Tea for Tu

TEA for

TU

Christina Belli, Conor Harrington, Rachel Heiss, Alexis Marando, Erin Smith April 2013 • Marketing on the Internet

Problem

As tea drinkers ourselves, we’ve found that high-quality, customized loose-leaf tea is not easily available for consumers. Also, many loose-leaf tea options are expensive and customizing tea is not a common practice.

While hot tea once was primarily the drink of choice for consumers in many nations overseas, it has recently become a trendy beverage for a significant portion of the American population. Companies such as Teavana have proven that the specialty tea market is a very profitable one. We believe that we can offer similar services to Teavana, but offer them exclusively online, and with a bit of a twist.

Solution

Our solution is an online store for tea-lovers. It is fully customizable and offers tailored recommendations for consumers. If the customer is a musician, or has a sore throat, needs a good detox, or some other circumstance, there is a tea for him or her. Tea for Tu offers endless combinations and unlimited customization.

The name of our brand has a dual meaning. It’s first a reference to the Doris Day song “Tea for Two,” but it’s also a reference to the casual, informal version of “you” in the French and Spanish languages.

Those familiar with the business model employed by the online cosmetics company Birchbox might know that the key way that the company knows what products to recommend to subscribers is by having them fill out a survey when they register. Our company will use a similar tactic. While we will have all of our teas (which we will manufacture on our own) listed on our website by category and available for individual purchases, we also believe that it would be beneficial to have our customers fill out a survey so that we know more about their tea drinking and lifestyle habits. For instance, do they drink tea to relax? Do they drink it for health reasons, such as speeding up metabolism? Do they consume it before bed, or as an energy booster? By answering these questions and more, we will be able to create a “Teafile” for each consumer, which will in turn help us know which leaves and blends that we should recommend for them. So if the customer doesn’t want to purchase boxes of tea individually, Tea for Tu can craft the perfect tea selection and send them each month.

These recommendations will be our most powerful differentiation strategy. Rather than simply having lists of our blends and flavors on the website, after customers fill out the survey, they will be directed to the recommendation page based on their answers. There, they will be exposed to different types of tea that they may not have ever even heard of, in addition to their old favorites. The page will also feature recommendations for blends based on personal preference; for example, “If you like green tea, you should try our light and sweet pomegranate mango blend, a perfect way to jumpstart your day”, with a link to the blend’s page. We will also give customers the option of creating their own blends from our selection of tea leaves, as well as buying leaves and tea bags by the container.

By creating their own profiles and logging in, customers will automatically have a virtual tea card (similar to a coffee punch card), that will allow them to receive special product promotions for every certain number of teas ordered.

Target Market The industry’s growth is continuing to expand, and as with any lasting fad, there is a specific market to target for the best returns. In our new business venture, we plan to target mainly female tea drinkers between the ages of 18 and 35. These women enjoy tea by relaxing with a warm cup in their dormitories and apartments after a full day of classes and homework, women with nine-to-five jobs that need something pure but revitalizing to jump-start their day, and women that are in tune with their bodies and understand the benefits of medicinal herbs, teas, and apothecary.

It is important to highlight that our target demographic has grown up and lives in the digital age. The Internet is a main source for browsing different blogs (i.e. Pinterest, Tumblr) for a variety of tea recipes and concoctions. The majority of these women are seasoned tea drinkers and will be eager to let their love for tea meet their love for online shopping and Internet browsing, allowing our business to serve them online.

Though we are primarily targeting women with our business venture, it is important that no tea drinker (or potential tea drinker!) is left behind. Men are an important part of the tea market and those with similar demographics as our primary market can be directed to our website as well.

Whether drinking to relax, for health reasons, or simply for pure and tasty, we believe this target market would be the most complementary to our company’s mission.

Business Model

Since the tea industry is growing, this company will be able to easily generate revenue. This is especially true since it’s an online company that produces the tea in-house. This disintermediation, or eliminating the “middle-man,” allows the tea to be made directly for the paying customer.

Having an online-only business requires strategic business methods in order to generate revenue.

Our tea company will employ mass customization through our signature “teafiles.” These customer details and specialized recommendations create a basis for generating revenue. This personalized approach will drive tea-drinkers to the virtual checkout to make a purchase.

The virtual tea card is an incentive for customers. This loyalty strategy drives repeat purchases with the promise of a reward. As the company expands, the possibilities for new product lines and brand extensions are endless. In a growing industry, even tea accessories are becoming a trend. This is something our company can tap into.

