Ragged Coast Chocolates is a craft chocolate company based in Westbrook, Maine, making small-batch confections with an emphasis on quality ingredients and local sourcing. As their business grew across wholesale, retail, and direct-to-consumer channels, they needed a digital marketing partner who could bring structure to their ad spend, improve their email performance, and help them scale seasonally — without losing the warmth and personality that defines the brand.
Ragged Coast Chocolates has been in business since 2007, in different locations and under different names, but always as makers of some of the finest chocolates and truffles around. When we started working together, their digital marketing had been on and off, ad hoc, and only semi-functional for some years, presenting a clear opportunity for improvement.
Our work started with a complete overhaul of Ragged Coast’s attribution and event capture, creating a stable data framework from which we could report on our work accurately. From there, we moved to rebuild the account structures on Meta and Google, balancing a full funnel with the need to also market locally, and keep shipping challenges (nobody likes melty chocolate) in mind.
The outcome of our efforts was transformative for Ragged Coast Chocolates. By implementing a stable data framework and rebuilding their digital marketing strategies, we enabled them to make significant progress towards their goals.
For the first time, I feel like we are able to make real forward movement toward our goal, especially with the work you are doing, and doing well. When we would try to implement things ourselves in the past they just wouldn't work, but when you implement things for us we have to be able to produce to a higher level because what you implement works.
Steve Shaffer, Co-Founder & CEO — Ragged Coast Chocolates
A chocolatier's year is decided in about six weeks.
Ragged Coast makes most of its money in the run-up to the holidays, which changes what paid media is for. In a flat-demand business you optimise continuously and judge the account on the quarter. In a seasonal one you spend most of the year building the audience and the infrastructure you will need for a window that does not move, and the account is judged on whether it was ready when the window opened.
That is why this work started with attribution rather than ads. A stable data framework in the spring is what allows spend to be raised confidently in the autumn, when there is no time left to find out whether the numbers can be trusted.
The campaign work then ran on evidence: 9x average return, a 40% lift in Q4 sales, and 46% growth in new customers. Pre-order infrastructure and email segmentation carried the load the ads could not — a chocolate maker has a hard capacity ceiling in December, and demand generated beyond it is not revenue, it is a customer service problem.
Seasonal businesses get sold generic always-on programs. The useful version is built backwards from the six weeks that matter.
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