The Lunar Solar Group Raises $6m Series A

Posted on September 24, 2024September 27, 2024 by Bhupendra Rathod

Published September 24, 2024

The Lunar Solar Group Raises $6m Series A To Expand Suite Of Proprietary Technology Tools

October 1, 2024 — We’re thrilled to announce that Lunar has raised $6m from our venture partners and angel investors to continue to redefine digital marketing with new commerce enablement and martech projects. The funding will be used to build proprietary technology solutions for Lunar’s service groups focused on digital to retail media buying and AI applications.

Prior to this investment Lunar has successfully incubated a handful of technology companies like Stay AI, a next generation subscription management platform, and KnoCommerce, a post-purchase survey attribution tool. With $30m+ deployed into market-disrupting solutions to-date, the next chapter of Lunar’s innovation will focus on seamlessly blending technology and service.

Specifically, the raise will support Lunar’s development of “Mission Control,” an in-house data suite designed to address challenges with identification, media modeling, forecasting, and consumer insights. Capital has also been allocated to “Loyalty Landers,” a landing page and funnel testing platform that has been used to run thousands of CRO tests for Lunar’s clients already in 2024. Lastly the Lunar team will continue to invest in new solutions that help bridge the gap between digital marketing and brick and mortar retail.

“We’re thrilled to continue to work with fantastic capital partners on the next evolution of Lunar. Looking into the future of marketing services it’s clear that technology innovation will continue to keep our teams ahead of the industry and provide an edge for our clients in a highly competitive market.”

– Pierson Krass, Founder & CEO of Lunar Solar Group

Loyalty Landers / Available To Lunar Clients

A no-code landing page and experience builder allows our teams to deploy new funnels in less than an hour. Rapid testing and personalized post-click experiences for every ad and email.

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Mission Control / Available To Lunar Clients

Lunar’s internal data platform provides toolsets for identification and attribution, channel performance, financial forecasting, and more for our paid media clients.

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Stay AI / Launched 2022

We reinvented how subscription programs are built and optimized. Manage subscription programs like performance channels with dozens of unique new-to-market feature sets.

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KnoCommerce / Launched 2021 (Exited)

Seeing IOS 14 on the horizon Lunar developed the premier post purchase surveying app for Shopify and pioneered using HDYHAU survey data for attribution.

Learn More

Doe Lashes: Optimizing the Customer Journey while Sending Fewer Emails.

Posted on February 16, 2023September 27, 2024 by Bhupendra Rathod

Published February 16, 2023

How we optimized Doe Lashes’ customer journey to boost Klaviyo revenue — all while sending fewer emails.

Total Revenue Growth from Shopify

Total Revenue Growth from Klaviyo

Increase in Flow Conversion Rate

Revenue Growth From Welcome and Quiz Flows

Decrease In Automation Emails Sent

Project overview:

Red Giant Enkore

We helped Doe Lashes work smarter, not harder, to drive 3x more revenue with Klaviyo with 10% fewer emails. As a company with a stellar product and strong existing brand voice across other channels, Doe Lashes’ CRM needed to work smarter, not harder. They came to Lunar Solar Group with the following goals:

Boost Klaviyo revenue to be in line with key industry benchmarks
Improve customer experience by utilizing new forms of creative to leverage existing brand identity
Create an effective and efficient Octane-CRM personalized experience

We re-tooled Doe’s customer experience and ecomm ecosystem. The new CX took a customer-centric approach to simplify CRM. With customers coming in from 5+ platforms, it was critical to scale back email cadence and focus on quality over quantity.

Post-Quiz Flow

The highlight of the Doe brand experience is their Octane AI lash quiz — a funnel that uses personalization to find your perfect lash style.

If a user doesn’t convert immediately, the next touchpoints are critical. We created a distinct post-quiz flow that infuses personalized lash results and brand education.

To further promote the quiz, we geared both the welcome and abandoned cart flows toward the lash quiz for non-purchasers, making the funnel end with quiz to conversion.

Campaigns

While automations are a key part of the customer journey, campaigns play a heavy hand as well. We updated campaign creative to build a cohesive brand story — so that no matter where a user was in their customer journey, CRM effectively spoke to them across flows and campaigns.

By creating a personalized and branded email experience, we successfully pushed users to convert, making them feel intimately connected to the products themselves and looked after by the Doe brand.

