Welcome to PostFunnel’s 49^th episode of the 7 CRM Commandment Series.

Today, we get to Sunbasket – the delicious San Francisco-based subscription meal delivery service.

For a more detailed analysis from August last year, check out Blue Apron vs. Sunbasket, where we compared the two well-known American meal kit companies’ CRM practices to see who does it better.

So, how do you think Sunbasket scores this time around?

1. Be Transparent 4/10

The last piece of news that was published and/or reported by Sunbasket was from months ago. Whether it be a press release or recent news announcement – we found nothing.

On Facebook, Sunbasket shared that “Shopping with meal kit delivery services generates 33% less carbon emissions than shopping at grocery stores.” The post links to Sunbasket’s “Building a Greener Future,” which provides customers with details on its boxes, paper insulation, meal bags, recipe cards, and all of its recycling resources.

But that’s it. That’s all the transparency we saw from the brand online

A tip from PostFunnel: share a little more about the people and the inner works behind your brand. This will help create authentic relationships with customers who are likely to want to know more about what’s going on behind the scenes with the company they’re buying at.

2. Incentives and Perks 3/10

Free shipping on our first order was offered to us after adding meal kits to our cart and proceeding to checkout:

In addition, customers can claim a gift card with a promotional bonus code on the site:

However, those are all the incentives and perks we received from Sunbasket.

3. Be Relevant 10/10

Customers today are known to be environmentally conscious and choose to shop with brands that share the same values. As mentioned above in the transparency commandment, Sunbasket’s “Building a Greener Future” page answers to those exact customer needs.

On the brand’s HP, it also communicates: “Our commitment to safety,” where customers can find details on:

• Contactless delivery
• Reinforced cleaning and safety measures in our facilities
• Paid sick leave and hero pay for our frontline team
• Covid-19 FAQ page

All are great ways to show customers that a brand is relevant and timely.

Finally, on its website, customers can also find the “Sunbasket’s Values” page, which details the brand’s “mission to empower people to live their healthiest lives, starting with what’s on their forks.”

On the page, customers can find detailed info on the difference it is making:

4. Be Helpful 0/10

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a way the brand has been “helpful” recently when researching it.

Customers are looking at brands today through a microscope and want to support only those who care for important, top-of-mind issues.

Being helpful has to do with improving your community’s lives, whether through a charitable donation, a recent program/project to help those in need or even Covid-19 relief.

Either way, whatever a brand chooses, there will surely be customers who support the choice of cause.

5. Realtime Personalization 4/10

When getting started with the subscription meal delivery service, the following questions were asked to personalize our experience with the brand:

• Which meals are you most interested in?
• Need meals for more than 1?
• How many meals per week?

After answering the questions above and adding meal kits to our cart – Sunbasket totally missed the opportunity to easily use upselling and cross-selling CRM marketing practices – with smart product recommendation models.

When abandoning our cart and going back to the HP, we weren’t presented with similar meal kit suggestions for two. Directing customers to homepages filled with personalized product choices and recommendations that are based on what they browse is a must-have for any customer-centric brand. Two points deducted for that, too.

Finally, we weren’t retargeting in realtime by the brand on social media, either.

6. Master UX 10/10

Creating an account, adding a meal kit to our cart, and proceeding to checkout was a very simple, short, and sweet process.

The overall appearance and functionality of Sunbasket’s website delivers a consistent, branded experience to site visitors. The clean and neat font and colors make it easy and enjoyable to browse around to find meal kits.

Therefore, our experience with the site was positive.

7. Leverage Social Media 10/10

On Facebook, Sunbasket has 285K likes; on Instagram, it has 178k followers, and on Twitter, it has 4.3K Followers.

It posts in high frequency on all three platforms and uses each one to engage its customer base accordingly.

On Facebook, for instance:

And on Twitter, we liked:

Overall, Sunbasket is getting a 41/70 here (58.5%), positioning them in 46th place out of the 49 brands we analyzed to date.

The challenge for the brand seems to be in its helpfulness (or lack thereof), realtime personalization, and incentives and perks. Too bad! Brands that adopt a truly personalized, customer-centric approach attribute 33% of their revenue to CRM marketing.

Here are the full rankings of all the brands we analyzed to date:

1. Pets at Home91%
2. Lowe’s90%
3. Petco90%
4. The Home Depot 87%
5. Target87%
6. Uniqlo 86%
7. Paul Smith 84%
8. JD Sports84%
9. Vrbo 83%
10. N Brown Group 81%
11. West Elm81%
12. The North Face 81%
13. Holland and Barret80%
14. lululemon80%
15. Morrisons80%
16. Brooks Running79%
17. Best Buy78%
18. Blue Apron 77%
19. Angie’s List77%
20. Gap77%
21. Chico’s76%
22. Etsy76%
23. Nando’s75%
24. The Body Shop74%
25. Gymshark 73%
26. William Hill 73%
27. Essence72%
28. Deckers71%
29. Inditex71%
30. Iceland Foods71%
31. Total Wine & More70%
32. Tommy Hilfiger70%
33. Walgreens70%
34. Kohl’s70%
35. United Colors of Benetton69%
36. Buy Buy Baby68%
37. Carter’s67%
38. Fiverr67%
39. The White Company66%
40. Next63%
41. Babbel63%
42. Patagonia61%
43. Express60%
44. Burberry60%
45. Zara59%
46. Sunbasket 58%
47. Treatwell58%
48. COS57%
49. Dream1153%

We publish a new analysis every other week, so watch this space for more brand analyses coming your way!