Competition Adagio Teas Loose leaf tea sent to your door with many options to choose from Strengths: • “Create your own blend” option • Variety, customization, rating system, tea club, tea matches Weaknesses: • No background info • No relationship building • No contact with customer Teavana Part tea bar, part tea emporium Strengths: • Very well-known • Offers samples • Good customer experiences • Positive reputation Weaknesses: • Limited variety of blends • No customer rewards program • Bought out by Starbucks • Expensive Harney & Sons High-class tea sold at only the finest places Strengths: • Distinguished reputation • Very nice packaging – all teas come in tins • Tasting rooms • Loyal customers Weaknesses: • No customization • No rewards programs • Most expensive • Tea focuses on packaging instead of other key characteristics about tea Other indirect competitors include Tea Trekker, Numi Tea, Mighty Leaf, Murchies, Argo Tea, and Tazo Tea.

Website Development Plan For the website development plan, we’ve broken down our site design into five planes: Strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface.

On the strategy level, we’ve established the underlying business models that would be most effective for our products and services on the website. Our business model will be designed to work as a Pure Play business – meaning we will offer our products and services at Tea for Tu solely on the Internet and not in physical locations and offices. Working under this model will eliminate overhead costs, which will allow us to offer better discounts to our customers. Tea for Tu will also be able to offer more versatile customer services through a Pure Play business model.

More specifically, our business will combine the virtual merchant model through its online customization and ordering capabilities with the manufacturer model because all of the products will be unique to our business- eliminating any potential distribution partners. The website will also have aspects of a subscription model when customers opt in to the monthly tea delivery service that’s tailored to their taste for teas.

In our strategy, we have established what our users needs are and our site objectives. Our user needs are ultimately what power the site and the desires of customers that we aim to fulfill with our teas, tea blends, subscription options, and personalize services. Our customer is technically savvy with a love for new, interesting, but ideal teas to either alter their mood, better health, or achieve a feeling of comfort or satisfaction.

Our site plans to address all of these needs through our objectives that are; allow customers to purchase products directly from site, offer a wide variety of teas and tea blends that are customizable, offer tea blend of the day, free customer service available at any time, personalizeable tea-files that encourage customers to find a tea that fits them, offer online subscription service for monthly tea packages, offer online reading about herbs and herbal remedies, offer certified apothecary diagnosis and treatment for health, and sustain customer base through social media competitions, prizes, and seasonal deals.

Website Development Plan

continued

On the Scope plane, our business will provide all the previously mentioned features on the site through simple navigation buttons and related articles or products on the site. This will relate to the Structure plane of our web development plan because of the features’ relationship to the site interactions and layout. The home page with the simple design will have information and/or links that bring the consumer from an informative, visually stimulating first page to smaller break-out pages that are more specialized for each feature with further information and action steps. The information will be laid out with simple calls to action and key words in the easiest-to-access pages to the more detailed, tailored pages once user navigation takes place, providing both the interaction design and information architecture in this plane.

The Skeleton plane provides the user with easy-to-find information and attractive imagery. The information will be laid out and structured as previously mentioned while also having a few elements that will drive the success of the site’s features. For example, the front page with have a large, high-definition image heavy banner that rotates with new content, imagery, and information every couple seconds. This banner will provide information on current deals, new blends, video clips of tea making tutorials, subscription package pictures, and unique or limited-time vents. Much of the navigation for further information will be accessed through this main portal designed for easy navigation.

Finally, the Surface plane will combine all the previously mentioned attributed of the underlying goals in structure and design to appeal to our target market and stimulate customers to action through the final visual design. We’ve chosen a clean, sophisticated, and relaxed design for the website because it best encompasses all of Tea for Tu’s goals and mission. In the top center of the page will be a static bar that has the customers information, ‘tea-file’ access page, ‘hearted’ teas and tea blends, as well as loyalty points. Also a part of the static bar will be navigation buttons to other parts of the website. The rest of the page below the bar will have the banner in the center and new information as well as updates from our other social media accounts, last prize winners, and new product samples.

Website Design @teafortu: Join today, fill out your personal teafile and save 5% on your first order!

TEA for TU home

19 minutes ago

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teas

accessories

your teafile

Have a TEA-tastic Day! Check out our newest blends or customize your own!

Do you suffer from Spring allergies? Fear not!

Tea for Tu understands. We have crafted the perfect blend of tea for allergy sufferers. Join today, fill out your teafile and you can start ordering either by the box or subscribe for monthly boxes of allergy fighting tea!

The website design is clean and simple, just like the tea we offer. Since it’s an online business, it will remain in beta mode for a few months while we figure out the best user experience for our customers.

Search Marketing Plan To start our Google AdWords campaign, we have chosen a set of ten specific words/phrases: “tea,” “loose leaf,” “Adagio,” “Teavana,” “herbal,” “relaxation,” “sore throat,” “tea bags,” “tea company,” and “tea online.” Given our company’s description and goals in the online tea industry, we feel these words will lead our successful start. Including two of our main competitors in the mix will be important in steering possible new customers in our direction.

