Emporium

Not all growth is immediate: the following fashion e-commerce marketing case study tells the story of the return on wise, medium-term marketing investments.

About the client

Founded in 1989, this family-owned business serves its clientele, who are keen on Hungarian-designed, small-batch, unique clothing, through five locations in Budapest and a continuously developed webshop.

Planning and strategy

Our collaboration with Emporium began at the very start of 2021 with a complete reinvention of their webshop. The webshop’s measurement techniques were incorrectly set up, ordering on the site was cumbersome, and besides technical shortcomings, analysis of the traffic revealed several customer behavior patterns that were causing significant losses. Although more than half (56%) of the visitors accessed the webshop via mobile, the responsive experience left much to be desired, and on some product pages, it was simply impossible to make a purchase.

The conversion rate in the webshop was exceptionally low, and almost only old customers used the online platform. Therefore, beyond the technical implementation, the business processes also had to be rethought; from acquisition to conversion. While the sales performance of the company’s physical stores was promising, and the customer base was exceptionally loyal, the webshop seemed to just be vegetating; which didn’t seem like a good omen with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic…

The biggest challenge, however, was the slow but persistent repositioning of the management’s focus on the online interface, which had previously been regarded as a nice-to-have option, with appropriate empathy.

Thoughtful execution, careful launch

During the complete redesign and overhaul of the webshop, we also had to contend with an outdated enterprise resource planning system, the total replacement of which would have far exceeded the available resources.

After the launch, the 7digits performance marketing team had to face the fact that

the same conservative self-discipline of the management, which had kept the family business alive through the toughest situations for decades, could only view paid traffic generation with the utmost caution, bordering on the impossible.

Traffic generation

For Emporium, paid advertisements were previously minimal, as the webshop played a role akin to an outlet in the company’s business approach, rather than a primary sales platform. The results were achieved solely through running Facebook ads. The initial modest budget was gradually increased over several rounds – driven by return-on-investment-focused outcomes – to reach a visibly substantial advertising budget.

However, the overall results were still modest, and increasing the real profit-generating potential through customer value could only be achieved with marketing automation, necessitating another investment – which management eventually did make.

Opportunity

About 8 months after the WooCommerce-based webshop’s launch, in the fall of 2021, we activated the ActiveCampaign system, now used by Emporium for both occasional campaign dispatches and marketing automation. To collect emails, Emporium and 7digits created several mid-funnel contents, contributing to the current growth of 300-400 new subscribers monthly.

Unsurprisingly, email automation generated a tremendous revenue increase for the webshop, although, contrary to expectations, it wasn’t the well-managed handling of abandoned carts, but the personalized periodic campaigns that continuously contribute a significant portion of the revenue.