’ll overwhelm your customers and you’ll miss the mark.”

Through their Drip welcome email series, Saint Jane Beauty was able to highlight their key benefits and captivate their audience right off the bat. And as a brand that uses CBD in its formulas, educating customers so they know exactly what Saint Jane Beauty is about led to more informed (happier) customers and more revenue.

Don’t take our word for it.

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