Kara Golden
Founder and CEO
Hint

Following working with ecommerce for AOL and having three children, Kara gained weight and found herself with unhealthy habits including an addition to diet soda. She launched the first fruit-flavored unsweetened water after realizing the health impact of adding fruit juice to water in her personal life.

When her first sale to Whole Foods led to reorders the very next day, she knew she was on to something big. Through connections she sold to Google, Starbucks (but lost the contract) and then Amazon. It is now the largest independent beverage company in the US with no relationship with Coke, Pepis or Dr. Pepper-Snapple

She drove growth through office environments where employers realized the benefit of healthier employees. However, she felt that she needed a direct relationship with end-users. Despite concerns regarding the wholesale business model now responsible for millions of dollars of sales, Kara launched a website and began email marketing through Klaviyo. These same tactics worked to launch Hint Sunscreen, made in a similar way and for the same reasons as the beverage.

From this experience, Kara completely rejects the idea that wholesale product companies can be removed from the consumer and can depend on third parties to host their platform (like Amazon). She regularly receives warm customer feedback expressing well wishes for her health and even asking for company growth advice, even though the conventional wisdom to grow a wholesale brand was to pay for expensive product placements in grocery chains which she avoided entirely.

​Megan Whitman
Chief Digital Officer
​Kopari Beauty (@KopariBeauty​)

Growing a business requires different strategies at different stages of your growth. But one thing that must remain consistent and high-quality as you evolve: your customer experience. Hear from Megan Whitman, chief digital officer of Kopari to hear about the different and changing ways this beauty brand has leveraged Klaviyo to increase revenue and boost customer satisfaction during the various growth stages of their business. ​

Despite packaging delays and a launch email misfire, Megan used Klaviyo to grow one of the first beauty supply ecommerce stores. When a Klaviyo survey revealed that customers wanted to try products in-store and a deal with Sephora was inked, Megan used Klaviyo to provide needed purchase statistics. She used Klaviyo as the firm's CRM and connected it to their customer service team so that agents could access campaign emails that inspired queries.

They also used Klaviyo to set up direct mail segments and track their success through Klaviyo.

After a very popular coconut deodorant, which at $14 was less than half the brand's average $30 price point, dropped average cart value significantly, Kopari initiated customer feedback queries. In fact, telephone queries are now constant.

Personalization has become Kopari's engine for growth, and Klaviyo is used to customize forms and web experiences (through UTM links).

​Next steps include personalized content blocks, additional flows based on recency, frequency and spending habits and pushing data into other technology partners to align messaging.