We chose to use Google AdWords’s automatic bidding feature, which will allow us to set a daily budget. This program will adjust our CPC bids in order to achieve the most clicks given our budget.

We will start with a CPC limit of $1.50 and a daily budget of $150, and immediately begin to measure its success. Once we see which words are most useful and lead to the most valuable actions, we will be able to set individual CPC bids for specific words.

In order to further measure campaign success, we will use the Google AdWords conversion tool.

This will allow us to monitor which keywords are leading to more sales from the Tea for Tu website.

We will count conversions with the “1-per-click” option, which will measure the number of unique purchases to the website. Each time a customer clicks on an ad, a cookie will be temporarily placed on their devices in order to record conversions when a customer reaches the point-of-purchase page on our website.

The following chart estimates daily impressions, positions of the ads, daily costs, click-through rates, and average cost-per-click for each word given our current CPC limit and daily budget:

Search Marketing Plan

continued

In addition to paying for Google’s AdWords program, it would also be beneficial for us to drive traffic to our website organically. Because well-established tea companies, such as Teavana, Adagio and Twinings dominate the primary Google search results for the word “tea”, it is crucial for us to use search optimization strategies that will enable Tea for Tu to show up in the search results not only for the word “tea”, but other words associated with it. Specifically, we will seek to do this through the use of headlines and descriptive URLs. Headline Strategy As mentioned previously in this plan, our website will have different tabs for the kinds of teas that we offer. For example, if a customer is already on our site looking to purchase an herbal or green tea, she will easily be able to navigate to the specific page to do so. In order to drive customers to our site in the first place, however, we want to use our concise page headlines to help drive search results. By using html tags for page headline, we can move up in the search ranks for avid tea drinkers who are searching for particular types of tea, rather than just typing in “tea” in general.

Here are the specific page headlines that we will tag: Green Tea Black Tea White Tea Herbal Tea Decaffeinated Tea Loose-leaf Tea Energy Metabolism Health As you can see, our headlines are brief and to-the-point. Tagging these simple words will not only draw in a key customer base of those searching for specific types of teas, but also a healthconscious customer base comprised of individuals who may not even be searching for tea. With the Energy, Metabolism and Health headlines, we can possibly draw in individuals who are simply interested in boosting their health; Tea for Tu can be a way for them to do so.

Search Marketing Plan

continued

Descriptive URLs Correspondingly, we will tag the specific URLs for each of the headline pages. Again, these will be very direct and simple for customers to read and remember.

Here they are: www.teafortu.com/green-tea.html www.teafortu.com/black-tea.html www.teafortu.com/white-tea.html www.teafortu.com/herbal-tea.html www.teafortu.com/decaf-tea.html www.teafortu.com/looseleaf-tea.html www.teafortu.com/energy.html www.teafortu.com/metabolism.html www.teafortu.com/health.html While it might be more aesthetically pleasing to eliminate the word “tea� from the URLs, we feel that until we build a solid customer base we need to rely on the full word for the tags in order to draw in avid tea drinkers. However, the dash in between the words separates them nicely and makes the URL easy enough to read.

Promotional Plan Plan for January 2014-December 2014 Mother’s Day Promotion (April 11 to May 11) Promotion: partnership with Edible Arrangements To celebrate Mother’s Day, shoppers who purchase a bouquet from Edible Arrangements between April 15 and May 15 will be able to send a free tea blend with their purchase. After the shopper purchases an arrangement, on the final page with their receipt, they will have the opportunity to get redirected to the Tea for Tu website to claim their free customized tea. They can then choose to send this tea to a loved one or send it to themselves. This partnership will allow Edible Arrangement customers to try Tea for Tu blends for free, driving future purchasing behaviors.

Budget: $0 Pinterest wish list (November 27-December 27) Tea for Tu boards on Pinterest will allow users to interact with the brand by searching through striking visuals of tea leaves and teapots, which are available at the online store. From November 27-December 27, users can create a “Tea for Tu Wish List” on Pinterest and pin at least five items from our boards. At the end of this promotion, Tea for Tu will select five winners at random and send them their wish list items. This will increase the number of followers on our Pinterest page and allow us to see which items are most popular on this medium so we can target future promotions.

Budget: $375 Facebook--like-gating for coupon (January 1-March 31) To increase the number of “likes” on our Facebook page, Tea for Tu will utilize a like-gating strategy.

Users who “like” us on Facebook between January 1 and March 31 will receive a free punch on their virtual tea card by using a specific promo code. This will not only encourage people to visit our Facebook page, but will also drive traffic to our website which will increase the number of new users creating teafile accounts.

Budget: $0 Spotify (May 1-September 1) Since our target enjoys listening to music while drinking tea, we will have a sponsored playlist on Spotify from May 1 to September 1. This playlist will have the perfect music for drinking tea and will also include a targeted display ad and voiceover ad to not only draw listeners to our playlist, but to our website as well.

