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Case Study: Seasonal Campaign Response

Industry: Retail, E-Commerce, Lifestyle
Time with Thrive: Since May 2006

Summary

Utilizing the Internet and Direct Mail, Thrive Marketing helped a mail order/catalog company and manufacturer of ballet apparel achieve massive results during the peak buying season, which is the four months prior to Nutcracker performances across the country. We achieved #1-5 Google rankings for highly competitive seasonal Nutcracker keywords. We also deployed a four-piece direct mail campaign with a call-to-action to visit a targeted Nutcracker landing page on the website. The integrated campaign resulted in a 700% Return on Investment (ROI) on money spent on this campaign and a 300% increase in apparel sales over past efforts for the same season.

Objectives

Class Act Tutu’s largest sales opportunity is a specific season, a time when costume designers and ballet directors in the US are searching for various costumes for their Nutcracker performances.  Before working with Thrive Marketing, the client did not have a solid marketing strategy structured around the season. 

Thrive Marketing’s objectives for the Campaign were to:

1. Devise a direct mail campaign that would drive targeted buyers to the website and to call for a catalog or place an order.
2. Search Engine Optimize (SEO) the website early so that the website would be ranked before the buying season began for keywords like “nutcracker costumes” and the names of specific costumes like “sugar plum fairy costume.” 
3. Deploy an additional paid search engine (pay-per-click) campaign with Nutcracker keywords for an additional source of traffic.
4. Create a website landing page where people would arrive from both the Direct Mail campaign and the Internet campaigns. The focus was to create a customized, seamless and simple buying process on these landing pages.

Strategies

Because the search engines can take three to six months to index a website, we knew we had to start early. Thrive Marketing started optimizing the website five months before the buying season started to allow for ample time for the search engines to index the Nutcracker product pages. We search engine optimized five web pages for Nutcracker related keywords.  Not only did these pages have keyword-rich content, they also had to be designed in a usable and friendly way since the pages would serve as landing pages where traffic would be directed from the Internet and the Direct Mail campaigns. 

The direct mail piece was focused on placing Early-Bird orders to entice companies to plan ahead. This would help Class Act Tutu capture the maximum amount of orders and spread out production schedules to accommodate more orders. It would also avoid a bottleneck of orders in the last month of the four-month season.          

Tactics

Specifically, Thrive Marketing search engine optimized five web pages related to Nutcracker ballet costumes five months before the season started: one general Nutcracker page and four pages devoted to each of the top-selling products: Sugar Plum Fairy, Snow Queen, Spanish and Waltz of the Flowers costumes. 

By the beginning of the buying season five months later, the search engine optimization had taken effect.  Class Act Tutu was ranking (and still is) in the top 5 Google rankings for many important Nutcracker keywords and on the first page of Google for less important Nutcracker keywords.

At the beginning of the buying season, we also deployed a paid search engine campaign to make sure that our strategy was diversified between natural and paid listings in order to maximize the traffic to the website. 

The direct mail campaign consisted of four differently designed 8.5”x5.5” postcards sent once per month during the four-month buying season leading up to the final deadline to place orders for Nutcracker costumes.  This four-piece direct mail campaign was sent to a highly targeted and hand-selected list of ballet companies who have big-budget performances and would have an increased likelihood of placing large orders. 

Each postcard had a unique coupon code that customers could use to save a percentage off their order.  Contrary to how some promotions work, the percentage of savings went down rather than up, giving the most savings to the customers who chose to act in the beginning rather than those who waited until the last minute.  The message was clear in the campaign and there was a precise deadline to act.

The recipients of the postcard were led to a website landing page, which featured only Nutcracker related products.  Thrive Marketing had to reconfigure the shopping cart to accommodate the very specific requirements for Nutcracker costumes. Costumes are usually bought for a certain role, such as the Sugar Plum Fairy. This requires exact body measurements and specific colors that go with the mood of that scene.  This strategy ensured the theater directors could get exactly what they needed for each member of their cast.

Results

The use of search engine optimization resulted in #2 Google rankings for “nutcracker tutu costumes”, #3 Google rankings for “nutcracker ballet costumes,” both highly competitive seasonal keywords. The campaign also had #1-5 Google rankings for “sugar plum fairy costume,” “Spanish nutcracker costume,” “waltz of the flowers costume,” “snow queen nutcracker costume,” and other related keywords.

Pay-per-click advertising was also used effectively for an additional boost in traffic for the same keywords and other related keywords.

The direct mail campaign Return on Investment (ROI) ranged from a 200% and 400% return with each mailing.  Recipients chose to act earlier in the season than during past years. The client was able to spread her sales over the four-month buying season instead of all at once in the last month. This allowed her to handle more orders and run her company more efficiently.

Overall, the integrated campaign resulted in a 700% Return on Investment (ROI) on money spent on this campaign and a 300% increase in apparel sales over past efforts for the same season. 

The campaigns were monitored on a weekly basis and the results were tracked and reported on a monthly basis and discussed with the client. The results exceeded all expectations by the client.

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