Hannah Kennedy is Head of Marketing at Boomf —a fun and quirky gift company that specializes in personalized marshmallows and exploding gift cards. Faced with the challenge of developing a new product in time for Christmas, Hannah came up with a cracking idea: an exploding card helped the brand increase revenues by 123%. We sat down with Hannah to hear her #DareToGrow story, and how working with AdRoll sparked a new direction for the brand, just in time for the holidays.
Boomf was established as a marshmallow company for a good few years, but things were starting to plateau. We needed to think about where we could take the brand next, and realized we had to look for other product opportunities. We wanted something that complimented and replicated our personalization as a unique selling point – but we also wanted a gift that makes you literally go, "wow," on opening it.
That's when we came up with the Boomf Bombs – an exploding cube card. It comes in a tiny little envelope, and as you rip it open, a photo cube explodes in a shower of confetti. There's nothing else like it.
We ran a customer-led focus group and at the last minute, added the cube photo card to the mix. The customer reaction was insane. So, that for us was the turning point. As soon as we knew that this was the next product, the energy in the office changed. We were all excited, and there was this buzz, just in time for Christmas. We knew there was a lot of potential and it was just all hands on deck to get our product ready.
We knew from experience that AdRoll was a great platform to push our products out with. They were excellent at targeting new customers as well as using our existing customers – so we knew they were going to really support us in launching this new
product.
AdRoll has also been there consistently to support us through any rocky marketing campaign or idea and we rely on them massively for the creative side of all of our display ads. I can throw them any ideas, or mismatched assets and they can create this fantastic campaign that pulls in an insane number of new customers.
Launching the Boomf Bomb back in 2016 was a real catalyst for our business. It’s now a core product and has given us the confidence to launch even more items. We've also started to expand into international markets which is something we couldn't have even thought about two years ago.
We’ve also seen a switch in how our customers communicate with us, and that’s impacted on how we communicate with our customers. We’ve gone from being message-led to customer-led, and it's been the biggest change we've seen that's made the greatest impact on growing our brand.
The biggest mistakes I see marketers making at Christmas are starting too late, not changing their message, or not switching up how they're approaching their customers. Marketers should keep it fun and have fun yourself. Speak to your customers about how they want to be spoken to.
Learn how top marketers like Hannah turn make-or-break moments into breakthrough opportunities. Interested in getting your campaigns up and running on a growth platform? Update your AdRoll campaigns or sign up for an AdRoll account here.
Last updated on January 12th, 2024.