The Tech Startup

What We Did:

Marketing Audit, Zoom-Out Pivot, Branding, Marketing & Sales Strategy

Description:

Slingr was a revolutionary mobile app-based location-based social gifting tech start-up that allowed users to gift alcoholic beverages and food in real time while at participating bars and restaurants. Slingr’s user experience (UX) for their app users (i.e., when drinks were successfully gifted and delivered) was spectacular. However, the company was having trouble acquiring users. Slingr’s revenue model was also based on a fee added to each drink gifted. Consequently, the low user volume prevented profitability.

Through a deep-dive of the alcoholic beverage industry supply chain (called the Three Tier Structure), we uncovered a more profitable way to use Slingr’s technology. We orchestrated a “Zoom-Out Pivot”, adding promotions to incentivize gifting of specific beverages. Thus, instead of only generating revenue from items purchased at on-premise retailers, the technology could be sold as experiential field marketing campaigns to alcoholic beverage producers and distributors. Better yet, the UX was native to normal consumer behavior.

Next, we refreshed the Slingr brand, marketing, and sales strategy. We created messaging that reflected the new product’s value proposition and set new price points that reflected beverage brands’ customer acquisition costs. We also studied the most effective app user acquisition strategies and found that the best way to drive mobile app installs was incredibly low-tech: table toppers.

Best of all, between the new revenue streams and app user acquisition model, Slingr’s customer acquisition cost (CAC) became negative — in other words, Slingr made money each time it acquired a new app user.

We activated the new Slingr model at a single retailer with an ultra-premium brand of Irish whiskey called Red Breast. Slingr’s monthly user acquisition rate increased 1,000%. Moreover, the retailer’s point-of-sale inventory showed a 100% increase in Red Breast sales, 50% of which were organically purchased. The campaign was so successful that the bar sold out of Red Breast.

We then activated a multi-venue Slingr campaign with Pabst Brewing Company’s beer brand, Primo. The campaign was so successful that all the venues sold out of Primo, with app user acquisition remaining consistent.

We helped Slingr increased its user acquisition rate by 1,000% and opened a new revenue stream by conducting a marketing audit, orchestrating a zoom-out pivot, and re-orienting the company’s brand, marketing, and sales strategy. If The Saltzman Company can help your company, get in contact!