As the largest pure-play children's clothing retailer in North America, The Children's Place is a go-to destination for many back-to-school shoppers. To reach back-to-school customers who hadn’t converted since the previous season, the company used Customer Match and saw a 287% higher ROI.
Goals
Reach back-to-school customers who hadn't converted since the previous season
Increase in-store and online sales
Improve cost efficiency
Approach
Enabled Customer Match (CM) on tailored non-brand campaigns
Optimized keywords based on return on investment (ROI)
Results
287% higher ROI
153% increase in conversion rate (CVR)
40% decrease in cost-per-click (CPC)
237% increase in click-through rate (CTR)
Back-to-school season can be busy for kids, and it's even busier for parents. Thankfully, The Children's Place helps parents provide their children with the clothes they need to go back to school. As the largest pure-play children's clothing retailer in North America, The Children's Place knows the ebb and flow of seasonal business, but the cyclical nature of back-to-school shopping can leave even the most popular stores with lapsed customers.
With shoppers making purchases more quickly these days, especially on mobile, The Children's Place was looking for a way to rapidly convert reach parents who hadn't been to its website since the previous back-to-school season. The brand turned to Google’s Customer Match for search.
Zeroing in on high-value customers with Customer Match
With the help of iCrossing, its digital marketing agency, The Children's Place used Customer Match to reach its most loyal customers across Google Search.
The Children's Place ran Customer Match on tailored non-brand campaigns to reach customers who had made a purchase during last year's back-to-school season. The brand then adjusted bids to reach those high-value customers at the right moment with the right message—all to help parents find just the right look for their kids.
"Customer Match has helped The Children's Place find incremental revenue and significantly exceed ROI goals for non-brand keywords."
To measure performance, The Children's Place team ran Customer Match alongside its generic search campaigns. Both campaigns were then optimized at a keyword level based on ROI.
"Customer Match is a game-changer. Search is already so effective; combining it with CRM data remarketing makes it even more so. I don't think that power has fully sunk in yet," said Nino Ciappina, director of digital marketing and customer acquisition at The Children's Place.
Customer Match boosts ROI and conversion rate
Customer Match allowed The Children's Place to reach more qualified customers, which drove more conversions at a significantly higher ROI—287% higher than regular Search ads and 315% higher than just RLSA alone. The company also saw boosts in CVR and CTR of 153% and 237%, respectively, as well as a 40% decrease in CPC.
"Customer Match has helped The Children's Place find incremental revenue and significantly exceed ROI goals for non-brand keywords," said David Lau, vice president, national head of programmatic and SEM at iCrossing. "The ability to use CRM data in Paid Search represents the future of the industry—increased personalization, more control of marketing dollars, and changing the expectations of what Paid Search can achieve."
In an effort to continue bringing parents back to its website year round, The Children's Place plans to use Customer Match to reach other customer segments, like its "Best Customers," The Children's Place credit card holders, and recent purchasers.
