An Innovative Online Business

Last week my wife passed me a promotional code for a website that delivers snacks to your home or workplace. The promo code was from OK Magazine, but I must point out my wife isn’t a regular reader! Graze (www.graze.com) is a relatively new venture that enables its customers to choose from a plethora of available (and predominantly healthy) snacks, marking them as ‘never send me this’ ‘try this’ ‘send frequently’ and then select how often they want their box to be delivered.

Personally, I am terrible for snacking when in the office; after all, a cup of tea isn’t the same without some ginger biscuits to dunk in it. Also, we have many temptations to contend with, snackboxes full of chocolate and crisps are delivered every week or so, numerous sandwich companies pester us for orders and we often succumb. So, the thought of something more healthy than a bacon sandwich to snack on was rather tempting.

It turned out that Graze were actually doing a lot right in terms of their offering and how they are marketing the business. The offer the company were promoting was to get your first box free and your second half price, this is a fantastic example of good advertising – people love free stuff. Advertising in OK magazine certainly won’t be cheap so it must have been hugely important to gain as much ROI as possible.

Signing up was easy – another very important factor.  Had it started to get taxing in any way, I would have dropped out and I’m sure many others would too. The website is easy to use and imagery makes all of the food products look attractive – I couldn’t wait for my first box to arrive in the post! Essentially what they were doing right included:

•    An attractive offer using a postcard with enough to entice you into a website visit
•    A great website that is easy to navigate around, with uncomplicated registration
•    Clear information on how the service works
•    Straightforward details on how to stop the boxes, if you wish to
•    An excellent offer to encourage WOM marketing – A promo code that gets the user a free box and you £1 off your next snack box.
•    Graze encourage you to use the code on social networks (which I did) and to email to friends and co-workers. This is a well-known technique, however 3 people have signed up with my code, so it appears to be attractive enough for them too.

All in all, Graze have come up with a great concept for an online business and executed its marketing seemingly to perfection. From an online marketing perspective, they seem to be ranking ok for relevant terms and are also investing in PPC activity.  A Google search for the term ‘healthy snacks’ sees Graze in the sponsored links section and also in the top ten organic results.

However, now I have a big decision to make, I’ve had my free box and my half price second box…. Do I cancel, or pay £2.49 for the next one (includes my £1 off for a colleague signing up)…. Answers on a postcard please – and be quick, my next box is here on Tuesday…!