Because in the end, it’s about the customer.

Doe Lashes has earned praise from Vogue, Allure, Byrdie, and other major beauty experts as a must-have lash product in any makeup bag.

Enso Rings: Designing a Digital Experience.

Posted on February 16, 2023September 27, 2024 by Bhupendra Rathod

Published February 16, 2023

Designing a digital experience for Enso Rings: Increasing revenue and boosting retention.

Q4 Meta Campaigns Increased Revenue, QoQ

Google Shopping Increase in BFCM Revenue, YoY

Q4 SEM Campaigns Increase in Channel Revenue

Increased Revenue From All Sources, YoY

Launches supported With Photo + Video Shoots

Project overview:

PRODUCTION NO SLEEP Red Giant Enkore

After a successful pitch on Shark Tank led to national consumer attention and several high-profile partnerships, Enso Rings needed to quickly scale up their online presence and develop a strong digital marketing strategy.

To accommodate increasing product demand — particularly after announcing a partnership with Disney — and optimize search engine marketing and overall digital strategies, they needed creative assets that were dynamic, eye-catching, and could be used in a variety of ways.

Enso turned to Lunar Solar Group for full-service partnership, including a nine-month content engagement with Satellite Studio to create a pipeline of diverse creative assets.

High-velocity creative assets to fuel growth and support brand collaborations

Once we assessed Enso Rings’ needs, we formulated a plan knowing that creating gorgeous images for jewelry requires a careful touch. We needed to make sure that our photographs struck the perfect balance of framing the rings closely enough to show their unique designs while also demonstrating the myriad of ways that Enso Rings were perfect for a variety of lifestyles.

In addition to in-house studio productions, we utilized user-generated content to show real people enjoying Enso Rings products in an authentic way. These images resonated with audiences and allowed them to visualize how Enso Rings perfectly fit into their own lifestyle. The result is a wide variety of creative assets that could serve a variety of purposes, including web headers, digital ad campaigns, and more.

Landing pages built for light speed:

LSG’s No Sleep team managed creative direction, optimization, and website design and development to create multiple landing pages for collaborations with multiple brands, including Disney, Pixar, and Santa Cruz. On the web and across other creative assets, we made sure to cater to Enso Rings’ brand while simultaneously fitting the guidelines of their new partnerships.

Protecting deliverability with maximum deliveries over BFCM

Enso’s goal was to maximize deliveries during BFCM weekend, while protecting their email deliverability. This is a fine line to walk.

Our strategy? Replace DNOs (did not open) with DNPs (did not purchase). By updating creative with new banners and background colors, we were able to send similar-but-different emails to everyone who didn’t purchase from the initial send.

7% YoY increase in campaign revenue

Consistent MoM open rates

Highest IP pool, despite sending 21 campaigns in 2 weeks

Enso has an exciting future — new product categories, new brand collaborations, and huge growth potential.

Lemon Perfect: Giving Lemon Perfect’s Ecomm Strategy a New Squeeze.

Posted on February 16, 2023September 27, 2024 by Bhupendra Rathod

Published February 16, 2023

Giving Lemon Perfect’s Ecomm strategy a new squeeze: time to out-hydrate the competition.

Project overview:

NO SLEEP Enkore

When Lemon Perfect founder and CEO Yanni Hufnagel launched his company in 2017, he just had two real goals: drink great-tasting water without squeezing a ton of lemons, and disrupt the way Americans hydrate to improve health outcomes.

No big deal. Right?

What he didn’t know then was that just three years later, Lemon Perfect would go viral after being spotted in a photo Beyonce Knowles-Carter posted on her social media.

To harness that energy and set them up for even steeper growth, the Lemon Perfect team turned to Lunar Solar Group to revamp their website and help retain newly acquired customers.

A (lemon) perfect digital revamp

LSG’s Space Race team provided Lemon Perfect with creative direction, optimization, design, and development on their Shopify Plus site to grow and retain their DTC audience. We created a whole new, integrated digital experience to turn regular customers into loyal followers:

Redesigned product pages
New landing pages
Integration with Recharge to push subscriptions

Reducing churn and keeping customers is crucial for subscription retention. That’s why we branded Lemon Perfect’s Recharge Portal, making it cohesive with the rest of the ecommerce site for a seamless digital experience. It’s the ultimate example of “set it and forget it.” We make subscriptions a 2-click flow to make them appealing, accessible, and easy to sign up.

