It’s an age-old problem for CPG brands: if you sell through retailers and service businesses, how do you connect with your consumers?
Wyng sat down with Nick Dianni, Shopper Marketing Manager at Novamex, to find out how he bridges the gap between beverage brands and consumers.
The challenge: connecting directly with consumers
Novamex’s mission is to bring authentic Mexican food, soft drinks, and cultural spirit to people across the United States. Their portfolio of beverage brands includes household names such as Jarritos, Sidral Mundet, and Chocolate Ibarra.
“We don’t sell our products ourselves because it’d be impossible to try to fulfill that,” jokes Nick. Instead, Novamex works with over 50,000 distribution points from coast to coast, including both retailers and restaurants.
That leaves just one problem: how do you connect directly with consumers, when you don’t sell directly to them? That’s where Nick’s role starts.
“I work with all of our retail partners to drive sales, try to get some awareness, and help reward our consumers wherever possible,” he explains. “I want to make the experience more than just having a bottle of soda.”
Novamex and the beverage business
Connecting with consumers is a familiar issue for many CPG businesses. In the past, many have chosen to accept the status quo by marketing exclusively to distributors — and leaving the consumer experience up to them.
“Up until very recently, our website was more just informative,” says Nick. “You could learn about the brands, maybe see some videos, see some recipes, things like that.”
But now, the balance is shifting toward a more direct appeal to consumers. As well as offering links for consumers to shop online, Novamex has started to drive more direct consumer interactions through countdown calendars, instant wins, sweepstakes, quizzes, contests, and other interactive digital experiences.
“Outside of Wyng, it’s been difficult to engage consumers,” Nick explains. There’s also the challenge of managing multiple brands at once. “That’s why I love working with Wyng, because you make that possible. With some of my other programs, I don’t have that flexibility.”
The solution: value-driven, interactive experiences
The team at Novamex started building exceptional digital experiences to engage consumers directly. They now run multiple campaigns each year with Wyng Experiences.
Their most successful campaign has been JarriTODOS, where consumers submitted short videos on social media for the chance to win one of six artists’ grants from the Jarritos brand.
“We were giving away grants for areas across the arts — artists, musicians, dancers. People uploaded a ton of content,” says Nick. “We want to show that our consumers are super important to us and authenticity and culture are big brand values for Jarritos.” The campaign received so much engagement that it’s now become an annual staple. And, in combination with other Wyng Experiences, Novamex has reaped significant benefits.
“First and foremost, just building up our consumer database,” explains Nick. “That’s [gone] from zero to probably a couple million at this point just from Wyng. We’re probably getting 50,000 people in an experience and we’re doing ten-plus a year.”
As well as building Novamex’s own database, the campaigns have led to significantly higher engagement on social media and are driving more revenue for the brands they work with.
“Basically all of our metrics are up,” says Nick. “Impressions, engagement, they’re up double digits year over year. Sales are up double digits year over year across all brands.”
How Wyng Experiences help reach more consumers
Those are impressive numbers. So how did Novamex get there?
“We use Wyng for pretty much everything,” Nick explains. “National campaigns, smaller regional activations, social media giveaways, and cool content experiences.”
Wyng Experiences helped the team to scale rapidly, without farming content creation and campaign management out to third parties. They were able to translate big ideas into on-brand, interactive experiences that consumers loved.
“We’re not a large marketing team here, and some of the stuff we’ve been able to do … wouldn’t have been possible otherwise,” Nick notes. “Wyng gives us the tools to activate pretty quickly. And Wyng handles all the fulfillment [for giveaways], and that is super helpful!”
Stretching resources further means that Novamex brands can keep up the pace as they find more success. There’s more time available for in-store activations and new ideas. As the team expands, new hires get up to speed quickly, and experienced marketers have more time for big-picture strategy.
What's next for Novamex?
Nick is convinced that Wyng will be a part of Novamex’s consumer engagement strategy for a long time to come. “There’s been certain types of experiences that we use year over year because they’re that easy and they work,” he notes.
But that’s not the whole story. The marketing team at Novamex plans to expand their efforts and reach consumers with even more impact.
“We’re probably under-utilizing some of the data we’ve collected,” Nick admits. “We’re just scratching the surface.”
Through its campaigns and activations so far, Novamex has collected enough consumer information to be able to segment, retarget, and market to their audience through a wide range of channels.
Their expanded strategy will start with emails. Nick’s team plans to use the millions of email opt-ins gathered through Wyng experiences to keep building consumer relationships and boosting sales. Their retargeting strategy could also work with ads — and, eventually, web personalization.
For example, instead of listing a general recipe collection on a brand’s website, Novamex could show a tailored selection to individual consumers based on their expressed likes/dislikes and interests. Wyng makes it possible to personalize offers, content, and products across a brand’s website or mobile app using preference-based personalization.
“It’s in its infancy, over here,” Nick laughs. “Things are going well!”
Want to build world-class experiences with Wyng? Try all our features for free, for up to 30 days.
