Naked Wine: Scaling Growth
Group Director of Strategy and Performance at Majestic Wine
inpractise.com/articles/naked-wine-scaling-growth
Why is this interview interesting?
- Challenges for Naked Wine to scale beyond the vouchering 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
How scalable do you think that voucher model is?
It’s an interesting one because, if you look at the official stats, it’s a high proportion of Naked’s acquisition, with most of the gap being made up by digital marketing, which is one of the things they figured out when we were there. We got that working, as an engine. What you have got to remember is, for example, if Naked Wines ran a TV ad, they would still see a lot of vouchers coming in. It would be, oh yes, I’ve just seen Naked Wines on TV; that sounds good. I’ll try it.
It’s almost like double spending.
Yes. In a way, it’s an interesting one because it’s a program that very much started off as direct response marketing and you can track it all. It still works as a direct response level. It’s actually probably working as a brand level. If you think of wine clubs, Naked Wines is out there, with an awareness in people’s minds, as well. One of the reasons that it has become scalable is that it works at both those levels. It works both as direct response and as brand.
The one drawback of it is, because it is a voucher and because it has a discount on it, it definitely has that feeling of, oh, Naked Wines, they are the really low-priced guys. Once you are into the product and you get the site, that’s not what it is. But I would imagine, if you talked to people who haven’t used Naked Wines, and asked what their impression was, they would say, those are the cheap wine guys.
It’s also like a drug, as well, I guess. Once you’ve flooded the market with vouchers, it’s hard to pull back from them?
Yes and no. As long as it’s working for you, it’s not a drug if you keep an eye on the metrics and only do it when it makes sense. It can be, if you’re chasing the wrong metric and if you’re just pumping vouchers out there in the drive to get new customers and not thinking about the quality. But if you’ve got a good handle on the quality, then it all works very well.
As you said, I guess 80% to 90% of customers come through with a voucher, anyway, as angels?
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