Breaking Down Liquid Death's Email Strategy

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Saturday, February 12, 2022

The verdict is in - Liquid Death is going to be the 2022 Valentines gift of the year 🤣

In this newsletter, you’ll find: 👇

Brand Breakdown Part 2: Liquid Death (Email)

This week, we’re back and breaking down Liquid Death’s email sequences.

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EMAIL

Monster Energy, G-Fuel, and Daily Harvest: when you hear these brand names, what comes to mind? For us, it’s the fact that they offer more than a product—they’re an entire lifestyle.

And we decided to explore another drink brand to add to the mix: Liquid Death ☠️

We wanted to see how this brand communicates with its customers, and what we learned was surprising.

When it comes to email, Liquid Death completely differentiates itself from the status quo. There’s no brand background, no product recommendations, and no social proof. It’s all entertaining content and brand merch.

Yet, this approach works really well for them. Let’s discuss why. 🤔

1️⃣ Liquid Death’s pop-up

Rather than taking the traditional 10% off discount approach with their pop-up, Liquid Death offers a free product to visitors who purchase their first case of water.

This enforces the brand by not devaluing the product and builds a stronger relationship with consumers by giving them access to merch.

The pop-up design leans toward simplicity but works well because it shows people exactly what product they can expect. Also, the tone of voice and copy are so funny that you wouldn’t want a busy design to distract from that.
It’d be interesting to test this pop-up as a two-step version (asking for an email in part one and then SMS in part two). Customers may be more likely to convert if they see one ask at a time.

2️⃣ Welcome email 1

Liquid Death builds community from the first text seen on its welcome email: “Welcome to the cult.” It’s a much more exciting approach than just “Welcome to Liquid Death.”

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The original offer from the pop-up is reinforced above the fold—a great reminder about why the visitor signed up in the first place.

And Liquid Death doesn’t let this offer overpower the entire email. It’s well-balanced between the offer and the introduction to the brand.

The CTA copy immediately shows customers what kind of brand Liquid Death is. By using “fuck yeah” as the copy, Liquid Death shows off their edgy, funny, anti-corporate brand voice.

The “Death to plastic” section is an excellent way to bridge users into believing in Liquid Death’s social cause to use fewer plastic water bottles.

3️⃣ Welcome email 2

The second email is a reminder about the offer for two free koozies. This is the last email in the flow about the koozie offer, but that’s okay since this email is dedicated entirely to just that offer.

Again, the CTA enforces the brand voice with the copy “Hell Yes.”

While the email is simpler, it works with Liquid Death’s anti-corporate branding. That being said, it may be helpful to include a bit of social proof to help drive the sale.

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EMAIL

4️⃣ Merch campaigns 1 and 2

Immediately, the copy draws in the customer and connects them to Liquid Death’s merch. Both emails' first line is humorous and positions the shirts as something customers in the “cult” would want to own.

Since these emails only highlight Liquid Death’s merch, we feel as though Liquid Death falls into the category of a “lifestyle brand” rather than a “functional brand.”

Functional brands communicate their product benefits and features often, showing the customer why they need the product to make their life better.

Lifestyle brands don’t need to tell the customer how great their products are—their value is the community they belong to.

Liquid Death knows their customer well, but it would be good to run tests and surveys to determine if the lifestyle brand approach is the best for sales.
These emails also use the strong “Hell Yes” CTA. Using “yes” language consistently will train customers to always want to say yes.

5️⃣ Announcement email

This email makes our team believe that Liquid Death knows their audience well enough that they’ll understand a joke from the TV show “The Boys.”

With zero promotional language included, Liquid Death’s announcement email about parting ways with The Deep shows that they’re more focused on creating entertaining content for their audience than just pushing a sale.

Sending this email can be a bit of a gamble for the brand—they’re assuming their audience knows the TV show enough that they’ll understand the story they created around a character from it.

But we do like Liquid Death’s approach of not pushing their product in every email.

6️⃣ Pay later email

By the time you get this email, it’s clear that Liquid Death isn’t afraid of going over the top.

In fact, they built a product specifically just to sell to people in payment installments. They also treat the copy similarly to how it would feel like talking to a car salesperson.

Again, they use the “Hell Yes” CTA to stay consistent with their other emails. And in this email, it just makes the offer even more exciting.

7️⃣ Live life on island time

For a longer email all about a single product feature, Liquid Death knows how to keep their audience engaged.

While this email involves a bit of scrolling, they do a good job of showing off their island shirt from various angles. The final image is even a GIF of the shirt flapping in the wind on the beach in total island style.
But considering this is email number seven and Liquid Death still hasn’t featured their main product at all, they’re either very confident in their product, or their customer base is more engaged with the Liquid Death lifestyle than anything else.

8️⃣ Post-purchase email

We purchased Liquid Death to check out their transactional emails. We’ll share an example of their order confirmation email, but, unfortunately, this was the only email we received.

There’s an opportunity for Liquid Death to send customers shipping notifications and delivery confirmation along with the order confirmation email.

This gives customers a better experience when they receive regular updates about their order and when they can expect it. It also means fewer questions about “when will my order be delivered?” for Liquid Death’s support team.

Transactional emails aren’t always exciting, but there is an opportunity for Liquid Death to use more of their funny brand voice in this email to keep it consistent with their other campaigns.

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DTC Newsletter is written by Tina Donati, and Rebecca Knight. Edited by Claire Beveridge.

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