Budget: $55,000

Promotional Plan Tea pot promotion (March 1-March 31)

On our website, shoppers who have a teafile will have the ability to design their ideal teapot and post it to their Facebook page. Once per week, Tea for Tu will select one lucky winner, sending them their customized teapot with their favorite tea blend. This promotion will run from March 1 to March 31 and the winning teapots will be posted on our social media platforms.

Budget: $100 YouTube (November 1-December 31) Tea for Tu will reach out to our active social media followers and feature them on our YouTube page, asking them to share their favorite teas, when they drink it and more. These stories will personalize the tea drinking experience and will allow our followers to seek inspiration for other shopper’s customized teas. There will be one featured story each week between November 1 to December 31, the most popular time of year to drink tea.

Budget: $0 Tumblr (Jan 1-December 31) Our target market seeks inspiration from Tumblr and uses this as a source to find tea recipes. Through the Tea for Tu Tumblr page, we will use this platform throughout the year to promote our additional social media executions and promotional strategies.

Budget: $0 Email promotions (January-December) Our Tea for Tu(esdays) email newsletter will be sent weekly to our teafile users. Each newsletter will contain a new promotion, such as a free tea cup with a purchase of $25+ at our store. Users can unsubscribe to these emails at the bottom of the newsletter and Mail Chimp will allow Tea for Tu to monitor users who open the emails and measure the more popular newsletter features.

Budget: $250

Budget

All estimates are based off of a roll out for this new online brand from January 2014-December 2014 Domain name from GoDaddy.com, valid for 10 years

$14. 49/year = $144.90

Pinterest Promotion

$75/gift pack = $375.00

Spotify Display Ad & Sponsored Playlist

= $55,000.00

Create Your Own Tea Pot Contest

$25.00/tea pot = $100.00

E-mail Promotions with MailChimp

$240/month = $2,880

Google AdWords

$150/day for 90 days = $13,500

TOTAL:

$71,999.90

Any part of our promotional plan that was not noted on this budget is free, like many social media initiatives we have. Furthermore, the above estimates are preliminary. After we see how our customers engage with the brand and how our Google AdWords perform, the budget will change.

The Tea for Tu Team Christina Belli is a senior Integrated Marketing Communications major at Ithaca College. From the great state of New Jersey, Christina hopes to be a successful PR professional following graduation. She is most interested in and has had wonderful experience in lifestyle and entertainment marketing and public relations. Christina interned for PMK BNC in Los Angeles, staffing client events and organizing press clippings. She also enjoyed two very different positions in New York City. At Focus Features, Christina worked in the publicity department on different films being released. At Spiegelworld, an esteemed production company with shows in Las Vegas, New York, and Australia, she worked with the marketing department on traditional, digital, and guerilla marketing campaigns promoting the show in Times Square.

Conor Harrington is a senior Integrated Marketing Communications major at Ithaca College. Conor spent a semester studying Peace and Conflict Studies in Dublin, Ireland. He has held internships at a large newspaper, a digital marketing agency and a district attorney’s office. Last summer, Conor welcomed incoming Ithaca College students as an Orientation Leader with the Office of Student Engagement and Multicultural Affairs.

He is actively looking for what his next adventure will be after graduation.

As long as he loves what he is doing everyday, he’ll be happy.

Conor enjoys a cup of tea late at night while catching up on his favorite TV shows.

Rachel Heiss is a senior Integrated Marketing Communications major in the Roy H. Park School of Communications with a minor in International Communications at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. Rachel is from Buffalo Grove, IL. She spent last summer as a Branding & Design Account Management intern for the Covergirl account at G2 Worldwide in New York City.

The Tea for Tu Team Alexis Marando is a senior at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY, majoring in Integrated Marketing Communications with a minor International Communications. Alexis has worked with Los Angeles-based performing arts publicity firm Davidson & Choy Publicity, as well as the New York City-based Broadway public relations shop, Richard Kornberg & Associates.

Hailing from Nutley, NJ, a small suburb outside of New York City, Alexis intends on combining her personal passions with her professional interests to create a career in the city that she calls home. Â Alexis enjoys drinking a big cup of green tea as an energy boost right before the gym, and if no one is looking, she might just add a little cream and sugar.

Erin Smith is a junior Integrated Marketing Communications major with a minor in International Communications and Environmental Studies.

Erin has interned at Local First of Greater Pocatello promoting local businesses and retailers’ products to gain competitive awareness with the dominant chain stores in the area. After college, her career goals include utilizing her design and marketing skills for a non-profit wildlife rehabilitation clinic or environmental restoration. Erin is an avid tea drinker than enjoys herbal and medicinal teas. She uses tea as her morning pickme-up, her afternoon detox, and her nighttime soother.