Cozy Earth has landed a product on “Oprah’s Favorite Things” list for seven years. The brand reveals how it nourishes the relationship and why the spike in sales is not the most valuable part of making the list.
Cozy Earth has an ongoing relationship with Oprah Winfrey. The bedding and loungewear manufacturer has caught fire with the TV producer and tastemaker and has landed on her famous “Oprah’s Favorite Things” list for seven years.
Just announced in November, Winfrey selected Cozy Earth’s soft-woven pajamas as one of her favorite things for 2024. The list features dozens of products across categories including apparel, home, consumer electronics, food and cosmetics. Winfrey publishes the list annually the first week of November on her news website OprahDaily.com.
“When they announce it, we see a big spike in sales because everybody just wants to try whatever’s on the list,” said Weston Clark, head of customer retention at Cozy Earth.
Getting and keeping Oprah’s attention
The brand met Oprah Daily’s creative director Adam Glassman at a tradeshow.
“He felt our sheets and he was like these, ‘These are amazing,’” Clark said. “He sent them to the team, or whoever’s picking and deciding, and they just fell in love with the brand.”
That year, 2018, Oprah Daily selected Cozy Earth’s bedsheets for the list. Since then, the brand continually sends the Oprah Daily team products for them to try and hopefully select. Oprah Daily has selected Cozy Earth’s joggers, pants, socks and skincare line for the list. The products that Oprah Daily selects often align with its best-selling products, Clark said.
“It’s important for us to create product that is up to and exceeds Oprah’s standards,” Clark said. “It’s really important to us and it’s honestly been a big strategy of ours to make products that’s not just as good as the last one, but to make it even better.”
Oprah Daily did not respond to a request for commentary on what percent of the brands on its list are from a new brand or a repeat one.
The value of Cozy Earth on Oprah’s Favorite Things
When Oprah Daily publishes the Oprah’s Favorite Things list, Cozy Earth’s products are all linked to the product page on Amazon.com. Sales for that product spike for roughly about a week, Clark said.
The most important part of being on the list is not the sales, but the label of being an “Oprah’s Favorite Things” product and being able to use that award in perpetuity, Clark said.
“Most importantly, we can use that asset, ‘Oprah’s Favorite Things winner’ for however long as we want,” he said. “It’s that property that we now possess. It’s much more valuable than just that spike in sales the first week of November.”
Cozy Earth then uses that label for the products that earn it as much as it can, such as in email and SMS campaigns, on its homepage and on product detail pages, Clark said.
“It’s a huge unique selling proposition for us that our competitors don’t have,” he said.
Capturing and maintaining an Amazon shopper
All of the products on Oprah’s Favorite Things are linked to their respective Amazon product pages, with a secondary link to the brand website or another site where the brand sells its product.
Because the sales spike is from Amazon and not its own website, Cozy Earth cannot necessarily attribute any sales to the list and it does not have access to that customer’s data, Clark said.
One tactic the brand uses to capture shopper data is to put a QR code in its package for shoppers to scan and sign up for a warranty. While Cozy Earth cannot use that data for marketing, it does give the brand an opportunity to ask shoppers to opt-in to marketing messages.
Customer retention and acquisition challenges
Clark’s main responsibilities include customer contact via email, SMS and direct mail. In terms of maintaining a customer relationship, a phone number is the most valuable for Cozy Earth, Clark said. A shopper may have a handful of email addresses, but only one phone number. The brand’s SMS list is about a third of its email list, he said.
“It’s really important to not only get customers to come back and buy, but to make sure that they’re spending the money that we actually need them to break even off of our customer acquisition costs,” Clark said.
Finding new customers is one of the top challenges Cozy Earth has from a marketing perspective, Clark said.
About 40% of Cozy Earth’s shoppers are repeat customers. Its customer acquisition costs range from $180-$200. This is expensive, Clark said, and is likely only getting more expensive as competition increases on Meta ads, which is its largest customer acquisition channel right now.
“If you talk to anyone in the industry, it’s getting harder and harder to find new customers,” Weston said.
These high costs are one reason why getting on Oprah’s Favorite Things list is important to the brand. It is also is looking to increase its marketing spend in other channels such as radio, podcasts and direct mail.
Cozy Earth started selling online in 2017 and it does not have physical stores. It generates more than $50 million in annual sales.
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