Homeware brand Cox and Cox has successfully complemented its catalogue-based business model with personalised display ads to generate an incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) of over £2 million over the last 18 months.
The Somerset-based company, founded by BBC television presenter Fiona Cox, acknowledged its previous marketing set up – whereby prospects and customers were treated the same way – lacked relevance and personalisation. To overcome this, it partnered with Conversant and undertook a three month proof of concept to better understand the impact of personalisation. The goals of the campaign were to create profitable acquisition of new customers, help existing customers make a second purchase by understanding their product affinity and to generate a profitable incremental return across all of Conversant’s activity for Cox and Cox. The results far exceeded the brand’s expectations.
“The numbers in the forecast were real, the proof of concept did what it was supposed to, we saw an immediate business impact and it was completely painless to set up,” explains Richard Bell, Cox and Cox’s COO. “All across the board – the results, the account management, the insight, I just thought ‘why haven’t we done this before?’”
Over the next 18 months, Cox and Cox and Conversant went on to secure £2,088,462 in incremental revenue, a proportion of which was achieved by generating almost 25,000 new customers. To do this, they created 12,690 unique display creatives, to ensure all ads were personalised to the interests of prospects and existing customers.
Jacqui Whitewick, Cox and Cox’s head of acquisition, added: “The most effective feature is around the understanding and delivery of product affinity and category recommendations. It’s clear that the more relevant and personalised we can make it for our customers, the better we’re going to do.”
Understanding customer data provided unique insight to drive business objectives outside of the display channel, while the display channel – and Conversant’s work – generated new profit, which has subsequently allowed Cox and Cox to invest in business growth.
“Conversant would work for anyone, but where it comes into its own is with people who don’t have the massive budgets to get the numbers – companies who need to spend carefully, spend wisely and can be fleet of foot and flexible,” said Bell. “Anyone can spend a lot of money, but being able to spend a little bit of money really well – that’s tricky.”
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