Case Study: Direct-to-Consumer Apparel Brand Drives Online Sales with Simpli.fi and Spaceback
Advertiser Overview
• Men’s apparel company specializing in online sales
• Founded in 2020 as a Direct-to-Consumer brand and now also in retail stores
• Partnered directly with Simpli.fi in late 2020 and added social display ads from Spaceback in February 2022
Results
• $7.10 ROAS
• $82.17 Average Cart Value
• 16% Increase in ROAS after adding Spaceback creative
• $11.56 Cost Per Action
• 116K Online Conversions
BLENDING PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING WITH SOCIAL DISPLAY ADS TO DRIVE ONLINE SALES
One direct-to-consumer men’s apparel line, founded in early 2020, started out as many new DTC advertisers do by focusing on non-targeted digital and social media. As they grew, they recognized the need to improve their marketing efforts with more precise targeting and attribution.
The brand partnered with Simpli.fi at the end of 2020 to test the effectiveness of programmatic advertising. After 15 months of success, they added social display ads via Simpli.fi’s partnership with Spaceback to leverage their strong social media presence and further optimize the programmatic campaign performance.
The advertiser initially chose Simpli.fi to find users who were actively looking for men’s apparel and provide a personalized ad experience via dynamic creative based on online actions such as keyword searches, site visits, and products viewed. The brand also took advantage of Simpli.fi’s Transaction Value Reporting that accurately measures purchase values from online conversions to calculate Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Their main objectives were to increase online sales, attain a high ROAS, and achieve a Cost Per Action (CPA) of $32.50 for online purchases.
REACHING USERS BASED ON INTENT WITH BEHAVIORAL TARGETING
Simpli.fi worked directly with the brand to plan and execute a four-month programmatic campaign that developed into an always-on strategy. Because the brand only sells men’s apparel, they wanted to reach both males shopping for themselves, as well as females shopping for someone else. Therefore, Simpli.fi set up two distinct Search Retargeting tactics with a total of more than 2,000 keywords:
- Men searching for terms such as style, fashion, and men’s health would receive an ad tailored to them.
- Women searching for terms related to men’s gift ideas and shopping for men would be served ads encouraging the purchase of apparel for a male.
With transparency down to the individual keyword, the Simpli.fi team optimized the campaign by focusing on the highest-performing keywords. Additionally, the team added and removed keywords and creatives related to major shopping holidays to ensure timely and relevant ad delivery around events including Black Friday, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day.
The brand also took advantage of Simpli.fi’s Site Retargeting and Dynamic Creative solutions for a more relevant retargeting experience. Site Retargeting allowed the advertiser to retarget users who had been to their website, ensuring their ad spend was used on people actively interested in their products.
Furthermore, the advertiser used Simpli.fi’s Dynamic Creative targeting to serve personally relevant ads to users who had started the purchase process. This enabled the brand to target users who viewed specific products or added a product to their shopping cart with an ad for that same product on another website to encourage consumers to complete the purchase.
EXPANDING ON SUCCESS WITH SPACEBACK’S SOCIAL DISPLAY ADS
Like many DTC advertisers, the apparel brand wanted to leverage their strong social media presence to continue improving their advertising performance. When Simpli.fi introduced a new creative offering for social display ads via a partnership with Spaceback in early 2022, the brand jumped at the opportunity to further optimize the programmatic campaign.
With this partnership, Spaceback automatically converts a brand’s social media posts from the most popular platforms into static and in-banner video ads for immediate programmatic activation within the Simpli.fi platform. These distinct ads show actual post engagements, including comment and like counts, to provide an engaging user experience.
To implement the new ad type, the brand hand-picked their top posts from Facebook and Instagram for Spaceback to transition into programmatic assets. They split the daily budget allocation between existing display ads and the new social media creative. In less than two months, the new creative type helped drive down the CPA and maximize ROAS.
REPORTING ROAS FOR E-COMMERCE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS
With Simpli.fi’s Transaction Value Reporting, the brand could report on the average purchase value in real-time and easily calculate ROAS by dividing the transaction value by total campaign spend. Additionally, Simpli.fi’s advanced attribution tool helped the brand gauge their advertising performance across channels by revealing how their programmatic campaign impacted the bottom line.
After 15 months, the advertiser has achieved an $11.56 CPA and a ROAS of $7.10. Furthermore, since adding Spaceback’s social display creative, ROAS has increased 16% in less than two months. As a result of these successes, the direct-to-consumer brand continues to partner with Simpli.fi and Spaceback for their evergreen programmatic campaigns.
Interested in partnering with Simpli.fi and Spaceback to maximize e-commerce advertising performance?
Fill out the form below, contact your Simpli.fi representative, or email us at hi@simpli.fi for next steps.
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