Liquid Death Funnel Breakdown

Liquid Death is one of the fastest-growing CPG brands in America, currently valued at over $1 billion. They have transformed the typically mundane water category with their irreverent marketing strategy, sometimes called the “anti-marketing” strategy.

In this post, we provide a comprehensive breakdown of their brand, including insights into their traffic, direct-to-consumer (DTC) store, Amazon channel, retail presence, and other unique elements that make the brand stand out.

Liquid Death is utilizing a variety of well-known tools for their eCommerce tech stack. Here’s what we’ve noticed:

• eCommerce Shopping Cart: Shopify

• Email Marketing CRM: Klaviyo

• SMS CRM: Attentive

• Loyalty App: Smile.io

• Cart: Rebuy

• A/B Testing Software: VWO

• Gift Cards: Rise.AI

• Affiliate Tracking: Everflow

• Forms: Typeform

As of Summer 2024, Liquid Death is attracting 500,000 to 700,000 visitors per month to their website, with approximately 64% of the traffic coming from the USA. About 75% of their traffic is from mobile devices, while the remaining 25% comes from desktop.

Organic Search Channel

About 65% of Liquid Death’s traffic comes from organic search, making it their top channel. The next most popular channel is direct traffic. Direct traffic basically means they arrive by typing the URL directly in the address bar. Organic search traffic is driven through search engines, with visitors finding the website through unpaid keywords.

The main keywords driving their organic search traffic are "liquid death," "liquiddeath," and "death water," which are primarily branded searches. Although they also engage in paid search for these terms, it accounts for only about 0.46% of their traffic.

Social Channel

Liquid Death drives almost 8% of its traffic from social media. Their top social channel is YouTube, where they are highly active and frequently deploy content on that channel.

Liquid Death is known for its humorous and irreverent YouTube videos, many of which have gone viral. A key element of their brand’s success is their unique approach to blending irreverence with comedy. Liquid Death Founder Mike Cessario has publicly emphasized this strategy as a core aspect of the brand.

Liquid Death’s social media profiles direct traffic to a central social landing page. This page sends traffic to various key destinations, including their Amazon listings, direct-to-consumer (DTC) store, YouTube videos, and new product launches.

Social landing pages help people explore various aspects of the brand at the top of the funnel, rather than just directing them straight to a store for a purchase. This approach allows potential customers to engage with different elements of the brand, such as content, product information, and new launches, before making a buying decision.

Amazon Channel

Liquid Death has a thriving Amazon business, with their top seller being the 8-pack featuring a mix of sparkling water, still water, and various flavors. They currently offer 11 different flavors, available in 18-packs, 12-packs, and 8-packs, with can sizes ranging from 12 to 19.2 oz.

We did not go through every ASIN of Liquid Death, but their original 19 oz still water 8-pack alone generates six figures in monthly revenue, with a significant increase during the summer of 2024. As of July 2024, this SKU has achieved $1.6 million in sales.

While Liquid Death is experiencing rapid growth in various water and powder categories, it does not rank highly for main keywords such as "water," "sparkling water," or "hydration packets." Most of their Amazon search traffic & sales comes from direct branded searches like "Liquid Death" or "Liquid Death Water."

Retail Channel

We estimate that a significant portion of Liquid Death’s revenue comes from retail distribution. The brand is reportedly available in over +60,000 locations, including Whole Foods, Target, and Safeway.

A walk down the water aisle at your local grocery store has traditionally been a boring category dominated by brands like Dasani, Fiji, and Deer Park. However, Liquid Death has successfully differentiated itself with striking packaging & branding, making it stand out in the aisle.

Another interesting aspect of Liquid Death is how it defies price elasticity. If you browse through the water category on retailer websites like Target.com it reveals that Liquid Death is often priced nearly double that of its competitors. While the price per ounce is slightly lower and it makes it a little bit more competitive, it remains relatively high. This highlights the strong power of their brand.

Liquid Death often secures prominent shelf space in stores, such as end caps and eye-level placements. This strategic positioning maximizes visibility and ensures that the brand catches the eye of shoppers, enhancing its chances of being noticed and purchased.

Liquid Death frequently uses creative in-store displays that feature their distinctive branding elements, such as mini-skate ramps, skull-shaped signs, and other fixtures. These eye-catching displays are designed to capture attention and reinforce the brand’s unique identity.

Sometimes you will see these in-store displays near the alcohol or beer aisles instead of the water aisles. Liquid Death has successfully connected their brand to the beer and alcohol category, allowing them to tap into a customer base that traditional water brands never reached.

Find A Store

Like many large CPG brands with nationwide distribution, Liquid Death has a "Store Locator" page on their website that helps consumers easily find nearby stores where they can purchase their products.

In their DTC store, there are two main paths: the Merchandise Path and the Beverage Path. For beverages, traffic is primarily directed to Amazon listings.

