Carpe: The Marketing Strategy Behind a Sweat Fighting Brand

Not everyone has a sweat problem, but if you do then you’ll want to know about Carpe.

Founded in 2015 by (then) college sophomores David Spratte and Kasper Kubica, Carpe has been on a mission to help people who suffer from excessive sweating, a condition known as hyperhidrosis (which, according to WebMD, “produces a lot of unhappiness”).

With $100K in early funding from Bootstrap Advisors, the young founders tinkered with 60 prototypes in their dorm room before finally coming up with a winning solution. In 2018, they secured $2.3M in seed funding and (according to this report) snagged up another $3.5M+ in 2019 as they tackle a growing market of ‘casual sweaters.’

I recently got introduced to some of the Carpe team and fell in love with everything they were doing. I had no choice but to do a breakdown of the Carpe marketing strategy.

Here are the marketing strategies I dug into:

1. Power your top of funnel with TV ads
2. Pass the grunt test with flying colors
3. Boost conversion rate with customer video testimonials
4. Streamline the shopping experience with a quiz
5. Increase AOV and LTV with bundles, tiered discounts, and more

Before we dig into each strategy, let’s take a quick peek at their marketing stack.

Marketing Stack

Shopify – ecommerce platform
Klaviyo – email (and SMS) marketing automation platform
Attentive – SMS marketing platform
Recharge – subscriptions payments platform
Convert – A/B testing platform
Revenue Hunt – product recommendation quiz
Rebuy – product upsells, cross-sells, and more
Yieldify – website personalization and email remarketing
Zendesk – customer service platform
Zipify – one-click upsell post purchase
Judge.Me – collect and display product reviews
FoxyCart – better cart and checkout experience
Shogun – drag and drop landing page builder
Unbounce – landing page builder

Let’s dig in –

1. Power your top of funnel with TV ads

When you look at Carpe’s traffic breakdown, what do you notice?

Almost all of their traffic comes from organic search and direct.

While they are running paid social ads, Carpe’s real bread and butter is in top of funnel TV advertising. According to iSpot, they had over 800 airings in the past 30 days.

TV advertising is a channel every brand should explore, but for Carpe it’s a great fit because they’re solving a very specific problem: excessive sweating. There are over 365 million people who suffer from hyperhidrosis worldwide actively looking for a solution and TV ads are a great way to reach those individuals.

Here’s an example of a TV spot running for Carpe:

The ad starts with: “I’ve had sweaty hands for my whole life.” If you suffer from excessively sweaty hands, this will definitely catch your attention no matter what you’re streaming.

Pro tip – one of the ‘best practices’ in TV advertising is to have the URL overlaying the video at all times. We’re currently testing this in some other video-based channels.

What I love about Carpe is how they use customer stories to connect with audiences at home, capture their attention, and drive them to the site. Once they land on the site, they continue the customer story and take the shopper on a journey (see marketing strategy #3).

2. Pass the grunt test with flying colors

When you land on Carpe’s website, I bet you’ll know exactly what they’re about within 5 seconds. Here, test it –

In StoryBrand, they call this the grunt test – if a caveman landed on your website, could he/she immediately grunt what it is you offer? If yes, your homepage passes the grunt test.

Within the first five seconds of landing on your site, a first-time visitor should be able to answer:

1. What do you offer?
2. How will it make my life better?
3. What do I need to do to buy it?

Let’s look at Carpe. Within 5 seconds you know: 1) what they offer – antiperspirant for underarms, hands, feet, and more, 2) how they will make your life – help you solve the problem of excessive sweating, and 3) what to do next – Shop Now or take the quiz.

3. Boost conversion rate with customer video testimonials

Remember Terzel from the TV ad? Yeah, he makes another appearance on the site.

Here’s Terzel’s video testimonial that shoppers can watch on site:

This is what you want to strive for as a brand – a cohesive experience all the way through your funnel. The brand look, feel, and messaging should be consistent as you move from one touchpoint to another.

TV ad > Site > Email > PDP > Checkout

All these touch points are connected by a consistent look and feel.

Here’s a bonus – these videos work wonders for conversion. Text based reviews are standard practice in ecommerce, but not as many brands utilize video to show their customers talking about the product.

I remember Boom! by Cindy Joseph did this really well. Carpe reminded me of how great these can be if done right. As you scroll down the homepage, you get a glimpse of real customers with real problems using the product to find relief. That’s what shoppers want to see.

4. Streamline the shopping experience with a quiz

Ecommerce brands use different tactics to guide shoppers to the right products. This is particularly important for brands that have a large product catalogue like Carpe does.

Quizzes are becoming more mainstream in ecommerce with regards to personalizing the shopping experience and helping guide shoppers to the right product. They help shoppers answer the question of ‘what product(s) are right for me?’. Carpe does this and more with a unique way of streamlining the shopping experience.

