From their telephones, shoppers can management residence 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 workers 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 buyers.
Daniel Lacey is Pura’s chief advertising officer. He and I lately spoke, addressing perfume suppliers, influencer administration, and extra. Our whole audio dialog is embedded under. The transcript is edited for size and readability.
Eric Bandholz: Give us a rundown of Pura.
Daniel Lacey: Pura is a brilliant residence perfume machine you possibly can management from a cellphone. The corporate launched in 2015. We’ve got roughly 180 workers 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 a variety 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 among 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 a number of.
I primarily deal with the direct-to-consumer ecommerce technique. My background is paid social. We discovered traction early on with Fb and Instagram advertisements. 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 sometimes 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 — Prefer to Know — paired with Affect 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 quick. A greater method is discovering of us with comparable content material and promoting techniques as our star influencers. Our influencer workforce has a wonderful eye for that.
Success is usually a mixture of the appropriate individual, the appropriate content material, and the appropriate call-to-action. And, once more, it’s not at all times apparent. It’s nuanced. Our workforce will get fairly detailed. They maintain observe of all that. One weak part might doom the outcomes.
Bandholz: No extra social media advertisements?
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 residence perfume house. We had to determine our messaging and our target market. Fb helped do this. We might experiment with, say, a $5 advert and alter the messaging and target market. It’s a fantastic testing platform to seek out the market match.
For instance, we questioned if sensible residence automation would enchantment to tech-oriented shoppers. And pet homeowners — would they respect 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 stable funding return. It took time.
Bandholz: You’ve 250 fragrances. That’s lots.
Lacey: I agree. Each client has distinctive preferences. We now have 32 perfume companions, every with a number of scents. And most of the influencers have favorites.
Bandholz: The place can listeners assist Pura and join with you?
Lacey: Our web site is TryPura.com. I’m on LinkedIn.
