A British department store: generating record-breaking marketing metrics

The Challenge

In the fashion sector, choice is ever-increasing. Retailers are struggling to stand out amongst a huge number of competitors who are battling to win the attention and loyalty of their target audience. Our client, a major British department store, were witnessing that very situation. Despite a large ad budget, the retailer was struggling to hit return targets across Facebook and Instagram, which severely impacted the value they were getting out of their investment into digital marketing. The Elixirr Digital team were brought in to help drive the return on their spend through a variety of methods surrounding strategy and optimisation.

The Approach

The Elixirr Digital team began with a complete review of the retailer’s ad spend, which amounted to £650k. During this review, the team identified key issues and opportunities for improvement. The work included…

Updating the strategy – Our client had previously been applying Facebook’s DABA (Dynamic Ads Broad Audience) approach to their ads. This can be beneficial as it leaves the optimisation up to the network’s AI, however, using this approach also impacts data visibility and takes control away from the brand. To counteract this, our team balanced the existing ad set ups with lookalike audiences of purchasers, testing different levels of similarity. Our 5% lookalike audience is now the best-performing audience for the retailer, exceeding the results of the original DABA approach.

Improving the ads – Our client’s existing ads were not built in line with Facebook’s algorithm. As the retailer ran offers on a regular basis, they often had to update the adverts. This meant resetting the ad’s ‘learning phase’, which stopped Facebook from optimising the ads. To overcome this, we restructured the account and separated out different campaigns. Moreover, we added a dynamic feed to the prospecting ads, meaning we didn’t need to update the actual advert when offers changed. This allowed Facebook to complete the learning phase on the ads and optimise each one effectively.

Optimising the audience – Our client generally saw low average basket values, coming in at around £35. To attract customers that were likely to spend more, our team changed the bidding strategy, moving from the lowest CPA (cost strategy) to a value optimisation bid strategy, which targeted users that were likely to spend more. This strategy has been one of the best-performing campaigns week-on-week for our client.

The Impact

In just two months, we increased our client’s in-house return on ad spend by more than 100%, exceeding their target of 4.66. Moreover, we helped them achieve their highest ROAS on record, coming in at 5.28. Not only did this significantly impact the value the retailer saw from their investment into digital marketing, but it would also have a direct impact on revenue, pushing more of their target audience to the site to make purchases.