Hello again, e-commerce adventurers! It’s Melissa, and I’m back to bring you part 5 of our 10-part What’s in Store marketing automation series. One of the things I love most about working at Mailchimp is empowering small businesses with new tools to help them look pro and grow. For this issue, we visited Simply Gum to learn how they’re using Mailchimp’s brand new Google remarketing ads automation to reach new audiences.
Simply Gum: Ad Strategies That Work with Google Remarketing Ads
How the all‑natural gum maker uses the automation to reach new audiences.
We met with Simply Gum founder Caron Proschan in her SoHo office, where she told us about the genesis of her brand. It turns out that regular chewing gum is made of a plastic base and filled with questionable substances (yikes), so Caron started Simply Gum to offer gum-chewers everywhere a natural and delicious alternative.
Landing a wholesale account in Whole Foods stores nationwide gave Caron’s business the jumpstart it needed, but she’s still adamant about operating like a bootstrapped startup.
“I’ve learned that it’s really important to maintain a lean mentality,” she says. “I think a lot of startups forget this. We operate very leanly, because we want to make sure we can adapt to changing business environments and make it through, no matter what comes our way.”
“Before making large investments, we like to run small experiments in order to test our ideas. We’re then able to scale the ones that work, without having put a large amount of capital at risk.”
“As companies and budgets get larger, it’s pretty common to see money being spent on things that aren’t that important like fancy office furniture or artwork. We like to focus our capital on things that will really drive our business forward.”
“We try really hard not to waste resources, in all aspects of the business. As a startup with limited resources, it’s really important to make our ad dollars stretch.”
Part of stretching those ad dollars means saving time and resources wherever possible, so the Simply Gum team uses Mailchimp’s new Google remarketing ads to find new customers with retargeting ads. Caron explains:
“Retargeting ads are an incredibly important part of our business now. We use them to reach people who have visited our site and haven’t yet made a purchase, but may. As a result, the conversion rates for these ads are higher.”
After implementing automated ads for their new breath mints launch, the Simply Gum team was sold on the idea and its results. For Caron, the main benefit is that these retargeting ads provide her with “one-stop shopping” where she can do all her email marketing and advertising directly from her Mailchimp account.
“Every second of the day matters,” she says. “We send ads through Mailchimp, because it’s really like having a second brain. It saves us time, it saves us resources, everything is in one place, and it’s intuitive. It therefore enables us to focus on other more important parts of our business.”