Outthink and Outperform: Award-winning data strategies from Hilton, Tory Burch and more

As marketers, we spend a lot of time pulling data and creating reports demonstrating the value our efforts drive for our business. However, in the current climate where competition is fierce, and we need to make our budgets work smarter than ever before. It’s no longer enough to simply report on performance.

Data needs to be collected, analyzed and used to improve the campaign strategy that drives results. This means going beyond the basics of clicks, sales and orders – though that’s not to say these metrics should be ignored entirely. You need to gather deeper insights into the behavior of your audiences and partners and use this meaningfully to drive action that aligns with your company goals.

Rakuten Advertising has some of the industry’s most robust affiliate insights tools. For our clients, this means we can dig deep into the data and develop highly strategic, award-winning campaigns that drive results.

Tory Burch – Optimize to outperform in action

Test and learn, and then test again. A mantra familiar to any data-driven marketer and a must to follow. Testing the performance of different publisher models, ad messaging, creative, and even audience segmentation and then optimizing accordingly may seem daunting. Still, you can drive incredible results with the right tools and team.

Dubbed one of the most ‘innovative entries ever seen’ by the GPMA judges, the entry showcased how the united Tory Burch and Rakuten Advertising team delivered a campaign that achieved 140% KPI growth through robust testing and insights. The team tested merchandising and marketing messages for Tory Burch to identify how to maximise new customer acquisition and second purchasers.

The testing encompassed new media partners, offers, ever-green PR initiatives, order-based personalised reward offers and demand elasticity testing to understand how to increase conversion rates and grow ROI. Tory Burch saw a 30% improvement in new customer offer ROI through advanced testing and optimisations. Conversion rates from second-purchase shoppers increased 100% YoY, and as we’ve already mentioned, overall ROI from our marketing-driven conversions increased by more than 140% YoY.

Reaching the audiences that matter

In marketing audience is everything. Reaching and engaging your audience is at the very core of what we’re tasked to do. But turning reach or engagement into a conversion transforms an effective campaign into a powerful growth engine. Through data and audience segmentation, brands can convert the audiences that matter to their business.

A European luxury client recently tasked us with delivering new customers via the affiliate channel. Furthermore, they didn’t want only to drive new customers. They wanted to see solid and sustainable growth. Through a culture of test and learn, our team was able to redesign the publisher commissioning and shopper reward structure via dynamic commissioning. Additional tactics were layered on top to further personalize the cashback and reward experience.

The luxury retailer employed our dynamic commissioning engine, supplemented with audience segmentation technology, to tactically vary the commission paid to affiliate partners based on the publisher type, customer segment, category or product sold and the item price (full-price or discounted). This resulted in the new customer acquisition rate in Europe jumping from 10 to 20%.

Data-Driven affiliate keeps sales growing for Hilton

Many brands, especially those in the travel industry, are still experiencing the impact of a global pandemic. The affiliate channel and insights it generates can boost revenue while keeping costs low for brands looking to return performance to pre-covid levels.

Our team worked with Hilton’s flagship brand, Hilton Hotels, to make sure they remained the top choice for travelers. The team worked together to upgrade tracking and adopt a ‘cookie-less’ system to ensure every conversion was captured. New publishers were added to Hilton’s partner mix and a dynamic commissioning strategy was employed to reward publishers for driving bookings for days that are less popular with travelers.

Unsurprisingly, the data-driven approach was a huge success. Sales were boosted by 53% and profit per sale grew. Additionally, Hilton saw incrementality for every dollar they invested.

Tackling compliance with meaningful data and insights

For brands like those in the Finance vertical, marketing brings the extra layer of compliance, which can be laborious. However, an in-depth understanding of your data can reduce the resourcing efforts, enabling your team to spend more time on strategy and campaign optimizations.

Through our exclusive compliance solution and data analysis, Rakuten Advertising helped a world-leading credit-card provider maximize their affiliate performance to deliver +160% YoY new account acquisition and recruit more than twenty new publisher partners to their program. Additionally, existing publisher performance experienced a 100% YoY boost.

How did they do this? The brand used our compliance solution to automate and surface potential issues, allowing their strategist to analyze potential problems daily and mitigate risks. Once the compliance challenge was in hand, it allowed for easier publisher recruitment and audience segmentation to maximize the incremental reach. From here, the number of applications dramatically expanded without driving a large increase in unqualified applications.

So, there you have it. Three examples outline the power of data usage beyond metrics such as clicks, sales and orders. While conversion metrics are important and always will be, understanding the breadth of data you have at your disposal and how to use this is far more valuable. Using it wisely is going to drive greater results.

Ready to make smarter decisions with your data? Contact the experts at Rakuten Advertising.