Prior to the 2018 holiday season, Tammy & Benjamin, a luxury leather brand, sought to drive more global sales for its handbags and expand further into major markets such as the U.S. and UK. But with only 34 stores, the company needed more effective outreach to promote both its online and physical businesses. The France-based retailer partnered with digital advertising platform MakeMeReach to drive awareness, and ultimately sales, through an ad campaign that encompassed Facebook, Instagram and Google.
As a result, the retailer saw a 230% lift in sales attributed to Facebook and Instagram ads, and a 90% increase in sales through Google brand search campaigns in the lead-up to Black Friday 2018.
“These platforms have enabled us to reach many people that we previously could not,” said Benjamin Pincemaille, President and Co-Founder of Tammy & Benjamin in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “Targeting gives us the ability to reach the right people, especially people who are already interested in our product at that moment. Our Black Friday sales have mostly been driven by these platforms.”
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Prior to partnering with MakeMeReach, Tammy & Benjamin had been managing its ads in-house without using any real targeting strategy to reach potential new customers. Additionally, shopper data remained in platform-specific silos, which limited marketers’ ability to engage consumers across channels. A partnership with the social agency led the handbag company to push out Facebook- and Instagram-focused campaigns that were targeted at shoppers who had previously interacted with the brand on social media, but hadn’t necessarily purchased a bag.
“Mostly we were trying to find expertise, because while we were doing as much as we could, we didn’t have a dedicated team for paid ads,” said Pincemaille. “We were able to get the idea of what our objective was, and find someone that could make it happen with the knowledge of the social media tools available.”
Facebook Ads Drive Awareness, Spearhead Retargeting
The companies first sought to drive shopper awareness of the handbags. Using Facebook Link ads, Carousel ads and Instagram Stories ads, MakeMeReach built warm audiences for Tammy & Benjamin that could be retargeted closer to Black Friday.
After deploying these ads, both teams determined that a “qualified” prospect would be a web site visitor who had viewed at least two different product pages on the Tammy & Benjamin site. MakeMeReach then used Facebook Pixel, the social network’s ad campaign measurement and optimization code, to select qualified prospects and track sales driven directly from Facebook ads, so that the retailer could retarget the prospects on Facebook and Instagram in early November.
The same ad formats from the awareness stage were retained for these consideration and conversion stages, and were combined with Facebook Dynamic ads to fully leverage retargeting efforts based on users’ previous interests.
“We were focusing on retargeting at first, but we were surprised by the results because many new clients came during the campaigns, and bought after Black Friday,” Pincemaille said. “The fact that we’re able to see what interests the clients inside our brand is very useful, because we can then explain more about the products, the value-add of each product and how you can use it.”
Discount Offer Encouraged Conversion Before Black Friday
The retailer’s Google retargeting campaigns used brand keywords to drive specific brand searches, as well as generic product keywords to focus the ads for shoppers who weren’t as brand-loyal.
Google ads leveraged the warm audiences from the social media campaigns and featured similar messaging, with the addition of an “up to 50% off” offer on the Thursday before Black Friday. This strategy was designed to ensure a strong brand story across channels and reengage the retailer’s socially inspired users, while also providing a compelling offer to convert searchers with high purchase intent.
“Before, mostly we had emails that our clients gave us, and that’s it,” Pincemaille said. “The remaining insights were from people that came to our boutique and the rest was all from our wholesale network. We get much more insight from our clients today through the ad campaigns, which allows us to create and modify our product line better. We didn’t have that feedback before.”
Since Black Friday, Tammy & Benjamin has further integrated the Facebook and Google campaigns by tagging the traffic from top-of-funnel Facebook campaigns, and then targeting those users using Google’s Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) feature. To encourage repeat purchases, the retailer creates Google Analytics remarketing lists with the top converting Facebook Audiences, and applies them to RLSA.
