Black Friday
+42%
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Who Is Fish Society?
Fish Society has spent years making the case that frozen fish, sourced and frozen at the peak of freshness, beats anything sold as ‘fresh’ on a supermarket counter. Over two hundred products span shellfish, raw fish and prepared dishes, sourced from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean while still championing British catches, all backed by a Fresher Than Fresh money-back guarantee. Gordon Ramsay has called it the UK’s leading online fishmonger, and the brand has delivered more than five million meals to 150,000 homes on the strength of that reputation.
Fish Society’s customers range from everyday home cooks to those planning a special occasion meal, many of them members of a loyalty programme offering discounts of up to 30%. It is a business built on trust in a category where trust is hard-won, and on a frozen-first philosophy that turns what other brands treat as a compromise into the whole point.
Swimming Against the Inbox Tide
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the loudest weeks in any retailer’s calendar, and for a premium seafood brand that loudness is a genuine threat. Every competitor is discounting into the same inboxes at the same moment, and a customer who has never opened a Fish Society email is easy to lose entirely in that tide, regardless of how strong the BFCM offer actually is.
Email alone could not guarantee Fish Society’s biggest promotion of the year would even be seen, let alone stand out against a flood of nearly identical subject lines from every other retailer chasing the same weekend.
Fresher Than Fresh, Delivered
Paper Run ran a direct mail campaign timed to BFCM, putting Fish Society’s offer physically in front of customers instead of adding another line to an already overloaded inbox. Results were measured against a holdout group, giving Fish Society a clean read on what the mailer itself contributed on top of its existing email and paid activity during the busiest sales weekend of the year.
The mailer carried the same quality promise that defines the brand on-site, leaning on its Fresher Than Fresh guarantee rather than reducing the message to a generic discount, so the physical piece felt consistent with the premium positioning Fish Society has spent years building.
The Catch of the Season
Against holdout, the BFCM mailer drove a 6.1X incremental return on ad spend with a 42% uplift in conversion. For a business built on repeat ordering around dinner parties and special occasions, a customer won during BFCM tends to return well before the next big seasonal moment, extending the value of that one campaign considerably further than the initial order suggests.
The result gives Fish Society a proof point for treating direct mail as a standing part of its peak-season plan, not a one-off experiment, particularly for the exact weeks when every other channel is fighting for the same attention.
"We were sceptical that print could compete with everything else running that weekend. It outperformed most of it."
CEO, Fish Society
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