Naked Wine: Customer Acquisition
Group Director of Strategy and Performance at Majestic Wine
inpractise.com/articles/naked-wine-cust-acquisition
Why is this interview interesting?
- How Naked rolled out the vouchering acquisition channel
Neil Campbell
Group Director of Strategy and Performance at Majestic Wine
Neil has nearly 20 years of experience in consumer internet with experience at large companies such as Amazon and smaller growth companies such as Naked Wines. Neil joined Naked in 2016 as the business 6 months after Majestic Wine purchased the company and his role was to run Strategy where he was responsible for getting the right data architecture in place for Naked’s growth plan. After a MBA at Harvard in 2008, Neil spent 4 years at Amazon running various categories before launching a startup which eventually sold to Google in 2014. Neil also previously worked at Betfair and is now VP of Growth at Moneybox, a UK fintech startup.
Interview Transcript
What were the main channels of acquiring customers for Naked, in the UK? What was the split between vouchering and other channels?
It is always complicated because the vouchers are so ubiquitous that you would be mad not to use a voucher, if that makes sense? Even if your best mate came to you and said, you’ve got to try Naked Wines; they are absolutely amazing; give them a shot, the thing that is probably going to prompt you over the line is, oh, I’ve just got my copy of The Economist and in it there was a Naked Wines voucher; I’ll give it a go.
What was the rationale to plastering them everywhere?
Purely that it worked. Like everything at Naked, it was all tested and it worked and it proved a sustainable channel. Rowan talks about test and learn and probably the best example of that was the voucher program, in terms of the number of innovations that went into that to really optimize it. It just worked. It’s a big purchase and you’re looking to reduce that hurdle, for a new customer. It was just the right balance between reducing the hurdle to get the customer in but, again, not selling yourself too short.
How does it work, exactly? What was the rough discount that you offered?
The discount is slightly complicated because, obviously, on the Naked Wines site, if you are not an angel, you can turn up and buy the wine and there is a non-angel price, which is a higher price; normally about £2 per bottle more. Maybe you would have a bottle of wine that is £11 for non-angels, £9 for angels and then a case of those would cost you 12 by £9, which is £108. The discount level was, roughly, a case of wine for £60 or £70, on the first case. It was pretty compelling because 12 bottles of wine for £70 is pretty good for the kind of quality of wine that you are getting.
Based on the gross margins and things, essentially, you broke even on that kind of case, just about. It wasn’t a loss leader but, at the same time, it obviously dilutes the mix a bit.
So you can give a pretty big discount then, for that first voucher, for new customers?
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