Roses may be red and violets blue, but when you’re Interflora any colour will do, especially in the run-up to Valentine’s Day. As a key event in the floral calendar, much of Interflora’s marketing efforts are concentrated on this period.
This year was no exception, and, due to a dispute with Google which saw the company knocked off the hallowed ‘first page’ of search during that week, the performance of other channels was crucial.
Interflora had tried Facebook as an acquisition channel in the past but without much success in generating orders. However, London-based Facebook ad-tech agency Glow Digital Media proposed a solution. The agency was set up in 2008 by former TradeDoubler client services director Damian Routley. Glow has been working with the Facebook Ads API since its early days in mid-2009 and counts Kraft, Bacardi and Mercedes-Benz among its client list. It also works with media agencies including MEC Interaction and Manning Gottleib OMG.
Success on Facebook is vital for Interflora. The PPC environment the florist operates in has grown incredibly competitive in recent years. It needed another source of customer acquisition that could provide sufficient volume and a real alternative to Google.
There is a common misconception in the market that Facebook does not perform effectively for direct response advertisers. Glow demonstrated this was not the case.
Part of the agency’s strategy was to distribute engaging content to users on desktop and mobile devices, via the news feed, sponsored stories and right hand side ads.
To generate orders and build Interflora’s engagement with prospective customers, Glow specifically measured against reach and sales. Glow managed the entire campaign, from receiving the brief to building and submitting the strategy.
The agency created page post ad formats within the news feed to build awareness and drive prospective customers to the Interflora Valentine’s Day shop. This was supported by right hand side ads to build on the performance of the news feed formats. It then optimised the campaign to maximise orders.
Glow also tailored the messaging every day to ensure maximum relevance and impact across all formats and optimised by unique audience segment. This was matched against other channel communications to ensure consistency.
Every time a prospective customer liked, shared or commented on these formats, their friends would see an ad unit promoting that social action, thereby increasing the reach and maximising the impact of the campaign.
It also used targeting methods such as Custom Audiences, where Interflora’s offline CRM email data was used to more effectively target ads. Furthermore, the buying, optimisation, news feed engagement and insight was managed through Glow’s proprietary platform, Glow Machine. A platform that is tailored to the needs of direct response advertisers.
The results speak for themselves: 600% increase against target orders at a cost per sale which was 83% less than target. Ultimately, the cost per sale was just 10% of the equivalent PPC metric.
On the completion of the campaign, Glow provided valuable data and insight back to Interflora which was used to influence future creative and media strategy.
And, having demonstrated the potential of Facebook to drive sales and engagement so successfully, the social media site is now a core part of Interflora’s customer acquisition strategy.
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Case study: Interflora’s digital bloom http://t.co/rzlpZKAJJX