CATEGORY: PANTRY STAPLES

Mother-in-Law’s finds success with Sprouts product launch

Mother-in-Law's

COMPANY SIZE

Early Stage

CATEGORY

Sauces

USE CASE

New product launch

RETAILERS

Sprouts

IMPACT AT A GLANCE

4,603

new shoppers reached

1,400

reviews collected for syndication with an average 4.4/5 star rating

79%

of shoppers intend to repurchase the product

2,287

units were moved within 60 days

Mother-in-Law’s Kimchi started 16 years ago with a mission to share delicious, authentic, handcrafted, small-batch kimchi made from the finest natural ingredients. Founder Lauryn Chun was inspired to bring the beauty of Korea’s handcrafted kimchi tradition to the U.S., placing it among fine fermented foods like wine and cheese. Today, Mother-in-Law’s is known for having the best-tasting, fermented in-house kimchi and the top-selling gochujang in natural food stores, upholding the “son-mat” (hand taste) tradition in every jar.

We sat down with Justin Zotos, Head of Marketing, to hear how Mother-in-Law’s has worked with Social Nature to expand its national footprint and connect with shoppers.

What challenges was Mother-in-Law's facing before Social Nature, and how did our platform help?

Justin: We’ve done 3 campaigns with Social Nature now, and all of them have been around us winning new distribution – national distribution – into natural grocers like Sprouts and wanting to get a running start with what we’re doing. So we did this in the form of free product trial campaigns, and then we did a 50% off campaign and that was for the launch of our Everyday Kimchi. And then, recently we had launched an Everyday Gochujang, which is a line of squeezable Korean chili sauces, and those ones we did a free product campaign for. And what that really helped us do was get to a more established velocity than if we had just kind of gone in using the other non-digital marketing channels that we’ve done in the past.

The other thing that was important for us was collecting consumer feedback on the products. So for the Everyday Kimchi, Sprouts was the first retailer that we launched that line in or one of the first few, so it was great to collect consumer feedback at a more macro scale. And then same thing with these Everyday Korean chili sauces. We actually had a really tight timeline from when Sprouts told us they were picking it up and we had our first major order going out nationally distributed. So that was also our first ability to really capture consumer feedback. We were really happy with the notes that we got back.

Mother-in-Law's Gochujang Korean Chile Sauce - Original

How did Social Nature help Mother-in-Law's achieve positive retail results?

Justin: From a marketing level, we grew our audience. We got the list of all the new emails that we collected through the campaign, so we’re able to add that. And then also through the collab that we did with Social Nature, we got a lot of new followers on Instagram, so that was great getting in front of the community that way and growing our audience.

From a sales perspective, using the Social Nature data as part of the sales conversation is one great way to prove to retailers that we’re willing to invest and that we are wanting to collect this sort of consumer feedback and sales data on these products. And additionally, at an operational level, we’re also considering all this consumer feedback as we maybe make some changes to product formulation, maybe to serving size, pricing – all of those things we take into account, based off what we got back.

What were some of the key insights you gained from working with the Social Nature community?

Justin: I think that the real value of the company and what Social Nature does is that consumer feedback collection. Just the data that you get at an individual level, like the dashboard, there’s so much that you can kind of like mix and match. No matter what retailer conversation you’re going into, because of that data, maybe it’s a Sprouts campaign but you see that a lot of those customers are also shopping at Target, for example. If we’re going to pitch Target, we can pull data specifically for Target consumers, and we can see not only what their data feedback is, like all the numbers that they give, but we can even read direct written reviews. I think that that’s been really helpful – if you’re pitching to a buyer, showing them an exact quote of something that their customers said about this exact product before it’s even on their shelf is a great thing to have.

Mother-in-Law's Gochujang Korean Chile Sauce - Korean BBQ

How does Social Nature stand out from other shopper marketing platforms you've used?

Justin: We’ve gotten a lot from when we used to sell on Shopify, and you can collect consumer feedback and reviews from there, so that’s great. And then we stopped selling on Shopify and we were only retailer level – in stores is where we were pushing most of this stuff, activating a lot of our cash on Instacart or those retail media ad activations. And when you’re working with platforms like that, you don’t get a lot of consumer feedback. You don’t own that first-party consumer data. So after we moved to retail, we still had our email list and our Instagram followers, but we didn’t have that real back-and-forth experience with the consumer anymore because we couldn’t see who specifically was reordering and all of that.

So since then, we’ve had to actually build our own consumer insights program within the company. So utilizing social media and our email list to actually get people to sign up, fill out a Google form. We export that new Google sheet, we’re building reports with that. But the sample size is much, much smaller when you’re doing that, and it’s hard to get those people to sign up. Social Nature has a community that is able and willing to give that feedback, if you just give them a little something for their time.

If you had to choose one thing, what would you say was the biggest impact of working with Social Nature?

Justin: It was awesome and I think that Gus has been such a wonderful addition to the team, because we’ve been getting a lot more just one-on-one support. We can say our goals, what we really want out of it, and then he helps. Social Nature has been growing all of their capabilities by so much. The platform has changed so much over the last couple of years, and he’s been great for identifying how to use those tools to support our business goals. I think more than that, he’s always down to help out and help read the data. He’s offered to turn them into slides for our sales decks and getting that sort of personalized touch is really, I think, what helps turn this from data into something that’s really actionable at a business level.

Would you recommend Social Nature to other brands, and if so, why?

Justin: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think that it’s hard to substantiate signing up for programs where you’re giving those redemptions. You’re kind of paying that little extra bit to help people trial a new product and get it off the shelf. But I think that it’s really great if you were a brand who needs major consumer feedback. Maybe there’s a product on the shelf that you’re not sure about or you think isn’t the best and you want to get it off the shelf. Or you’re just trying to grow customers within the demographic that Social Nature community is. And I think that no matter what, all three of those are, I think, great reasons to get signed up with Social Nature, especially if you’re launching with a new retailer, definitely a natural retailer.

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