About the brand
Spirit of Manchester is an independent drinks brand that came to JM Digital following the sudden closure of their physical bar in Manchester. With offline revenue removed overnight, the business needed to pivot fast and build a sustainable online growth strategy from the ground up.
The challenge
Spirit of Manchester operates under significant restrictions across paid advertising channels as an alcohol brand, meaning they had no ability to rely on paid media to drive traffic or boost performance. When JM Digital came on board, the site was averaging a 2% conversion rate and trading was inconsistent. With no paid channel available, every result had to be driven through organic trading strategy, site optimisation, and CRM alone.
What we did
JM Digital took ownership of Spirit of Manchester’s ecommerce trading strategy and email marketing, and began with a deep dive on conversion. The site had structural issues across mobile, homepage, product listing pages, product detail pages, and cart that were directly suppressing conversion. Development work was carried out across all of these areas, addressing the underlying technical and UX problems rather than papering over them.
With the site in better shape, JM Digital introduced a structured trading calendar aligned to key consumer moments, built entirely around organic strategy and CRM. Every campaign was designed to work harder because it had to, with no paid amplification available to fall back on. This constraint ultimately sharpened the quality of the trading strategy and made the results more meaningful.
The results
The conversion rate improvement was significant. From a site average of 2% pre-work, CVR rose to 4.8% in November and 7.4% in December, representing more than a trebling of conversion performance driven entirely through organic means.
Across November 2025 to January 2026, Spirit of Manchester delivered a record period across almost every key metric. Q4 was a record quarter, up +15% on the prior record. November was a record month for gross sales, up +7% on the prior record, and a record month for orders, up +30%. New customers as a percentage of the total customer base reached 79% during the period, and 28th November ranked as the second strongest single trading day on record.
Ready to grow your brand?
JM Digital works with DTC brands across the UK and Ireland on ecommerce trading strategy, Shopify optimisation, and CRM. Get in touch to talk through your goals.
