Jolie started seeding its shower heads to what its founders called “influential people” before it even officially hit the market in order to drive FOMO (fear of missing out). Pre-launch, Jolie sent out about 100 shower heads and continues to seed slightly more than that amount per month to people in the art, culture, and fashion worlds, whether they’re social media content creators or not.
“The more we get organic content—content from seeding, content from customers—the more we can spend on Instagram, efficiently,” Arjan Singh, co-founder and head of brand marketing at Jolie, said, adding that Jolie is able to make money from Instagram, in part, because of all the content the community produces. Currently, about 90% of Jolie’s influencers aren’t paid, but it plans to do more paid partnerships in the future.
Babenzien said about three-quarters of Jolie’s yearly marketing spend goes towards paid social, particularly on Instagram.
Shower thoughts hit the inbox
Before the brand even rolled out, Outlines had a list of 5,000 email subscribers. Those arrived from two main, separate sources: those obtained from its first product, and a creative referral program.
Outlines got its start by selling only shower curtains (rather than the array of bath and shower products it now sells). The curtains were a so-called minimum viable product to see if people would be interested in them. Those initial 3,000-ish customers made up the bulk of its email list once Outlines as the world knows it now officially hit the market.