Indie beauty conversation with SoPost

22 Jun 2021 --- After seeing a significant uptake in the use of targeted sampling campaigns since COVID-19, BPC Insights caught up with Jonny Grubin, CEO of SoPost, to find out how the online product sampling partner is keeping up with demand.

At the end of 2020, Innova caught up with SoPost as part of its Premium Fragrance report to learn more about its sampling solution and how it had fared during the pandemic. Back then, Grubin shared: “2020 was a record year for us in terms of new business signed and volume of orders.”

As the fragrance sampling brand gathers the qualitative ability to purchase data from consumers, it has found that since COVID-19, it has increased considerably. We wanted to get the lowdown on the idea behind SoPost’s arrival onto the sampling scene, its aims and achievements and the 2021 market.

Can you tell me about your inspiration behind launching SoPost?

Click to EnlargeJonny Grubin, CEO of SoPost. Source: SoPostWe saw that a gap existed in the market for brands to sample smartly. Historically, samples have been handed out at department stores or outside train stations, but not via a targeted approach online. It seemed like fundamentally, sampling really worked, but all too often there was a lot of wastage, no data capability and a poor experience for consumers. Simply put, by creating SoPost our call was to create an intelligent way for brands to go about their sampling campaigns online. 

What were the drivers behind SoPost opting to enter the beauty market?

Many leading brands with beauty products were looking for new ways to get their products in customer hands as traditional channels shrank. Taking their sampling programs online was one great way of doing this, and SoPost was the partner that could provide a full service experience with intelligent data collection integrated. As a result, our solution was a perfect fit for those brands and continues to be today.

What was missing from the mainstream beauty market that you sought to fill with SoPost?

There was not an intelligent platform for sampling prior to SoPost. Through our machine learning-based platform, we are able to engage with our brand partners’ strongest potential customers—the ones that would likely have the most genuine and valuable exchange with the brand, resulting in leaving feedback or reviews or buying a full-size product.

What makes SoPost stand out in the marketplace?

SoPost was first to market and today, is the most sophisticated platform available for online product sampling. Hundreds of global brands count on us to deliver high-performing sampling campaigns from engagement to fulfilment and beyond. Our technology empowers our brand partners to reach the right people in the right environments and to ensure high-quality engagement and conversions. We handle all the order processing and quality control, including intelligent order filtering to eliminate sample wastage.

What are the greatest opportunities for sampling fragrances today? 

Click to EnlargeSoPost solution is a great way for consumers to experience fragrances online.Creating authentic lifetime value customer relationships through sampling is key. For example, someone who discovered a fragrance through a SoPost sampling campaign and went on to buy it on an ongoing basis would be a major win for the brand’s return on investment (ROI). Additionally, during COVID-19, as you can’t ‘smell the internet’, brands were looking to find another way to allow customers to experience fragrances without instore options. SoPost’s solution was a great tool to solve this problem.

How have these been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic? 

We have been lucky to have amazing year-over-year growth. This will likely continue as we close our fiscal 2021 year and look forward to 2022. Due to COVID-19, product sampling has shifted hugely to digital, and this has led to a massive increase in our business as most brands have refocused their sampling to include more digital distribution methods. 

What are the challenges for brands in the sampling space?

Many of the challenges that brands face can be fixed with SoPost’s efficient and targeted approach. Two of the biggest challenges we see in the market are sample wastage and people just looking for free stuff, both of which can be addressed by our machine learning algorithms and targeted approach. 

How does SoPost hope to impact the beauty market, in both the short and long term?

Our mission is to build the most powerful sampling platform in the world, so we will continue to focus on growing the solutions we currently offer. However, we are also extremely excited about launching our API solution for developers in the coming months in addition to our self-serve model for smaller brands looking for a smarter way to sample. 

What are you proudest of to date?

The amazing work we accomplish for our brand partners, the fact that we are active in 17 markets and that we have had a phenomenal year-on-year growth. Additionally, through our platform, we are able to collect zero-party and first-party consumer data which are very powerful pieces of information that our brand partners can use as they plan their future marketing campaigns.

By Natasha Spencer-Jolliffe, BPC Insights Senior Editor