How I'd grow Matchmaker Coffee

Matchmaker Coffee is a custom coffee subscription.

They send you a testing pack composed of 6 different coffee types, you rate them, and they design you a custom blend.

Once you find your favorite combination, it’ll be delivered every month.

This is more of a spinoff than a completely new project. The founders already have a coffee subscription website (The Roasters Pack).

Yet, they used a separate domain. While I understand that they probably made this choice for branding, I don’t completely agree with it.

The first reason is that keeping things under the same roof would make it much easier to upsell this new subscription to existing customers.

There’s no better time to propose your new shiny product than when someone is already buying a similar one from you.

I’d try to upsell after the checkout is completed, to avoid pre-purchase friction.

Then I’d set up an automated email sequence that starts 3 months after the customers sign up for the basic subscription. By that point, they should be ready to upgrade.

Secondly, it’d be easier to get new visitors.

Search: concentrating domain authority under a single domain makes it easier to rank on Google.

Social: aggregating pixel data allows the FB/IG algorithm and its conversion optimization process to find cost-effective converts.

1-minute improvement that’ll boost the conversion rate: mention free shipping earlier! Right now, the first mention is at the checkout.

If I’m a visitor who’s on the fence, seeing free shipping could push me into buying. Make that super prominent!

If we think about the target audience, they are probably people who are really passionate about coffee, not random buyers.

They probably hang out online with peers who are just as passionate, and debate topics like roasting and flavours.

In cases like these, where communities are formed around topics, word of mouth is extremely powerful.

To encourage it, they could launch a referral program: make a friend sign-up, and both of you get 1 free month of subscription. The more friends, the more free months.

I’d also try to come up with a strategy to encourage user-generated content.

An example could be a contest on Instagram, which has a strong coffee community.

Share a coffee-related pic tagging or mentioning Matchmaker Coffee, and each week we’ll give a prize to the best one.

Matchmaker Coffee could also start their own community. They can keep it simple with just a FB group for verified customers.

This would make customers feel a sense of belonging, which leads to organic word-of-mouth and turns customers into brand evangelists.

Then there is content marketing. This is something they aren’t really doing at the moment, and I can’t understand why.

In a niche like this, content marketing could work really well for attracting top-of-the-funnel traffic through SEO and social media.

From an SEO perspective, their first domain has a good number of links and a strong domain authority.

If the content lived on that domain (like I suggested earlier), it’d rank really well almost immediately. It’s a no brainer!

Pro tip: find content ideas by visiting communities. Pay attention to the real questions. Then use keyword tools to validate their SEO potential.

Even if they show 0 monthly searches (but you see people asking those questions in the real world), they’re worth writing about.

One cool idea that would be worth exploring in the future is partnerships with other subscriptions offering similar goods (but not direct competitors).

For example, chocolate, wine, gourmet food, etc. Sharing audiences with other direct-to-consumer brands would be a win-win.

Customers would need an incentive. For example, progressive discounts for additional subscriptions they sign up for.

Brands could absorb these discounts by saving on shipping. One box is significantly cheaper than multiple boxes.

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