Tempo Tea, a fledgling beverage packaged in an aluminum can hits all the right trend-of-the-moment chords.

It’s bubbly. It’s USDA Organic. It’s ready-to-drink and it’s packaged in an easily recyclable aluminum can. The product packaging is bright, eye-catching and graphic. It contains just enough caffeine to fuel productivity, but not enough to cause jitters. And now, through smart e-commerce techniques, founders Ryan Crane, Austin Gallagher and Grant Williams are primed to get Tempo Tea into the hands of their core audience: health conscious millennial aged professionals.

Here are three ways their brand is attracting customers, garnering sales and making waves online (in more ways than one).

Keep it simple

When creating their website, Crane says user experience was a chief driver in making design decisions. There are three, easily identifiable steps to purchasing product (Pick Flavors, Review Cart and Checkout) listed at the top of the page, and consumers have two ordering options: Choose a one-time shipment of 12 beverages or a reoccurring monthly subscription. 

“We know where our customers like to shop, and online is a big component. For e-commerce, we wanted to make our checkout experience as simple as possible,” says Tempo Tea CEO Ryan Crane. “I didn’t want a thousand different SKUs and complicated ordering. I wanted an easy checkout experience with no shipping fees.”

Offer a subscription option, but don't make it mandatory 

At its core, Tempo Tea was designed to eliminate the 2 p.m. slump many professionals feel after lunch without consuming sugar or excess caffeine. While the tea product is available for purchase in select brick-and-mortar retail stores, Crane and Gallagher say a subscription model is the easiest, most streamlined way to get their product into the hands of busy people—in part due to expanded modern workdays. “For a lot of people, a 9-to-5 workday doesn’t really exist anymore … for many people, it’s a 16-hour workday,” says Crane. “Our goal is to make Tempo really easy for people to consume for focused energy; for productive energy.”

While subscription services such as meal kit delivery often carry the added stress of setting aside time to prepare meals before ingredients expire, subscription delivery for finished products are all about convenience. At a minimum, shoppers can sign up to have a 12-can case of Tempo sent to their home or office each month.

“A subscription model makes a lot of sense for us,” says Gallagher, who adds that Tempo also serves startups purchasing the sparkling tea for their employees.

Tell a conservation story

Tempo Tea is in the unique position to work with a close nonprofit partner, a conservation organization called Beneath The Waves founded by Gallagher, who is also a conservation biologist specializing in the study of predatory animals. Beneath The Waves conducts cutting edge research on threatened marine species such as vulnerable shark populations to help maintain ocean biodiversity. When users sign up to buy a monthly Tempo Tea subscription, Beneath The Waves sends monthly information about the sharks they tag—which can include shark location, unique biometric data and more. Plus, a portion of each subscription supports Beneath The Wave’s mission.

In addition to enticing shoppers to buy a reoccurring subscription, nonprofit involvement fosters a resonate brand story by connecting consumers with a worthy initiative. “This has always been a part of Tempo Tea’s DNA—we’ve always been supporting these missions,” says Crane. “However, there is a disconnect between consumer and cause. Our subscription model helps people develop a relationship with the organization they’re helping to support.”