What I love is they first incentivize engagement by offering a free gift with your personalized solution.

Similar to how Harry’s offered a ‘mystery item’ to bump AOV, this is a great way to 1) delight your customer (increase conversion rate), and 2) expose your customer to a new product line which increases their likelihood of purchasing that item in the future (increase LTV). It helps get more people into the quiz funnel.

OK so once you complete a series of questions, you’re asked to enter your email address to see (and save) your personalized Carpe solution.

Side note – at Crossrope we’ve tested both with and without capturing email and it’s definitely worth capturing email.

Now this is where the magic happens – when you click to see your results not only do you see what products are recommended but Carpe automatically adds each of the recommend products to your cart!

I bolded that line because it’s so damn powerful! Check it out – this is what you see when you click to see your results: your personalized sweat kit:

From there, all you have to do is click to go to check out and you’re done. This is brilliant. By streamlining the process and eliminating steps shoppers need to take, Carpe has improved the customer experience and increased the conversion rate through their quiz.

5. Increase AOV and LTV with bundles, tiered discounts, and more

From speaking with Carpe, I know they put a lot of effort into improving AOV & LTV over the past year – and it shows. I’m very impressed with what they’ve done.

Here are some of the AOV & LTV boosting strategies they’ve put in place:

1 – Leading with the bundle

As soon as you click the Shop Now button you’re directed to the bundle & save page –

Carpe uses classic bundle and save tactics to incentivize shoppers to choose the bundle over individual products in order to unlock savings. This works particularly well with consumable goods (like deodorant).

When you get to the product page you have the option of saving even further by choosing the subscription option where you get a new pack of sweat sticks delivered to you every 12 weeks.

2 – Multi pack options and subscriptions

But let’s say you don’t go with the bundle option. You’re just a single stick kind of guy like me and want just one stick. Well even if you go that route you’re still presented with the option to unlock savings by creating your own bundle and/or purchasing the subscription.

Side note – I love how they’ve built the pricing block to be floating so that it’s anchored to the right side of the page even as you scroll. Again, it’s about minimizing the steps a shopper needs to take in order to move to the next step. By having the Add to Cart button always available, they’re one fast click away from conversion.

At every step of the funnel, there’s an option to upgrade to save. Even if I add the single sweat stick to my cart and move forward, I have the option to turn my order into a subscription right in the drawer cart –

This consistency is key, but it doesn’t end there.

3 – Tiered discounting to unlock new discounts as cart value increases

One of the best ways to increase AOV is to give shoppers a reason to add more to cart. Carpe does a great job of presenting this through multiple touch points including this little secondary nav –

As you add more products, you unlock more savings and you see how much more you need to add to cart to reach that next level of savings. And you get to see it right in the drawer cart:

The orange bar is a nice visual representation of how much you’ve accumulated in savings and how much you’ve still got left to go. It creates a pull for shoppers to add more to cart to see what they unlock when they get to the very end. Here’s the ultimate prize:

Alright you’re on to the checkout page.

4 – Catch them at checkout

Most brands give up recommending additional products at the product page or cart page (or drawer cart), but with tools like Rebuy you can keep the party going all the way through checkout.

Notice the recommendations Carpe makes at checkout –

This is a really easy way to get a portion of shoppers to increase cart value by presenting them with some last chance savings before they complete their purchase.

5 – Engage them post purchase

Like I said I’m a one sweat stick kind of guy so I went ahead and bought myself a single sweat stick just to see what happens on the backend. Well, guess what I saw right after I purchased –

Using Zipify, Carpe is strategically positioning other offers immediately after purchase. With just a single click of the moust, a shopper can add another product to their order. The countdown timer and limited time offer messaging reminds me of the good ol’ Clickfunnel days, but if done right it can be really powerful for increasing AOV.

And it keeps going. Even after I decline the offer for a second sweat stick, I’m presented with a second limited time offer (this time with only 5 minutes!) on the order confirmation page.

If played the right way, tools like Rebuy and Zipify can be really effective for incentivizing shoppers to build up their cart value. You just have to be careful because it can easily rub people the wrong way (not great for LTV).

Carpe Marketing Summary

There’s so much you can learn by analyzing other brands and Carpe was a textbook example of this. Some of the on-site bundling and conversion rate tactics they’re using alone are worth exploring further.

But there’s more to Carpe’s marketing strategy than what I’ve shared – a fun social media presence, dominance on Amazon, a growing retail presence in over 8000 CVS stores, founders creating their own podcast, and even branding their support team as ‘sweat advisors’ to make shoppers feel more comfortable reaching out with questions.

With roughly three percent of the world’s population experiencing hyperhidrosis, Carpe has a big opportunity in front of them. It will be exciting to see what they’ve got in store next.

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