Shrooly expanded from a specialist niche into a broader consumer market
As Head of Marketing, I led a subscription transition while addressing plateauing paid media, audience saturation and customer trust after delayed pre-orders.
Consumer hardware, subscriptions, paid acquisition, lifecycle marketing and crisis communication
The situation
Paid media had plateaued while the business was grossing about $200K each month. The addressable market was heavily concentrated among solution-aware mycology enthusiasts, yet the subscription model required a much wider customer base.
At the same time, delayed pre-orders created a customer-trust crisis and class-action risk. Marketing had to help the business grow without treating customer communication as a secondary task.
My remit
I led communication, marketing, paid media, direct mail and email. I coordinated a 12-person team across paid media, design, email marketing and copywriting, alongside a media-buying agency.
What I did
- Defined new ICPs
- I built detailed ICPs that moved the brand from a highly specialized sub-niche toward everyday customers who wanted the product without committing to mushroom pods.
- Rebuilt the market story
- I reworked positioning and messaging, created education-led campaigns and launched new acquisition creative around the broader proposition.
- Led the trust response
- I set a transparent update and newsroom strategy, organized PR appearances, shaped compensation for long waits and supported investor communication.
Evidence
The new ICP strategy expanded the addressable market tenfold. Blended ROAS rose from about 1.14x to 3.4x, and LTV increased 10% from the start of the customer-update program.
The crisis communication strategy received a Gold Globee Award in 2024. View the award listing.
Leadership signal
I treated acquisition, customer trust and investor confidence as one commercial problem. That made it possible to protect the relationship with customers while opening a much larger market for the product.