Ticket to Ride

Background

Ardbeg is a single malt whisky from Islay with a successful CRM programme based on the concept of the Ardbeg Committee. Islay, an island with a population of just 3,000, has 140 committees and creating one more seemed not unappropriate.

To celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the founding of the Committee, a limited-edition whisky was created. Taken from rare casks from ten different years, it was named Rollercoaster, to reflect both the ups and downs of the decade and to give an indication of the high-notes and the low-notes in the flavour.

The brief was to sell the special bottling from the online shop, create more momentum for the Committee and pull in new members.

Idea

10 years ago, Ardbeg was a distillery on its uppers but is now the fastest-growing malt whisky in its sector.

The intention behind Rollercoaster was not just to celebrate the survival and success of Ardbeg but to develop the Committee and strengthen the brand for more ambitious programmes to come.

A ‘teaser’ mailer went out to 50,000 members of the Committee to alert them to the new campaign and a countdown clock was put on the gates of the Rollercoaster website.

On February 15^th at 9am, the site would be opened and the bottling would be released for sale.

The mailer featured various members of the Committee and distillery figures and contained ‘tickets to ride’, invitations to go online and play the game, test their knowledge and see the movie.

They could sign up for news of celebrations in their part of the world and to bring a friend.

Results

From a stock of 13,000 bottles created, 11,000 were sold within two weeks. Rollercoaster is now completely sold out, the fastest sell-out of a whisky ever. Not bad going at £50 a bottle. (Call that €60)

Mailing 50,000 people led to 46,096 website visits by 22,560 unique visitors who between them accounted for 338,534 page views at an average of 7 pages viewed per person and an average time spent on site of 14 minutes.

New members joining the Ardbeg Committee rose 300% since campaign launch and is ongoing week on week.

Total ROI is estimated at 1525%

Our Thoughts

What I love about Ardbeg as a case history is that it is a story of customer retention. Plenty of folk talk about customer loyalty but then expect a couple of mailings a year to be enough to sustain a relationship. Ardbeg keeps in touch with its Committee members constantly, creating warmth and personality in everything they do. No hard sell here. Yet the bottles keep disappearing off the virtual shelves. This one campaign netted sales of nearly £700,000. Honestly, direct marketing doesn’t have to be about free gifts and special discounts to work. It can be about sharing an interest. I seem to remember that Ardbeg has 37 different Facebook groups in different parts of the world.

Any marketer wondering what CRM could do for them should visit Edinburgh. Story are among the very best of the best at it.