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🎧 On this episode of the DTC pod, we chatted with Will Critcher, eCommerce Director at Death Wish Coffee, who spilled the beans on the brand’s success.

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Death Wish is on a mission to save the world from blah beans and caffeinate the universe with The World’s Strongest Coffee. ☕ A premium product, bold personality, and marketing prowess has helped this brand build an iconic 8-figure coffee empire in less than 10 years.

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Grab a cuppa Joe and tune in to learn how a Superbowl ad launched the brand, why the death of the Facebook feed is eminent, how adding Quick Shop boosted their ATC by 400%, and much more.

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‍The takeaways 👇

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✂️ Separation of church & state content and sales:

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Death Wish has always been big on email marketing. “We have two commodities: coffee and email addresses.”

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In the past, they would combine promotions and content in one email, thinking the content would be supportive of the sale. Pretty common approach, right?

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However, they noticed that sometimes the content would outperform the promo and hypothesized that having both in one email was cannibalizing potential sales.

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So they decided to separate the two:

• They made their sales emails simpler, with just one CTA focused on the product or promo.
• They moved their content to a weekly standalone newsletter called “The Scoop.”

✔️ Not only did their sales-focused emails improve, but their newsletter quickly amassed 100K followers and is now beloved by customers.

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Sometimes it pays off to simplify and focus!

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☕ A whole latte leadership wisdom:

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As someone who’s been mentored by great leaders, Will shared some of his favorite nuggets (or beans?) of leadership wisdom:

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The speed at which truth is shared within an organization is directly correlated with the success of that business.

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Context over control. (No micro-managing.)

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[A successful company is] not a family. It’s a Superbowl-winning football team.

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We would also like to add: The success of your business is linearly correlated to how caffeinated your employees are. 🤪

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💰 What Will would do with an extra $50K:

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“Pre-roll and display ads on Pornhub.”

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(No, really. That was his answer.)

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We’ve got the hook: Hot coffee near you. 🔥🔥🔥

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👉 Get the full drip with Will Critcher here!