Challenge
When Planet Organic was founded in 1995, their mission was to offer the widest range of organic foods available. Their ethos is simple: food should be authentic, ethical and tasty. We worked alongside Planet Organic to help them become a one-stop-shop, not just for food, but clothes, beauty and household items as well. Challenges Increased competition as popularity of organic and ethically sourced products rises Both an ecommerce website and physical store with 11 locations – we need to ensure we drive business for both, not one or the other. Goals Increase traffic to the Planet Organic website Increase online sales/conversion rate Support the growth of seven physical store locations
Solution
Over our six year relationship, we provided extensive ecommerce management services to Planet Organic, helping them to build and grow the ecommerce side of their business. Our work has resulted in consistent double digit growth in revenue and traffic each year. These services included the following: Digital marketing management We provided full digital marketing channel management including paid media, SEO, affiliate marketing, email marketing, blog content creation and social media. Tech management Venture Stream acted as first line technical support for Planet Organic’s in-house buying, marketing and customer service teams, resolving technical queries which removed the need to escalate any issues to their developers. We also collaborated with an external tech agency, taking ownership of the technology roadmap to ensure key opportunities were capitalised on through clear prioritisation of development tasks. With the website moving from Magento to Shopify, we have provided support for both platforms over the years to ensure the Planet Organic website was optimised for conversion. Managing third party technical suppliers also formed part of our role with the client, in order to maintain, improve and develop functionality for the Planet Organic website. Custom reporting Reporting played a key role in developing Planet Organic’s ecommerce and marketing strategy. We generated regular, custom reports using bespoke data dashboards that pulled live stats from a number of sources into one clear view. Merchandising Collaborating with Planet Organic’s buying and marketing team, we ensured online merchandising space was being utilised to its full potential, including paid placements with some of their top performing brands. This involved proposing and implementing site-wide promotions based on seasonality and current performance stock levels to maximise sales all year round. Email Marketing Strategy In order to effectively achieve growth and monitor performance, we’ve built a strong email marketing strategy, which includes the following activities. Planet Organic Website - iPhone A/B Testing We rolled out extensive A/B testing to strengthen Planet Organic’s email marketing strategy, covering the following areas: Subject line optimisation Time & day triggers Content testing Extensive A/B testing enabled our email marketing team to pinpoint the optimum day and time to send marketing emails to Planet Organic customers, comparing open and click-through rates to achieve maximum interaction. We used our findings to tailor content to the Planet Organic audience, introducing more relevant subject lines and blog content, for emails with ‘value-added’ impact. Customer Segmentation & Retargeting Campaigns MailChimp pro package integration allowed us to better refine our knowledge of Planet Organic’s customers. We were then able to take a data-driven approach to increasing conversion rate of marketing emails through strategic retargeting campaigns. Using personalised MailChimp recommendations, customers were targeted based on their purchase history with products specifically of interest to them. We defined the target audience via the use of segmentation, allowing us to tailor emails based on key factors such as location, gender and interests. Segmentation allowed us to drive footfall in physical locations, advertising in-store events, fresh produce and local brand offerings. Our strategy is all about remaining relevant to the target customer, without spamming the database. This approach keeps the unsubscribe rate low and the open rate high. Planet Organic Email Example Automation Emails We introduced tailored automation emails into Planet Organic’s email marketing strategy to convert first-time buyers. We’ve grown the Planet Organic customer base by creating emails which communicate the brand’s values to new subscribers, including a discount code to encourage their first purchase. Sending an automated welcome email when new or potential customers create a Planet Organic account resulted in a 34.15% open rate and a 3.8% click-through rate. Loyal customers are also rewarded with special offers and discounts. Re-engaging lapsed customers is just as important as acquiring new ones, however, so we introduced automation emails after 30 days, 60 days and 90 days of inactivity. This resulted in a 24.1% open rate and 2.3% click through rate – these rates are higher than the average 15.66% and 2.07% for ecommerce brands. Shop by Lifestyle What perhaps makes the Planet Organic website so successful is the optimisation of product categories. With the ability to shop by lifestyle, customers can quickly access the products that are relevant to them. Planet Organic’s ‘Vegan Shop’ page currently ranks in the top 3 positions on Google for “vegan shop”, and in the top 10 for “vegan shop near me” and “vegan shop london”. Creating pages that cater to specific lifestyles also allows us to segment emails by interest, and direct customers to the page most relevant to them based on purchase history and location. Our ‘Shop by Diet’ campaign got us shortlisted for Best SEO Campaign at the Northern Digital Awards 2019, thanks to the phenomenal results achieved by capitalising on growing diet and food trends.
Results
27% increase in email marketing sessions YoY 29.3% increase in email marketing revenue YoY 48.6 million total audience reach 42% increase increase in revenue 33.9% increase in transactions 45.8% increase total website users
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