The Merchandise Path is where they get more creative, guiding visitors to product detail pages and eventually through a Shopify cart and checkout process.

One of the more unique email capture forms and pre purchase flows we’ve ever seen is Liquid Deaths Sell Your Soul Flow. Here’s how it works…

When you land on the Sell Your Soul page you're given the option to join their "Country Club", which will give you a free T-Shirt when you spend $50 or more and some other cool perk.

You have two options to join the Country Club. The first one is to sell your eternal soul and sign a DocuSign contract to Liquid Death. The second option is to pay $125,000 in cash.

Once you join the Country Club, you're then sent an email with the free t-shirt offer, a card you can download and a copy of your contract.

Liquid Death also has another pre-purchase flow that activates on various pages throughout their website. This flow collects both email and SMS information, using irreverent copy to engage visitors.

Popup

Their current popup invites users to "Join The Cult" by offering 2 FREE can coolers. We believe they are using Attentive to collect email and SMS information through this popup. The SMS messages are sent via Attentive and then the emails are deployed from Klaviyo.

Email One

The first email is very witty, featuring a subheadline that reads, “Please read to complete your indoctrination.” As you scroll down, it provides details on how to receive your free 2-pack of can coolers.

Liquid Death’s product pages are straightforward. They feature product images against simple backgrounds, concise descriptions, customer reviews, cross sell below the fold, and remind people of payment options like Klarna.

Cart

The cart is a slide-out design that includes light cross-selling features. It also provides incentives to increase your cart size by highlighting offers such as free shipping for reaching a certain purchase threshold. We think that they're using Rebuy's Smart Cart for this functionality.

Checkout

During checkout, Liquid Death utilizes a one-page checkout process through Shopify. This streamlined approach focuses on completing the transaction efficiently, they don’t add any cross-selling or order bumps on the checkout page.

Checkout

Liquid Death has one of the funniest SMS opt-ins we've ever seen on a Shopify checkout page. It's exceptionally creative, totally on-brand and just another example of how they're masters at branding.

They offer Route Package Protection, a feature increasingly adopted by larger brands.

Liquid Death uses both email and SMS for abandoned checkout flows. We assume they use Klaviyo for sending email reminders and Attentive for SMS notifications.

It's notable that they have double opt-in enabled for their abandoned checkout email flows. We received the same "Welcome To The Cult" email as in the pre-purchase flow, indicating that their abandoned checkout emails may not be dynamic and not a real priority.

We also speculate that they don't have an abandoned checkout email flow. When you abandon your cart, instead you join the master list and receive the same welcome email as in the pre-purchase flow.

After submitting your order and arriving at the thank you page, there is a form that collects zero-party data. Many scaled, multi-channel brands use this approach to better understand customers and gather information, as tracking attribution across different channels can be challenging for scaled brands.

This post-purchase survey is fairly standard until the final question. Liquid Death uses this opportunity to learn more about you in an irreverent, on-brand manner, which likely encourages higher response rates.

Immediately after your purchase, you are added to a Klaviyo list with double opt-in enabled, so you receive a confirmation email for your subscription.

You are also enrolled in their loyalty program, where you earn “Skulls” (similar to points in other programs). Another example of how Liquid Death adds a humorous twist to a traditional marketing tactic by incorporating their unique brand style into these practices

Liquid Death sends the standard order notification emails from Shopify: Order Notification, Shipping Notification, and Delivery Confirmation.

The styling is minimal, primarily using the stock templates with added witty copy to align with their brand voice.

This is Liquid Death’s order notification email, sent immediately after you complete your purchase, humorously reminds you that you’ve transformed your "body or home" into a "shrine for Liquid Death."

Liquid Death has one of the best and most thorough post-purchase surveys we’ve seen. Sent via Klaviyo a day after your first purchase, it directs you to a Typeform survey where they collect a substantial amount of zero-party data.

The Typeform survey includes over +10 questions, asking about your age, how you heard about the brand, your experience, and what you liked or disliked about Liquid Death. The survey incorporates witty and humorous elements related to their brand, and at the end, you receive an offer for free shipping.

There was nothing particularly notable about the unboxing experience. In November 2023, we purchased a mug from Liquid Death, and it arrived in a standard corrugated box. The packaging was functional but didn’t feature any unique or distinctive elements related to the brand.

Liquid Death is excellent with their newsletters, sending approximately 20 or more each month. They have a standardized email design system (what we call an EDS) or template to maintain consistency.

The content typically rotates between announcements of new product drops, highlights of recent videos, and occasional promotions, such as those for Prime Day. You can view their email campaigns here.

Liquid Death is one of the better brands we’ve seen that creates raving fans. What are raving fans? These are loyal customers who not only make purchases but also actively promote the brand to others, both online and through word of mouth.

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of marketing, and it’s a strong indicator of raving fans. How do we know Liquid Death is achieving this? Apparently over 300 people have gotten tattoos of the brand. You don’t see that with too many brands!