Squeezing out the competition with an unexpected holiday

After a successful Series A raise in early 2022 (which Beyonce jumped on as an investor), the Lemon Perfect team sought out our Enkore service to generate a campaign that could build on their brand story and increase brand loyalty — all while generating BFCM-comparable revenue without the BFCM competition.

Our approach? Create a whole new holiday that Lemon Perfect could own.

Popular promotional periods such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and major national holidays create heightened competition among merchants for consumers’ attention. In such a saturated environment, marketing even your most aggressive markdowns of the year may still yield lackluster results.

Instead, we worked with Lemon Perfect to devise a creative promotional strategy that broke internal records while keeping the brand at the heart of the campaign. Here’s how we did it:

1. Find the perfect holiday.

What better holiday for a Lemon Perfect super sale than National Lemon Day? It falls on Aug. 29, meaning no distractions or competition related to common sale periods.

2. Create a style guide that differs from normal creative.

For the 2022 email campaigns, we created a cohesive design theme to solidify the brand moment and generate excitement, with a new aesthetic featuring clean images and design, and leaning into Gen Z messaging.

3. Deploy a robust campaign strategy.

The sale strategy involved an aggressive cadence of 3 emails and 3 SMS over 6 days, mimicking the send volume and general hype that most brands save for periods such as BFCM. Revenue was further boosted by a post-sale recap campaign which drove sales even after the offer was no longer available to customers.

At a 150% increase in average promotional revenue, the juice was worth the squeeze.

The National Lemon Day campaign achieved 150% higher revenue than prior average promotions, and open, click, and order rates all well exceeded industry averages:

7% YoY increase in campaign revenue

Consistent MoM open rates

Highest IP pool, despite sending 21 campaigns in 2 weeks

Higher Promo Revenue vs. Average

Increase Open rate

Click Rate Higher than Industry Average

Placed Order Rate Higher than Industry Average

“When it comes to email and SMS, the CRM team at Lunar Solar Group guides our team — both strategically and creatively. They make it easy to establish and grow deep relationships with our customers. As a business that is scaling quickly, having trusted partners like LSG to help us get there is so important.”

Taylor Smith, Sr. Director of Ecommerce at Lemon Perfect.

In addition to Lemon Perfect’s digital growth, their on-shelf success continues with national expansions in major retailers, new product launches, and more.

Vita Coco: From Online Growth to IPO and Beyond.

Posted on January 24, 2023September 27, 2024 by lunarsolarnstg

Published January 24, 2023

From online growth to IPO and beyond: How Lunar supports Vita Coco’s continued growth.

Blended ROAS Increase YoY

Shopify Sales Increase YoY

nCAC Reduction YoY

Increase in Subscription Revenue YoY

Platform Specific Creative Assets Delivered

Project overview:

PRODUCTION NO SLEEP Red Giant Enkore

When we first met the Vita Coco team a couple years ago, they were already profitable and had a strong foothold in third-party retail storefronts. But their rise to popularity hadn’t gone unnoticed, and Big Soda players were launching competitive products.

Vita Coco knew they needed to expand their reach via new channels to retain strong market share and prepare for their upcoming IPO. They had ambitious goals for a full digital and direct-to-consumer strategy and needed a strategic partner to help get them there.

Lunar and No Sleep bring Vita Coco’s brand to life online

To be successful in every aspect of their new digital marketing strategy, Vita Coco needed a comprehensive library of creative assets to build a pipeline of dynamic, engaging content. Initial photo shoots focused on in-studio shots for the website and for an initial paid social campaign abd website build. Then, we moved out of the studio — dreaming up visually compelling use cases to help customers make emotional connections between their own lives and Vita Coco’s variety of offerings.

Meanwhile, LSG’s No Sleep Studio team provided Vita Coco with creative direction, optimization, design, and development on their Shopify Plus site to grow the DTC audience. The entire website was re-built with a fresh DTC approach in mind. Vita Coco was already a force in-store, which meant that DTC adoption would be dependent upon frictionless e-comm UI and incentivizing subscriptions. We created a website that would accomplish all of Vita Coco’s brand goals while providing insight into core audience buying habits.

While our No Sleep team was bringing that first set of creative to life online, we moved into creating the video assets we knew the Vita Coco team would need for the best performance on paid social channels.

