A large online retailer who many of us buy from on a regular basis sells thousands of products online in dozens of categories. They noticed a big drop in conversion rates and revenue per client and didn’t know why.
They went to McKinsey & Company for help, who did a 20,000 person study on consumer behavior and how selling and marketing to consumers has changed. They identified where efforts should be directed to yield the highest return on marketing efforts. Click here to read a great brief about the study – “The Consumer Decision Journey.”
Key Findings
They dug deep into existing online analytics to study the correlation between purchases and quantity of product per category
They used segmentation to calculate likelihood that customers in each category would “cross the aisle” and buy something in another category
After digging into the data, they found the lifetime value of a toy buyer increased greatly when they bought in other categories
Conversely, consumers who bought a lot of pet products did not buy frequently in other categories
After studying their consumer decision journeys they developed cross-selling and category penetration techniques to grow the lifetime value per customer
6 months into this project yielded a jump of 25% in email conversions, 60% increase in on-site conversions, increase in overall sales of 20% and and overall ROI of 30%.
Kotex launched a creative, low cost, well executed advocacy/influencer campaign using Pinterest. Great video below expanding on how they did it and what the results were.
Kotex first looked through thousands of women’s pinboards in search of 50 power users with a large number of engaged followers on Pinterest who could be future Kotex customers. They then studied the 50 women’s boards to get a better understanding of some of the things they are passionate about. After the analysis, they created custom gift boxes for each woman filled with goodies they believed would resonate with them. I would estimate they invested between $50 and $100 per gift box.
Upon receiving the gifts, almost all 50 did as Kotex had hoped. They talked about Kotex online. Kotex then asked the women to reciprocate by opting in to the campaign to share their stories about the cool gifts they got.
At the time of the video below, there had been 2,000 interactions between the 50 women and their friends and almost 695,000 impressions.
A singular focus proves successful. By holding true to their philosophy to only provide content that helps their visitors find more ways to look better and feel better after using their products, Burt’s Bees found the formula for success in converting visitors to paying customers. They are practicing the “dynamic liquid content” methodology Coke has been preaching since late 2011.
Burt’s Bees was founded in 1984. They started by selling beeswax candles and have grown into a global brand making over 150 natural personal care products. Their mission is to “try to make people’s lives better every day–naturally.”
Hair Club, North America’s leading provider of hair restoration solutions for men and women created a mobile website with one purpose, to get mobile phone users to “click-to-call” for more information.
They worked with Google’s new free mobile marketing resource site to identify best practices in mobile marketing, from how to design their site to proper calls to action to move a mobile visitor to call their 800# or visit a nearby store. Their “click-to-call” button goes to a live sales person within seconds. Once a call is made, their close rate goes up exponentially.
Lesson Learned
There is still time to be an early adopter. Even though Hair Club’s mobile site is not visually appealing, it’s their effort to go mobile that paid off. Their competition is slow to act and they come up first on search from a mobile device leading to the clicks and calls. full case study.
Found a great interview with the team behind the wildly successful Old Spice campaign. In the interview, they talk about how they decided to employ various social media strategies, and which people to send personalized videos to.
One interesting disclosure was that Old Spice had built a custom application that ranks the influence level of people tweeting Old Space, providing the team with a shortlist of people to produce customized YouTube responses to:
We’ve built an application that scans the Internet looking for mentions and allows us to look at the influence of those people and also what they’ve said. They’re working in collaboration with the creative team that are there to pick out the messages that: 1. Have creative opportunity to produce amazing content; or 2. Have the ability to then embed themselves in an interesting or virally-relevant community. It’s not just picking people with huge followings, it’s a really interesting combination.
Kaya Skin Clinic, an Indian company specializing in skin products and services, decided to use online video to promote its new offering – Kaya Bridal. Online videos were chosen as a social media strategy engage with consumers via visual content. The video was published on leading indian and international video sharing sites. The results were phenomenal and established brand Kaya as the skin experts. It also helped break a popular mis-conception that Kaya’s services are expensive and spread the word that it’s value for money Case Study
To grow awareness, market share and sales, OPI, one the top brands for both home and salon manicures, came up with a strategic plan to spread word-of-mouth promotion of the brand. OPI along with SheSpeaks, a leading word-of-mouth marketing network decided to target female consumers with direct dialogue. The program involved nearly 9,000 SheSpeaks members sampling OPI’s Nic’s Sticks nail polish. The campaign generated close to 800,000 conversations and 120,000 unit sales which proves its high success. Case study
Unilever took the support of word of mouth marketing campaign to raise awareness regarding its new skin care segment and their new product, Dove Summer Glow. The campaign aimed at educating the consumers regarding correct usage of the product and motivated them to speak more about the product to their friends and family. For the same 30 conversation starters were identified that networked in their local communities and were invited into and social groups as guest speakers. They also targeted groups such as mothers’ playgroups, school groups, sporting associations. Case study
The face to face campaign by Nivea for Men stood out to be huge marketing success. In order to create awareness for daily face care regime for men, the company targeted women to encourage their partners to try Nivea’s products. For the same conversation starters were invited into women’s community groups where they spread the message regarding the benefits of daily face care regime for their partners. The women were also provided a trial pack to take home. Nearly 42,000 women were targeted in the entire 6 months of word-of-mouth campaign and results displayed that 58% of survey participants
had gone on to recommend the product to their friends. Case study
Found a great interview with the team behind the wildly successful Old Spice campaign. In the interview, they talk about how they decided to employ various social media strategies, and which people to send personalized videos to.