Aura Bora boosts campaign frequency and grows Klaviyo revenue 59.5% YoY

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Aura Bora makes sparkling water from herbs, fruits and flowers, creating unique flavors like lime cardamom and cactus rose. Their water contains no sugar or calories and unlike other sparkling water brands, Aura Bora skips citric acid, to prevent headaches and a bitter aftertaste.

It’s fitting the brand’s motto is “drink weird water,” because their water is weirdly tasty, natural, and eco-friendly to boot: Every year, Aura Bora donates 1% of revenue to conservation non-profits.

Learn how Aura Bora bet on owned channels and exceeded revenue forecasts by 25%

Challenge

Like many players in the seltzer space, Aura Bora brings in most of its revenue between Memorial Day and Labor Day. In the off-season, the brand historically ran paid digital ads.

But as 2022 wound down and recession forecasts swirled, paid acquisition in winter seemed risky and expensive. The marketing team decided to scrap business as usual and forge a new path.

“Given the economic climate, a lot of brands are looking for ways to drive revenue outside of performance marketing,” says Cameron Faist, VP of growth at Aura Bora. “For us, it was an easy decision to lean into owned media channels to drive more revenue per existing user and deepen our relationship with our consumers.”

Given the economic climate, a lot of brands are looking for ways to drive revenue outside of performance marketing. For us, it was an easy decision to lean into owned media channels.

Solution

After BFCM 2022, Aura Bora cut their spend on top-of-funnel performance marketing more than 50%—to an all-time low—in preparation for the sparkling water off-season.

To continue driving revenue, the marketing team ramped up retention marketing activity in Klaviyo, increasing send frequency to maximize revenue per subscriber.

“During these off-peak months, we relied heavily on Klaviyo to continue to drive revenue from our existing consumer base,” Faist says.

Strategy

How many emails could Aura Bora send per month without losing subscribers or engagement? Testing showed that their audience maxed out at 15 campaigns a month, plus ecommerce automations. Starting in December, Aura Bora sent exactly that.

Their new test? Fewer product emails, and 2x their usual number of brand-first campaigns. Specifically:

• 10 campaigns about the month’s new, limited-edition seltzer flavor
• 5 evergreen brand-first campaigns that leaned into Aura Bora’s quirky brand voice, with no product specs or up-selling. A recent one featured goofy, overlapping CTAs, like “shop… now?” and “shop auras and boras,” under the heading, “This is what happens when you leave the interns in charge.”

Open rates and revenue per user have been “incredible,” Faist says, especially from the brand-first campaigns—substantially exceeding forecasts.

“Of course there’s a cost to Klaviyo, but nowhere near the tens of thousands of dollars Facebook and TikTok ads cost,” Faist says. “When we’re increasing our campaign sends, that revenue has no cost associated with it. We look at Klaviyo as a no-cost channel, and we absolutely saw a better P&L for our DTC side of the business as a result of this shift.”

We look at Klaviyo as a no-cost channel.