Westwing is a premium furniture shopping club that extends daily offers from top brands and designers to its members, with the goal of encouraging new sign-ups. Having recently launched a mobile-optimized site, Westwing decided to upgrade its search and display advertising to enhanced campaigns. The result has been more insights into the performance of specific audiences across devices, which has allowed the brand to successfully optimize its display advertising.
Approach
Created mobile-optimized website and initiated display mobile ads
Upgraded to enhanced campaigns in the Google Display Network
Adjusted bids to target users by context as well as audience signals including age, gender and remarketing
Goals
Efficiently optimize display campaigns
Reach potential audience groups most effectively
Accommodate sudden budget shifts
Results
Mobile visits have increased 80% since release of mobile-optimized site
Enhanced campaigns have delivered 20% uplift in impression share
Cost-per-click has been reduced 9% and cost-per-lead has stayed stable
16% of all Westwing visits are now on mobile
Westwing is a premium furniture shopping club that extends special daily offers from top brands and designers to its members. With its emphasis on exclusivity and chic design, the majority of the brand's target users have high incomes and are female. The goal of Westwing's online marketing is to identify leads and encourage new member sign-ups so that details including the user's name, email address and gender can be registered.
Good to go
Because it's easy to register while on the move, more and more new users were joining Westwing via mobile devices. In response to this, the company developed a mobile-optimized site, a tactic that subsequently saw mobile visits increase by 80%.
The success of the mobile site provided further evidence of the channel's potential, so Westwing opted to advertise its marketing campaigns on all devices while using every ad format in the Google Display Network. Furthermore, the company began to make intensive use of bid multiplication opportunities through enhanced campaigns in search, such as setting higher bid adjustments on best performing cities.
The volume of marketing that the company undertakes compelled it to make use of automated tools such as Conversion Optimizer and Display Campaign Optimizer. As these tools work algorithmically, they "learn" over time to make increasingly smarter optimization decisions on an automatic basis.
Westwing's digital strategy is built around a cost-per-lead (CPL) model however, which means it takes a dynamic approach that involves daily budget shifts. Since flexible budgets are easier to handle with manual optimization procedures, Westwing believed this would provide a more efficient way forward.
Help is at hand
A manual optimization approach could be achieved with powerful bidding opportunities made available through enhanced campaigns. Enhanced campaigns for display help brands to reach people with the right ads, based not only on users' context — such as location, time of day and device type — but also by adjusting bids across various signals, including interest categories, demographics, topic targeting and remarketing placements.
By upgrading all of its campaigns to enhanced, Westwing can now easily manage all of this in one place without needing to create and maintain multiple campaigns. "It was very easy to migrate," says Westwing's Manager of Global Marketing, Stathis Konstantinidis. "After testing a couple of campaigns, we realized that the management is fast and simple, and that the performance was stable."
The layering of targeting options produces a powerful effect; Westwing no longer considers only the primary targeting and placements for bid adjustments, but also audience data now available with enhanced campaigns. For example, bid adjustments are now considered for age and gender on all campaigns, while remarketing signals are integrated into all campaigns as well. Bids can be increased and decreased across the whole range of parameters dynamically according to their performance.
"The bidding and management of the campaigns is definitely simpler now," says Stathis. "Before enhanced campaigns we had to consider the bidding order of the different targeting methods. Now we have a better overview of the costs-per-click and can adjust them easily in every targeting method."
Enhanced campaigns helped us to reach our target group in the Google Display Network more effectively, as it gives us more insights into the performance of specific audiences. Thus we have a stronger data basis to evaluate our marketing investment and continuously optimize its allocation.
Count on it
Enhanced campaigns also benefits Westwing in that it lends added transparency and opportunity for analysis of all audience signals on ad group level. "Now with the upgrade we have greater insight what our converting audience looks like. We can use this information in order to push the impression share of our ads within the converting audience and decrease the impressions within the lower performing audience to drive conversions and decrease the CPL." Stathis says the approach has already paid off. "Bid adjustments according to the performance of each audience group in the Google Display Network led to a 20% uplift in impression share, and at the same time reduced cost-per-click by 9%."
Philipp von Plato, Westwing's Co-CEO is enthusiastic about the achievements so far, as well as the outlook for the future. "Enhanced campaigns helped us to reach our target group in the Google Display Network more effectively, as it gives us more insights into the performance of specific audiences," he says. "Thus we have a stronger data basis to evaluate our marketing investment and continuously optimize its allocation."
