Florida Brewery - Beer Presale for Taproom Pickup
Boosting Brewery Sales with a Strategic Beer Pre-Sale: A Case Study
What’s up? This is Chris with Get Hoptimized, and we’re going to dive into a case study about a beer pre-sale we ran for one of our clients. This model is something we frequently use to help breweries not only sell more beer but also significantly drive on-site revenue, even from an online pre-sale.
Beyond Direct-to-Consumer: The Taproom Advantage
This strategy is effective even if you’re not doing direct-to-consumer sales or shipping. This was a pick-it-up-and-taproom kind of operation, and the results were pretty cool. Maybe this is something you could use for your brewery as well.
The Pre-Sale Setup: A Four-Pack and a Bonus
Let’s dive right into the data and give you some background on what we did. We sold a four-pack online ahead of its official release date. The release was set for a future date, and we sold the four-packs for a couple of weeks before that date.
The idea was simple: customers who bought the four-pack online would come to pick it up starting on the release date. And when they did, we gave them a little extra bonus – a free four-ounce taster with their purchase. Plus, we created a dedicated landing page or product page for this pre-sale.
We sold this online using a website platform, and this could be done through any e-commerce-enabled website, whether it’s Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, or anything else.
Driving Traffic with Meta Ads and Email Campaigns
We ran Meta ads and an email campaign to promote the pre-sale. Let’s look at the results for each.
Meta Ads Results: High Conversion and Solid Return
On Meta, we spent about $98 driving traffic to the landing page. The key metric we focused on was orders. We drove 20 orders with this ad, giving us a conversion rate of 17.5%, which is exceptional. Honestly, if we get a 5% conversion rate, that’s already great, so 17.5% is fantastic.
This resulted in $538 of revenue. Our return on ad spend (ROAS) was 5.38 to 1. What that means is for every dollar we spent on the ad campaign, we returned a little over $5. So, about a 5 to 1 return, which is really good for Meta ads.
Email Campaign: The Power of Owned Channels
Now, the real value of this campaign, in my opinion, was with email. If you've heard us talk before, you know we're big on owned channels, and your email list is a prime example. This campaign perfectly illustrates why we care so much about owned channels.
In terms of cost, we listed $29, but this deserves an asterisk. That $29 is the monthly cost to have the email system, and we run multiple campaigns, not just this one. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact dollar per campaign cost, but let’s assume all $29 was tied to this pre-sale.
We drove 203 link clicks from the email, resulting in 19 orders. Our conversion rate was about 9.3%, which is still really good, and we generated $576 in revenue.
The real value here, though, is the return on spend. In this case, it was almost 20 to 1, at 19.86. Again, we take $576 and divide it by our cost of $29, which gives us that 19.86. This is exciting because of the efficiency with email. We returned almost 20 to 1 on our email efforts. It’s a perfect example of why owned channels are so valuable – they return so well.
Overall Success and On-Site Revenue Boost
In this particular snapshot, there was over $1,000 worth of revenue on this pre-sale for roughly $130 in spend between email and ads. A really solid campaign. And this doesn’t even take into account the on-site revenue that took place.
Remember, people had to come in to pick up their order and they got a free taster while they were there. We recommended this bonus because it gets people in a seat. Now, there’s an opportunity to upsell them to another pint, maybe some lunch, or anything else you have going on. There’s even more revenue tied to this online and on-site interaction.
Also, we sold 39 orders ahead of time, and some of those orders included more than one four-pack. So, we sold a significant amount before the beer was even officially on sale. This is incredibly valuable.
The Bigger Picture: A Measurable Marketing Funnel
To paint a bigger picture of how this all works, we’re talking about a marketing funnel built on driving measurable outcomes. Things like beer pre-sales, merchandise, coupon sign-ups, event registrations – real, trackable results. We leverage advertising and owned channels like email and SMS to drive traffic and sales through product and landing pages.
These sales and opt-ins do multiple things for your business. Every sale and opt-in increases the size of your owned channels, making your marketing funnel stronger. The email campaign's strength is a perfect example.
We want to continue growing our owned channels, but these sales and opt-ins also drive on-site and e-commerce revenue. Sometimes, e-commerce revenue can drive on-site revenue, just like in this example. People came in, sat down, got their free pour, and now we have an opportunity to drive even more on-site revenue.
This is the system we’re building our marketing strategies on. If this resonates with you and you’re interested in learning more, please reach out to us. We have multiple marketing packages that can fit your business model, and it’s probably more affordable than you think. We’re here to help you make this work for your business. Thanks for reading!
