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From their telephones, shoppers can management house thermostats, safety, doorbells, and lights. With the Pura app, they’ll management the odor.
Launched in 2015, Pura makes and sells programmable units 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 by way of retail companions. Per Crunchbase, the corporate has raised $4.4 million from outdoors traders.
Daniel Lacey is Pura’s chief advertising officer. He and I not too long ago spoke, addressing perfume suppliers, influencer administration, and extra. Our whole 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 house perfume system you may management from a cellphone. The corporate launched in 2015. We’ve got roughly 180 staff now. I joined 4 years in the past as chief advertising officer. The units retail for about $45. They maintain perfume pods, which run $10 to $15 and supply scent.
The units have loads of cool know-how. They go off at particular person instances, with customized schedules to not waste perfume. There’s an “away” mode, for instance. We companion 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 just a few.
I primarily concentrate on the direct-to-consumer ecommerce technique. My background is paid social. We discovered traction early on with Fb and Instagram adverts. We’ve since moved to influencers — with hits and misses.
Bandholz: How do you vet influencers?
Lacey: We’ve got macro- and micro-influencers, an envoy program, and an associates program. Most macro- and micro-influencers usually obtain a price with no affiliate fee. Our ambassador program consists of comparatively small influencers in love with Pura. We’ll ship them presents and swag. And we’ve many conventional affiliate companions who work on a fee foundation. We use a buying discovery app known as LTK — Wish to Know — paired with Influence 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 brief. A greater method is discovering of us with related content material and promoting techniques as our star influencers. Our influencer staff has a wonderful eye for that.
Success is mostly a mix of the proper individual, the proper content material, and the proper call-to-action. And, once more, it’s not all the time apparent. It’s nuanced. Our staff will get fairly detailed. They maintain observe of all that. One weak part might doom the outcomes.
Bandholz: No extra social media adverts?
Lacey: I’m a believer in beginning with paid social. It was useful within the early days with a brand new product. We have been the primary within the sensible house perfume house. We had to determine our messaging and our target market. Fb helped try this. We might experiment with, say, a $5 advert and alter the messaging and target market. It’s an important testing platform to seek out the market match.
For instance, we questioned if sensible house automation would enchantment to tech-oriented shoppers. And pet house owners — would they admire 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 could have 250 fragrances. That’s loads.
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.
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