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Carol Ramos is responsible for paid search growth and app marketing at G-Star, a global denim brand headquartered in the Netherlands. She is at the forefront of finding new ways to connect with customers via app strategy across various channels.
Let’s face it, most of us use multiple apps in our daily routines. Whether it’s an easy way to shop for groceries, buy a new pair of our favourite jeans, or track our morning run, apps are an essential part of our lives.
At G-Star, a Dutch omnichannel fashion retailer with a global presence, we had an app in some markets, although it was always underutilised. We recognised its potential, but we never truly prioritised it within our marketing strategy.
While I began my career with G-Star looking after paid media, last year I started reading articles about loyalty in app users. One shared that 83% of retailers thought app customers tend to make more purchases compared to non-app customers.
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From this early research, I knew we needed to maximise our app's potential and integrate it more effectively into the overall business and marketing strategy.
A new thread through our marketing
One of my first challenges was getting buy-in from stakeholders. We analysed our existing data to uncover insights that would highlight the unique benefits of our app with the marketing mix, such as increased user engagement, higher conversion rates, and enhanced personalisation.
One such insight about our existing app was the customers we acquired there were 1.4x more valuable than .com only. From the moment people had the numbers in their head they started asking questions.
“Understanding our app user base and finding ways to make it more appealing to our audience have been key priorities for us,” says Jurgen Derycke, global director of digital marketing for G-Star. “Unlocking these data points and optimising our ad spend to maximise return on investment is an important first step toward achieving our goals.”
After securing this all-important buy-in from our senior team, we had to set our KPIs and we came to the conclusion that return on ad spend (ROAS) and customer lifetime value (CLTV) were key. At the core of it, of course, we wanted to drive app downloads and installations. However, the reality is that after people download an app there is no guarantee that they’ll actually use it. So, really, what we were after was improving in-app engagement.
At the same time, we needed to provide a consistent and seamless user experience. Within marketing we often talk about app users and web users, trying to identify how we can best reach each of them, separately. But, when you really think about it, it doesn’t matter how they find you or where they engage with your brand. They are, simply, your customers.
That’s why we turned to deep links for all our products and pages inside our app. These links send mobile device users directly to relevant pages in an app rather than a website. The benefit of this is seamless, more relevant, and a more consistent experience for customers.
From just this one tweak we saw a 3.2X increase on app return on investment vs. web across our main markets, including Germany and Netherlands.
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Seeing the initial success of our deep link strategy, we wanted to increase the number of app users so we could engage more customers in this way. To achieve this, we focused on making our app ads more compelling by diversifying the ad copy, tailoring creatives for each operating system, and highlighting the app's exclusive USPs.
These efforts extended beyond the ads themselves, incorporating optimisations in app store listings to further drive downloads and installs.
We also created App campaigns alongside our search and shopping campaigns as, at this point, we had a better understanding of how app and web users interact and how they move across channels. Powered by Google AI, this campaign type helped us with creative assets and goals to promote our app across different Google properties, all from a single campaign.
Stitching together the platforms for interwoven success
The future of apps isn’t just having them on your customers phone or tablet, it’s about encouraging actions within it — such as in-app discovery, exploration, and purchases.
That’s when we starting using our app campaigns to promote loyalty features, like early access to products and exclusive discounts:
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All this new-found app marketing knowledge led to impressive results for us. We achieved an increase in app installs, 2.6% increase in click-through rates on deep links to specific products within the app, and a 5.5X increase in return on ad spend.
“There is still much to accomplish — expanding to more countries, exploring new approaches to install acquisition, and growing our user base. We’re excited to tackle these opportunities in 2025 to make G-Star app marketing a standout success in the industry,” finishes Derycke.