We planned shoots focusing on specific promos, while shooting evergreen content in tandem. This included a handful of shoots where photo and video work would happen at the same time, maximizing pre-production hours to work within specific budgets outlined for the year.

“We tapped Lunar Solar Group to help us launch our first ecommerce website and then build our ecommerce program,” said Brittany Harshbarger, Vita Coco’s Director of Growth Marketing. “Since then we haven’t looked back and we’ve been fortunate to count Lunar Solar as a partner.”

The right combination of ad strategy & creative generates online traction.

Britt Harshbarger,

Director of Growth
Marketing

“Working with Lunar to create quality content for ads, while simultaneously managing paid ads, is a growth marketer’s dream. Forget the painful process of fighting for creative that is optimized for performance media.”

Continued partnership

By the time of their IPO, Vita Coco was the undisputed market leader in the coconut water space, with a 50% market share. (That’s bigger than the 10 next biggest brands combined!) Along the way Vita Coco has managed to beat back the advances of behemoth would-be competitors like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, both of which tried to crack the coconut water market to much less success.

“…(W)hen Coke and Pepsi came into the category that I was trying to build, it drove me to find new, creative, innovative ways to outmaneuver them”.

Co-CEO Mike Kirban told Food Dive in a 2021 interview. One of those maneuvers? Reassessing the identity of the brand’s core customers.

“Every time we talk to the [Lunar] team there is something new for us to sink our teeth into — unique platform strategies, new tech, and even product ideas”.

— Harshbarger (Vita Coco)

With the support of Lunar Solar Group, Vita Coco expanded their target audience beyond the typical “health and wellness” demographic with new campaigns that speak more directly to a younger customer — one more inclined to turn to coconut water as a hangover cure or an alcohol mixer.

The Lunar Solar Group Raises $6m Series A To Expand Suite Of Proprietary Technology Tools

Loyalty Landers / Available To Lunar Clients

Mission Control / Available To Lunar Clients

Stay AI / Launched 2022

KnoCommerce / Launched 2021 (Exited)

How we optimized Doe Lashes’ customer journey to boost Klaviyo revenue — all while sending fewer emails.

Project overview:

Post-Quiz Flow

Campaigns

Doe Lashes has earned praise from Vogue, Allure, Byrdie, and other major beauty experts as a must-have lash product in any makeup bag.

Designing a digital experience for Enso Rings: Increasing revenue and boosting retention.

Project overview:

High-velocity creative assets to fuel growth and support brand collaborations

Landing pages built for light speed:

Protecting deliverability with maximum deliveries over BFCM

Enso has an exciting future — new product categories, new brand collaborations, and huge growth potential.

Giving Lemon Perfect’s Ecomm strategy a new squeeze: time to out-hydrate the competition.

Project overview:

A (lemon) perfect digital revamp

Squeezing out the competition with an unexpected holiday

Instead, we worked with Lemon Perfect to devise a creative promotional strategy that broke internal records while keeping the brand at the heart of the campaign. Here’s how we did it:

1. Find the perfect holiday.

2. Create a style guide that differs from normal creative.

3. Deploy a robust campaign strategy.

At a 150% increase in average promotional revenue, the juice was worth the squeeze.

In addition to Lemon Perfect’s digital growth, their on-shelf success continues with national expansions in major retailers, new product launches, and more.

From online growth to IPO and beyond: How Lunar supports Vita Coco’s continued growth.

Project overview:

Lunar and No Sleep bring Vita Coco’s brand to life online

“We tapped Lunar Solar Group to help us launch our first ecommerce website and then build our ecommerce program,” said Brittany Harshbarger, Vita Coco’s Director of Growth Marketing. “Since then we haven’t looked back and we’ve been fortunate to count Lunar Solar as a partner.”

The right combination of ad strategy & creative generates online traction.

Britt Harshbarger,

Director of Growth Marketing

Continued partnership

“…(W)hen Coke and Pepsi came into the category that I was trying to build, it drove me to find new, creative, innovative ways to outmaneuver them”.

“Every time we talk to the [Lunar] team there is something new for us to sink our teeth into — unique platform strategies, new tech, and even product ideas”.

Today, Vita Coco is a household name, and Lunar is proud to be a piece of their growth story.

Director of Growth
Marketing