Flint & Flame Case Study
Flint and Flame design, make and sell a range of high-end knives, cookware, and accessories to chefs and passionate home cooks.
Established in the UK in 2011, they have been successfully selling their knives through shows and events such as BBC Good Food, Grand Designs, Taste and Ideal Home Show, and more, all over the UK and now far beyond.
Background
Back in 2014, Flint & Flame approached Results Corporation to develop a strategy for nurturing and developing the relationships with their existing clients – people who had purchased a knife or two at a show or an event over the previous few years.
At that point, Flint & Flame had a database of 10,000 previous customers but had no real strategy for maximising the value of those customers other than sending an occasional email.
Fast forward to today, and the partnership between Flint & Flame and Results Corporation continues, with refinements to old strategies combining with brand new projects and initiatives, all aimed at continual growth and development.
Flint & Flame Marketing Machine
Working with the Flint & Flame’s founders, Results Corporation developed a Marketing Machine – a strategic approach to developing and nurturing their relationship with their customers.
This included…
A Marketing Machine Strategy – we developed a strategy to nurture and develop the relationship with previous customers. The objectives were to create a lot of value through providing knife skills emails with videos, recipes from top chefs, home cooking hints and tips and to intersperse these with sales-focussed communications.
Gold Member Client Nurturing – central to the Marketing Machine is the Flint & Flame Gold Member club. Existing clients were made into Gold Members and as such qualified for Gold Member pricing, free tickets to events, special recipes and offers, and more.
An Email Broadcast System – we set up a high quality, UK-based email broadcast system with a templated email format matching the new website to facilitate emails broadcast, list development, and to provide strong KPI reporting.
A New E-commerce Website – working with Flint and Flame designers and management, we created a new website optimised to provide value and inspiration to website visitors, to tell the Flint & Flame story and to offer an easy way to buy online.
Communications Plan – this is at the heart of the Marketing Machine and the key driver. We set in place a 12-month plan to send clients a series of high value emails interspersed with the occasional direct mail piece based on really exciting and inspirational content.
Making it Happen – Flint & Flame elected to use Results Corporation’s ‘Created and Operated for You’ service. They recognised that they didn’t have the capabilities or resources in-house to execute the Marketing Machine with the attention and diligence that it needed to be fully effective. Every week, Results Corporation’s team create, manage and deliver the Flint & Flame Marketing Machine – this includes managing and updating the website, creating and sending the communications, regularly reviewing and updating the strategy itself and creating regular KPI reports for the Flint & Flame management team.
Christmas Catalogue – we set out a plan and structure for what is now a 36-page Christmas catalogue, packed with knife skills hints and tips, recipes, and of course, Christmas gift ideas based on knives, knife sets, and accessories.
What Happened Next?
The Marketing Machine started to produce results within weeks of the new website being up and the first communications going to customers.
Customers (now Gold Members) loved the emails, with extremely high open rates and engagement, and after an initial ramp up, the sales began to grow strongly.
Today, there are over 31,000 Flint & Flame Gold Members, annual sales revenue has grown at an average of 58.6% since 2014 and the Marketing Machine is an extremely important, valuable and fast-growing part of Flint & Flame.
Based on this success, Flint & Flame have expanded into the USA and Spain, and have plans for expanding further into Europe.
The Marketing Machine is at the heart of this growth and expansion.
Happy Customers and Significant Sales Growth…
Several years ago, following the initial success of Flint & Flame in the UK and the popularity of our beautiful range of knives, we decided to seek the support of Results Corporation in helping to create and deliver an effective marketing strategy for our customer database.
Results Corporation were tasked with producing an external communications plan that (like our product) exceeded the expectations of our loyal customers.
The support, professionalism and creativity of the Results Corporation team has been fundamental to the growth and return on investment we now see from this route to market, and sales growth and customer satisfaction is high as a consequence. Feedback from our customers, as well as the raw sales data clearly show that Results Corporations’ guidance is rightly at the very centre of the strategy that ensured we hit the right mix of sales and informational content to maintain the customers interest in our business as a whole.
In addition, and as the consequence of the hands-on style of the Results team supporting us, we have the ability to react as we manage our inventory, chef relationships and other media exposure to further ensure that our message is always current and relevant to opportunities and our customers’ needs. I have no hesitation in recommending Results Corporation to any small business who have a passion for ensuring customers are highly satisfied, report positively their experience to others and crucially, return to buy over and over again.
