When online fashion retailer St. Frock decided to double down on its social media strategy, it expanded on a plan to re-engage recent web site visitors and provide context to online promotions. In combing Facebook’s Dynamic Product Ads with the Brand Networks social advertising platform, the retailer was able to build out a retargeting strategy that ultimately:
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Boosted return on ad spend (ROAS) by 480%;
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Lowered Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) by 70%; and
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Helped the retailer generate $5.5 million in revenue in 2015.
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Australia-based St. Frock initially began its focus on Facebook in 2013, with company Founder and Director Sandradee Makejev using the Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) feature to test out advertising campaigns, track data and measure the success of certain products online. However, with increasing customer acquisition costs and more overall transactions to handle, the retailer needed to collaborate with a brand partner that could help minimize the cost pressures. So St. Frock brought Facebook Marketing Partner Brand Networks into the fold.
The platform’s bulk upload functionality provided the ability to test a large variation of product sets, audiences, creatives and targeting, to help St. Frock uncover which combinations performed best and provided the biggest ROI.
“Originally, we were making ads for dresses that were relevant for the whole dress category, or a couple of new items that were relevant to what’s new,” Makejev said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We’ve gradually become able to start retargeting products and change our strategy so we are serving relevant products that are on point.
“If a person looks at an item online, that item — or other products that are similar — gets served immediately, either on their mobile or their desktop,” Makejev explained. “It’s the products that are relevant to the customer which makes it more powerful, and it means that customers are coming back again and again because they can trust us and they know what they want.”
Facebook Ads Bring The Right Products To The News Feed
St. Frock has a massive Facebook following, having amassed more than 380,000 “likes” on its company page. With access to such a large and diverse fan base, it’s clear why retailers would use Facebook, or any social media platform for that matter, to generate personalized offerings.
The Brand Networks platform works in conjunction with Facebook to enable relevant retargeting, putting merchandise that has recently been viewed on the company’s web site in front of the consumer via the Facebook News Feed.
The campaign specifically paired Facebook’s carousel ad format, which can showcase three to five images and links within a single unit, with its Custom Audiences feature, which is designed to let retailers reach visitors based on the product types and sales events they have already shown interest in.
“Most people are plugged into Facebook’s massive highway of information each day,” Makejev said. “Back on our web site, shoppers might look at a dress or a jacket. When they go back to Facebook, within one minute they get served the DPA, and these carousel ads will include the products they just looked up.”
Keeping An Emphasis On Retargeting Throughout The Holidays
Even though the retargeting efforts have shown to be successful for St. Frock thus far, the retailer still has to introduce the concept carefully, and at appropriate times.
As the retailer continues to expand both its online and social presence, it takes on the added challenge of achieving an ideal balance between prospecting new consumers and retargeting to existing ones. Makajev estimates that 30% of the company’s online advertising budget is focused on retargeting while the other 70% is in prospecting, but the company plans to further increase the emphasis on retargeting during the holiday season.
“From analyzing last year’s Christmas data, the balance would be great to change over that period to focus more of the budget on retargeting rather than prospecting,” she said. “We want the retargeting to be heavier then, particularly the DPAs, to focus on the customers we already have and serve them relevant content.”
