How Door County Coffee uses Ordergroove and Klaviyo to personalize seasonal upsell campaigns to grow recurring revenue

Coffee-lovers may come to Door County Coffee for their quality promise, but they stick around for the novelty of their unique seasonal flavors and the convenience of their subscriptions.

“Whether people are on vacation or at home, they’re going to start their day with a cup of coffee,” said Erin Hoffman, Director of eCommerce at Door County Coffee. “They’re always consuming it and always need to replenish, so our product set really lends itself perfectly to subscriptions.”

Door County Coffee initially got their coffee subscriptions off the ground with a homegrown system, and eventually switched to a third-party subscription app — but both approaches came with limitations.

“Our homegrown subscription solution couldn’t advance unless a ton of resources were pushing it forward,” Erin said. “Then we switched over to a third-party app, but it just didn’t give our customers the user experience and flexibility they needed with their orders — so we couldn’t count on either approach to future proof our business.”

And so began Door County Coffee’s search for a more flexible subscription solution that would give subscribers more control — from the ability to edit their recurring order details, to adding seasonal items onto their next order.

Switching to Ordergroove to future proof their business

Door County Coffee found the flexibility and subscriber-friendly experience they were looking for by seamlessly integrating Ordergroove’s recurring revenue platform into their BigCommerce hosted store–giving them confidence in the ability to scale and future proof their business.

“We finally found a partner that works well with our tech stack and can help us achieve our ambitious subscription vision, starting with giving subscribers more control over their orders,” said Erin. “Ordergroove even has features and integrations for things we’ve always wanted to try — like personalized Klaviyo campaigns encouraging subscribers to add seasonal products to upcoming orders.”

In their first 12 months with Ordergroove, they saw a 109% increase in active subscribers, and that number keeps growing 20% year-over-year and 2% month-over-month on average.

Door County Coffee upsells boost AOV and recurring revenue from non-subscription items

Even with the majority of their SKUs available as a subscription, Door County Coffee was eager to let subscribers add non-subscription items — like seasonal coffees only available for a limited time, hard goods like mugs, and other related items from local vendors — to their upcoming orders.

“Pumpkin spice is obviously not a flavor that’s available all year long,” said Erin. “But our flavored coffee lovers are super excited when it comes out, and want to add it to their subscription orders for the whole time it’s available.”

Not being able to do so with their previous subscription solution took a toll on average order value, and the overall subscriber experience.

“Before we switched to Ordergroove, they would have to place a separate order,” Erin said. “Which is not only inconvenient for the subscriber, but expensive for us, because our free shipping offer means we would have to pay for shipping twice.”

Switching to Ordergroove allowed Door County Coffee to make every non-subscription SKU eligible for upsell, so there’s no limit to what subscribers can add to their upcoming orders.

“Upsells have been so meaningful for our business because without that capability, few would actually place that additional order,” said Erin. “It helps us with average order value and revenue, but it also improves our retention by allowing customers to do whatever they’re looking to achieve with their subscription.”

And no matter what subscribers add on, Ordergroove’s flexible discount framework ensures Door County Coffee still has granular control over their profit margins.

“There’s less margin for us on the items we don’t manufacture, so the products we wanted to make eligible for upsell needed to have different discounts applied,” Erin said. “The team at Ordergroove helped us set up that level of customization so that discounts are applied seamlessly.”

With their new upsell capabilities giving subscribers access to the products they wanted, Door County Coffee was able to grow their average order value, save money on duplicate shipments, improve margin, and drive more recurring revenue from their full product suite — with 17% of recurring revenue coming from upsells in 2023. 

But Door County Coffee didn’t stop there. By leveraging BigCommerce’s suite of leading technology integrations, Door County Coffee seamlessly utilized solutions like Ordergroove and Klaviyo to deliver next-level experiences to their subscribers.

Promoting upsells and seasonal offerings with personalized campaigns thanks to Ordergroove’s Klaviyo integration

Switching to Ordergroove meant that Door County Coffee could integrate their subscription data with Klaviyo, improving subscriber communications with segmentation and enabling personalized campaigns to promote upsells.

Ordergroove’s integration with Klaviyo sends a wealth of real-time subscriber related activity and data into a merchant’s Klaviyo account. This enables Door County Coffee to use subscriber data and events to better tailor their customer communication throughout the subscriber lifecycle.

“We like to keep all of our messaging in a single system like Klaviyo so we can not only see every communication subscribers are getting, but send targeted communications based on their buying behaviors,” said Erin. “With Ordergroove’s Klaviyo integration, we can send emails to specific groups when we launch a new seasonal item they’d like, and automatically display content blocks in our emails reminding subscribers about seasonal items for as long as they’re available.”

Using personalization helps drive urgency for seasonal SKUs, which account for 56% of all upsells.

Ordergroove’s Klaviyo integration also offers the most frictionless way for subscribers to manage their orders with 1-Click Actions. These personalized subscription URLs can be added to any email or SMS communication and provide subscribers with a simpler way to manage their orders, which ultimately grows subscription sales and customer lifetime value.

Door County leverages 1-Click Upsells, so subscribers can add those seasonal items to their upcoming orders directly from their reminder emails in a single click of a button — taking away the friction of the seven or more clicks it would take to navigate to their website, log in, find the item they want to add, and complete their order.

“Subscribers need reminders every so often to know they can add our seasonal line to their ongoing shipments,” Erin said. “It’s another touchpoint, another addition to an upcoming order that we probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.”

Flexible technology makes evergreen subscriptions and seasonal promotions the Door County Coffee gift that keeps giving

With steady subscriber base growth and capabilities for personalized upsells and subscriber communications at their fingertips, Door County Coffee’s evergreen subscriptions and seasonal offerings have become the gift that keeps on giving.

“Ordergroove lets us give subscribers so much more personalization and customization by plugging right into Klaviyo, but most of all it lets us tell them ‘Yes, you can do that. It’s possible. We can make that happen,’” Erin said. “That’s a huge difference from other subscription solutions that just didn’t give us the flexibility our subscribers were looking for.”

Ordergroove’s flexible and comprehensive subscription solutions not only unlocked a 109% increase in active subscribers in Door County Coffee’s first year — but also led to a 17% lift in recurring revenue driven by upsells, proving just how much enhancing the customer experience with tailored upsells and personalized messaging can pay off.

Now, 11% of Door County Coffee’s total annual sales are from subscription orders — and with plans to integrate their loyalty program with Ordergroove to offer subscribers even better rewards, that number is sure to keep growing.

“We’ve had nothing but growth with our subscription program since we moved over to Ordergroove,” said Erin. “It’s a very robust technology that continues to pay off over time.”