From their telephones, shoppers can management residence thermostats, safety, doorbells, and lights. With the Pura app, they will management the odor.
Launched in 2015, Pura makes and sells programmable gadgets that emit fragrances, 250 to be precise. The enterprise has scaled to 180 staff and depends totally on influencer advertising for gross sales on its web site and through retail companions. Per Crunchbase, the corporate has raised $4.4 million from exterior traders.
Daniel Lacey is Pura’s chief advertising officer. He and I just lately spoke, addressing perfume suppliers, influencer administration, and extra. Our total audio dialog is embedded beneath. The transcript is edited for size and readability.
Eric Bandholz: Give us a rundown of Pura.
Daniel Lacey: Pura is a great residence perfume system you possibly can management from a cellphone. The corporate launched in 2015. We now have roughly 180 staff now. I joined 4 years in the past as chief advertising officer. The gadgets retail for about $45. They maintain perfume pods, which run $10 to $15 and supply scent.
The gadgets have numerous cool expertise. They go off at particular person occasions, with customized schedules to not waste perfume. There’s an “away” mode, for instance. We associate with a few of the largest perfume manufacturers, such because the Volcano scent from Capri Blue.
Most of our gross sales are direct-to-consumer on our web site. However we’ve established robust retail footholds — Nordstrom, Sephora, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Anthropology, to call a number of.
I primarily give attention to the direct-to-consumer ecommerce technique. My background is paid social. We discovered traction early on with Fb and Instagram advertisements. We’ve since moved to influencers — with hits and misses.
Bandholz: How do you vet influencers?
Lacey: We now have macro- and micro-influencers, an envoy program, and an associates program. Most macro- and micro-influencers sometimes obtain a payment with no affiliate fee. Our ambassador program consists of comparatively small influencers in love with Pura. We’ll ship them items and swag. And we’ve many conventional affiliate companions who work on a fee foundation. We use a procuring discovery app referred to as LTK — Prefer to Know — paired with Impression software program to maintain observe of associates.
Working with influencers is a little bit of artwork and science. Some look good on paper — a big following, nice engagement, spectacular content material — after which they fall quick. A greater strategy is discovering of us with comparable content material and promoting techniques as our star influencers. Our influencer staff has a wonderful eye for that.
Success is usually a mixture of the fitting particular person, the fitting content material, and the fitting call-to-action. And, once more, it’s not at all times apparent. It’s nuanced. Our staff will get fairly detailed. They preserve observe of all that. One weak element may doom the outcomes.
Bandholz: No extra social media advertisements?
Lacey: I’m a believer in beginning with paid social. It was useful within the early days with a brand new product. We had been the primary within the good residence perfume house. We had to determine our messaging and our audience. Fb helped try this. We may experiment with, say, a $5 advert and alter the messaging and audience. It’s an awesome testing platform to search out the market match.
For instance, we puzzled if good residence automation would enchantment to tech-oriented shoppers. And pet homeowners — would they recognize we’re secure for animals? Casting a large web on social helped us hone our message and content material.
We took these learnings to influencers. We most likely labored with 100 of them earlier than getting a strong funding return. It took time.
Bandholz: You’ve 250 fragrances. That’s rather a lot.
Lacey: I agree. Each shopper has distinctive preferences. We now have 32 perfume companions, every with a number of scents. And lots of the influencers have favorites.
Bandholz: The place can listeners help Pura and join with you?
Lacey: Our web site is TryPura.com. I’m on LinkedIn.
