Purity Coffee had a shorter sales cycle during the 2024 Cyber 5 period than the year before.

Part of that is because the retailer switched its fulfillment to a third-party logistics (3PL) provider in November. Purity Coffee had grown so much in the last couple of years that it put a strain on the brand’s fulfillment, said Sheena Steinhoff, content and direct marketing manager.

The switch to a 3PL meant that Purity Coffee could fulfill orders faster, and in turn, it could shrink its promotional period because it could accommodate a tighter turnaround during the holiday season.

Making the switch right before the busiest sales period of the year “was a little bit of a crazy decision, and we’ve been learning a little bit as we go, but ultimately, we live in an Amazon world,” she said. As such, consumers often expect to receive online orders in two days. In addition to the 3PL, Purity Coffee sells on Amazon, using the marketplace’s fulfillment services for some of the orders consumers place there.

This was the third Cyber 5 period that Steinhoff completed with Purity Coffee, she told Digital Commerce 360. The Cyber 5 refers to the five-day stretch from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.

This year, Purity Coffee started its Black Friday promotions the Monday preceding Thanksgiving. In previous years, it had started them at the beginning of November. Steinhoff said the switch worked well for Purity Coffee, which grew Cyber 5 sales 22% year over year. That was also the retailer’s best sales week to date, she told Digital Commerce 360.

Part of Purity Coffee’s promotions included sample sizes, mugs, and the option to purchase whole-bean or ground coffee. For the third year, it also did a limited release of a coffee flavor during the holidays.

Purity Coffee’s holiday collection this year included decaf and one-third caffeine, as well as whole-bean and ground coffee.

How Purity Coffee used marketing messages during Cyber 5

“It’s always encouraged to send more messages” during the Cyber 5 period, Steinhoff told Digital Commerce 360. But how retailers use those messages affects more than just sales.

Steinhoff said she likes to book-end sales with messages at the beginning to announce a promotion and at the end to let consumers know the deal’s deadline. In between, though, she’s segmenting consumers.

“Through that segmenting, who’s engaging?” she said. “Who has purchased? I like to segment out some people who have just recently purchased. Nothing annoys me more when I’m following a brand — I’ve already purchased during your sale; why am I still getting two or three messages today? That’s annoying.”

And that segmenting appeared to have paid off. On Black Friday, Steinhoff had decided to send an email to the retailer’s more engaged audience that hadn’t purchased during the Black Friday sales period. She said she poked fun at Black Friday while reminding consumers of the brand’s coffee selection.

That email had an 80% open rate, which compares to a 47% open rate, on average, throughout the Cyber 5 as a whole.

“To get an 80% open rate, it was a more engaged audience, and the revenue from that was just a little bit behind the announcement,” Steinhoff said. “That’s really big because typically you see the highest sales spike from the actual announcement and then it kind of dwindles off a little bit from there.”

Purity Coffee takes advantage of session abandonment messages

Despite not wanting “to bother people,” Steinhoff said she tried a new marketing feature during this year’s Cyber 5, called session abandonment messaging. The feature, from the email and SMS marketing platform Attentive, allows brands to target consumers who visited their website but didn’t click on a product or add anything to their carts.

Consumers must opt in to begin receiving such messaging from the brands they like. That’s the case with all of Attentive’s features, chief marketing officer Keri McGhee previously told Digital Commerce 360.

Consumers who visited the website would, after a while, get a message Steinhoff wrote thanking them for visiting the website and informing them of the brand’s sale.

Along with session abandonment, customizing Purity Coffee’s cart, checkout and browse helped the brand grow sales during the Cyber 5.

Additionally, it took advantage of back-in-stock messaging. When Purity Coffee replenished inventory for low-stock and out-of-stock products, it would automatically send consumers messages that the product is available again.

“Specifically with our limited-release coffee, we had times where it was going in and out of stock as things were being fulfilled,” Steinhoff said. “As soon as that back-in-stock hit, you could see the order spike up.”

‘A marketer’s dream’

Purity Coffee is a certified B Corporation. That means it meets certain environmentally friendly and sustainability standards. It also means meeting certain standards for how it treats its employees and how its suppliers treat theirs.

Additionally, Purity Coffee is a Public Benefit Corporation, meaning although shareholder value is important to the company, it also “committed to making a positive impact on society, the environment, and other stakeholders,” it says.

Steinhoff said Purity Coffee pays its farmers more than fair trade, adding that it doesn’t do just the minimum.

“I literally say it’s a marketer’s dream,” Steinhoff said.

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