If you missed our first update, here’s the short version. We gave a year of free digital marketing to gourmet sweet treats store Sweet Darl’n, run by Amanda. In return, we get to document everything – the strategy, the results and the occasional curveball.
Last time, we set our benchmarks and landed on a plan: build out a solid email foundation before we start spending on ads. That foundation now has a free marshmallow in it. You can catch up here.
So, how’d month one go?
Honestly? Not bad for a first crack. The first campaign to go out of Klaviyo (maybe ever, by Amanda’s reckoning) pulled a 30%+ open rate across close to 1,000 subscribers. And one sale came through directly we’re on the board.
We’ll take it. The open rate tells us Amanda’s audience is genuinely engaged and ready to hear from her. They just need a reason to buy. Which, conveniently, is exactly what we’re here for.
What’s been built in the background
While the campaign was out in the world doing its thing, Maddie had been busy in Klaviyo. The welcome series Amanda had a stalk of ahead of this meeting (“it looks really good”) has been expanded from two emails to four, now covering the free marshmallow offer, a social follow prompt and a bestsellers feature.
The abandoned checkout flow is also live, which would turn out to be more interesting than expected (more on that shortly). And with Klaviyo firing, we’re set up nicely for what comes next.
Right. Time to spend some money.
With the email foundation in place, the next logical step is getting more people to the website in the first place. We’ve put together a Meta ads strategy, starting simple: no elaborate funnels, no over-engineered audience segmentation. We know Sweet Darl’n has a great product, the job right now is to get it in front of people.
We’re running three audiences a lookalike built from website visitors and the Klaviyo list, a broader Meta audience with some age and location signals (most orders are coming from Melbourne and Sydney in the 25–54 bracket), and a third audience of social engagers who haven’t yet purchased. The thinking there is that plenty of people are already following Amanda’s journey, they just need a nudge.
The budget to start is $50 a day, roughly $1,500 a month. We’ll watch it closely, adjust as the data comes in and resist the temptation to pull every lever from the get go.
As Maddie puts it, “because we’re not launching everything at once, we’re actually able to see the increase in sales from starting each individual thing.”
Amanda’s on the same page, “As tempting as it is to just throw everything at it, we could be spending a whole heap of time on something and attributing success to it, and it’s a waste of money.”
The creative brief: five videos and a very good hook
Running ads means having content that actually works as ads, which is a slightly different suite to the content that works for an existing audience. Amanda’s TikTok is full of great material, but a lot of it is tied to specific events (Mother’s Day, expo days, seasonal products) and doesn’t necessarily translate for someone who’s never heard of the brand.
So we’ve put together a brief for five evergreen, product-focused videos: a brand introduction, product explainers for the two bestsellers (the Marshmallow Box and Wagon Wheel Box), an unboxing video, a gifting-focused piece and a nostalgia hook think; remember Wagon Wheels? aimed at people who need very little convincing.
The vision is to keep it feeling like Amanda, not like an ad. As Caleb explains, “once they click through to the Instagram page, this is the actual business owner creating this. This is the person who’ll be making it and sending it to you.” The story ties up neatly.
And in what Caleb described as “the dream client scenario,” Amanda’s response to the brief was essentially: tell me what you need and I’ll make it. She’s even got a cracking hook in mind for the Wagon Wheel video: “I can’t believe I haven’t shown you how we make our bestsellers.”
The checkout mystery
Here’s where things get interesting. Now that the abandoned checkout flow is live, we can see that around 9% of people are making it all the way to checkout, but only 1% are actually completing a purchase. That’s a gap worth investigating.
Amanda has a theory. Cookie dough requires cold shipping, which is calculated by postcode and can be noticeably more expensive than the flat-rate Australia Post shipping uses for everything else. Her hunch is that new customers arrive for the Wagon Wheels, see the cookie dough on the upsell prompt, add it to their cart and then get a surprise at checkout when the shipping jumps.
“I’d love to know how many people have cookie dough in their cart when they abandon,” Amanda said. “Because if they had just checked out with Wagon Wheels, which is what they’re actually there for, they might have followed through.”
We’re going to pull the data from Shopify and find out. In the meantime, we’re looking at whether cookie dough should simply be removed from the checkout upsell, a small tweak that could quietly have a meaningful impact on conversions.
On the horizon: Father’s Day
We’ve got a bit of runway before Father’s Day, which is good, because Amanda’s seasonal products require lead time to develop, photograph and promote. Past Father’s Day ranges have included bourbon bacon cookie dough (“sounds kind of whack, but it was so good”), cookie dough sundae boxes and s’mores brownies. Each one a limited run, never to return. Well, unless by popular demand.
Our plan for the next meeting is to work backwards from launch, figure out what content we need and when, and potentially tease the new product by referencing past Father’s Day drops. If you want to find out what’s coming this year, you’ll have to join the mailing list.
What’s next?
The Meta ads are nearly ready to go live. Amanda has some video homework. We’re digging into the checkout data. And we’re keeping an eye on those email flows as they start catching new subscribers through the welcome series.
We started at $1,118 in average monthly revenue. The needle is about to start moving.
