My Maille Community: A Thriving Facebook Group Connecting People Through Food
Last year Maille experienced a 5-10 year’s worth of growth in a single year! The mid-sized gourmet mustard company continues to grow faster than any other brand in its category, with the Facebook group being the most recent social platform—and already the most successful one.
Maille Facebook Group By the Numbers
Since we created the group on January 14, 2019, the My Maille Community has grown to nearly 76,000 members. From July 2020 to July 2021, we experienced 34% year-over-year growth, increasing from 50,554 to 76,110 members. The My Maille Community averages:
20 posts per day, 600 posts per month
70,000 organic engagements (posts, comments, and likes) per month, approximately 2,333 per day.
The community’s record-setting engagement occurred in August 2020, with 105,000 reactions for the month, an average of 3,500 per day.
The members of the My Maille Community are among the brand’s most active consumers. The average cost per acquisition in the community is under one dollar per new member, which is reimbursed the first time they buy mustard or cornichons.
Food: Our Universal Language
The My Maille Community experienced substantial growth during the pandemic. During quarantine, people sought connections in the digital world. Food is an important part of everyone’s life and culture. Knowing this, we brought people together through the joy of cooking, sharing recipes, making conversation, and taking screenshots of their creations. The community became a place to heal and find support and friends, especially important at a time when in person conexions were so complicated.
Maille mustards are incredibly versatile products. The recipes shared by members of the community show the many ways that Maille can be incorporated with any dish. Some recipes just ask for a dab of Maille for flavoring. Other recipes, including marinades, suggest you use an entire jar.
Our community members became very passionate about sharing their favorite mustard recipes. The top members contribute several hundred comments and posts each month! Through these posts, genuine relationships between community members have developed over time. Personal stories are commonly shared, members interact outside the community, and sometimes even travel to meet one another.
As the My Maille Community continues to grow, it serves as a testimonial to the positive role social media can have on people's lives.
Exchanges like these are commonplace in the Maille community.
Contests, Giveaways, and Growth
We organise two contests every month in the community, and each contest has a different theme. Sometimes we ask community members to create a haiku about mustard or to encourage their loved ones to join the group. Others are holiday-themed, like July’s Bastille Day competition.
We also regularly send community members free products and goodies to show our appreciation:
We produce live videos with Chef Brandon The Mustard Sommelier, who incorporates the products in recipes and shows people how to create culinary masterpieces. To date, Chef Brandon’s reactions span 60 episodes.
Beyond these regular engagements, we foster growth by posting in the community every day. We also play an active role in people's lives, showing the same warm, inviting gratitude to our members that we receive from our consumers.
We are personally invested in the community. Over the last couple of years, we’ve built relationships with Maille consumers, have gotten to know about their personal lives, and check in when times get tough.
It’s also not uncommon for community members to send each other food and pray for the well-being of other members when they are experiencing hardships.
Our moderators also pay close attention to the interactions within the community to ensure that the general vibe remains positive. This is echoed by community members who consistently express enthusiasm and love for the people they’re with and the product they love.
Community Through Connection
The My Maille Community isn’t experiencing substantial growth through paid ads and boosted posts. It’s growing because we have an excellent product and encourage genuine connection. What started as a page that shares gourmet mustard recipes has become a thriving community that sometimes even has us going, “Maille, oh Maille!”