BAM moves beyond re-targeting, driving £700,000 in incremental revenue

Shifting to long-term demand-driving advertising has attracted 18,000 new customers and boosted repeat purchases

BAM, the ethical retailer of bamboo clothing, has generated £700,000 of incremental revenue through updating its display advertising programme. This overhaul has also spurred new customer growth, with BAM winning 18,000 new customers. BAM’s new display programme uses Conversant’s CRM Media Solution to show a mixture of brand, offer and product ads, customised to the individual viewer and providing a much more relevant advertising experience.

BAM bamboo clothing, the environmentally sustainable and ethically-minded retailer founded by former pole vault athlete and explorer David Gordon, had previously focused on running re-targeting and struggled to measure ROI for its advertising efforts. Realising the need to align its retention and acquisition strategies across online and offline, BAM turned to Conversant to build a new personalised display programme and be able to grow its channels.

“In the old days it was pretty straight forward; the customer saw an ad, used an offer code, and your cost of acquisition was very easy to work out. For digital display, I had been used to working with the mentality of the banner and the creative – that how it looks is not as important as getting the click. But we’ve evolved beyond that now – just looking at the different touch-points of how customers are interacting shows you can’t take a single journey anymore. The trick is to find a model that gives credit where credit is due,” explained Steve Newman, eCommerce Manager at BAM.

On Conversant’s recommendation, BAM’s new display programme aimed to provide a long-term view and drive demand over time throughout the whole sales funnel. As part of this, messages to consumers are now personalised according to a huge range of variables, notably whether they are return or new customers and what they as a buyer want to see, such as offers or similar items.

“This challenge of alignment and measurement is not unique to BAM,” commented Elliott Clayton, Senior Vice President of Media UK, Conversant. “It’s one that many other brands are coming across as the customer journey evolves. Using re-targeting alone there’s no way for marketers to know where the real value is coming from and precious budget should be invested – not to mention, the limited opportunity for bringing in new customers. But the value this new programme has already driven speaks for itself.”

As a result of this change in approach, BAM witnessed a 30% increase in customers making a second purchase and a 9% increase in orders per person. BAM also saw a 20% increase in site visitation after customers had seen a BAM advert from Conversant. “In the occasional month when we had no direct mail activity – so it didn’t have a strong impact ‒ I could only see Conversant as the influencer,” said Newman. “That was when it clicked that what they’d been telling us was incredibly accurate – the programme was doing exactly what it was meant to be doing. It shows touch-points across our entire attribution model – it’s helping all the other channels in our marketing mix.”

To accurately measure ROI for this new programme, BAM harnessed Conversant’s test and control measurement – similar to A/B testing – alongside their existing attribution system. Instead of relying on clicks, test and control allowed BAM to focus on the long-term growth of the brand and incremental value, rather than short-term goals. In turn, this enabled BAM to see the true lift created by the programme and allowed full transparency into the programme’s return.

Newman concluded, “With the test and control mode they (Conversant) have ‒ unique to them ‒ you can do very quick calculations; ‘if I take that tiny percent uplift out, that’s how much impact it can have’ – which could be huge. Some of the customer insights they were able to give us about our audience were really useful as well. They could show us stuff I’d been screaming out for!”