CASE STUDY

PerfumesWorld

USA

PerfumesWorld increases transaction volume by 77% against a 5.3% decrease in expenditure with Core and More Technologies!

Situation

PerfumesWorld is a major U.S. fragrance retailer offering thousands of products across numerous brands. Competing against giants like Walmart, eBay, and Amazon, their market share had become stagnant and their account was riddled with inefficiencies. Being savvy marketers and technically adept themselves, they knew that there was something wrong, and that there was much left on the table. Yet, they didn’t know what they didn’t know. Having seen a recent press release on the success that Core and More Technologies was creating for their clients, they decided to reach out. That was in February of 2015.

Challenge

There was no process to manage in-stock/out-of-stock inventory. Therefore, their ads for out of stock items would still show up. This was negatively impacting the relevance of their ads, while also resulting in expenditure being accrued on a per click basis against out of stock products. There were tens of thousands of outdated ads -- some featuring offers that were no longer applicable, others with coupon codes that did not work, and many with messaging that had become otherwise irrelevant. These issues resided across both the Google and Bing platforms and were costing them a small fortune.

Naturally, this impacted their ability to attain top placements against other retailers, both large and small. To top it all off, there had been some website transitions (as well as changes among marketing agencies managing the accounts), so there were potentially many other issues to discover, and then resolve.

Solution

Core and More Technologies and the PerfumesWorld team both knew one thing for certain: that the account was missing the ‘human touch’. Automated management platforms such as Marin Software would not cut it, this account needed to be cleaned out completely. We needed to roll-up our sleeves and build an inventory management process for search campaigns, address the need to stabilize the account and show near term growth, while also deciphering which existing adverts to keep (and which to discard).

And that is exactly what we did. First, looking at the history of the account we determined the top performing products, geographies, days, and time of day. We revised the account structure to mirror that data for optimal ad serve. We sought to then re-apply the savings recouped there and push for additional impression share all day, every day for top products and with top of page placement.

We simultaneously began a long, but systematic, process of restructuring the entire paid search account. We developed a methodology for inventory management that allowed us to effectively control budget allocation to ensure marketing dollars were only supporting in-stock products that were available for purchase. We created a nomenclature specifically built to mirror that of the Product Name assigned by The Perfume Spot within their inventory management system, and applied that to our Ad Group level naming convention. By doing so we were able to access a daily inventory report in which we applied an advanced algorithm to that, then activated or paused those Ad Groups based on product availability. This strategy not only improved the efficacy of the paid search campaign performance, but the efficiency of day to day management for the account as well.

Over time, we have also sought to bring all of the latest platform innovations to the table. It took a total of two solid years to manually establish the performance stability that we had envisioned. Naturally we are very cautious not to disrupt or jeopardize that progress. So, when Google began releasing more advanced, automated bidding strategies – we opted in to several betas. Through a nine-month process we facilitated batches of controlled tests, placing manual bidding strategies into 50/50 experiments against automated strategies such as Target CPA and Target ROAS. We allowed at least two-weeks runtime before declaring any winners. We went through this process in a rinse and repeat fashion throughout the course of the year – seeking to ensure optimal efficiency in terms of both volume and cost per transaction. This applied to both search and shopping platforms.

“We have been working with Core and More Technologies for over 5 years now. They have helped us to increase profitability by triple digits through ongoing digital expansion as well as digital process improvement. We have thousands of product SKU's to contend with. They created an outside-the-box methodology to ensure that our in-stock/out-of-stock inventory is matched to our ad promotions with the utmost efficiency. Never complacent, they stay on top of all industry innovations and ensure that our digital program leverages all of the latest features available across all advertising platforms. That's what they bring to the table. They truly partner with us, and in that respect they are also completely transparent and operate with a refreshing level of integrity. We have worked with many agencies over the last 21 years. Core and More Technologies has been far and away the best.”

-Steve Kraidman, President, PerfumesWorld

The Results

It is best to look at non-branded (that is, not searches against their name) for the period just prior to when we took over management of the account, and this past quarter. Here is what we see:

  • Total clicks: -32%
  • Total Impressions: -72%
  • Click-Through Rate: +143%
  • Total Conversions: +29%
  • Total Expenditure: -5%
  • Cost Per Acquisition: -25%
  • Conversion Rate: +83%
  • While spending 5.3% less, we generated 29% more transactions. Now that is progress!!!

SEM (Q3 2020 v. Q3 2019):

  • Total clicks: -174%
  • Total Impressions: -34%
  • Click-Through Rate: +104%
  • Total Conversions: +77%
  • Cost Per Acquisition: +14%
  • Result was over 4,000 additional transactions right within our target cost per acquisition!

This is all Google. On Bing, when we look
at the same time periods, we see the following:

  • Total clicks: +63%
  • Total Impressions: +113%
  • Total Conversions: +57%

SEM (Q3 2020 v. Q3 2019):

  • Total clicks: +20%
  • Total Impressions: +105%
  • Total Conversions: +21%
  • Cost Per Acquisition: +4%
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