ARCHIVES: This is legacy content from before Marketing Dive acquired Mobile Marketer in early 2017. Some information, such as publication dates, may not have migrated over. Check out the new Marketing Dive site for the latest marketing news.

Alternative Apparel leverages digital optimization for 161pc Facebook sales increase

Alternative Apparel is one of the brands leveraging digital marketing optimization platform Accomplice to link its outbound advertisements and social media material with ultimate brand objectives, resulting in the brand seeing a 161 percent increase in revenue from Facebook.

Alternative Apparel?s participation in Accomplice?s alpha phase has had a significant impact on the retailer, which previously did not have a cohesive social media strategy. Examples such as this have resulted in Accomplice securing a $5 million Series A funding round, helping the platform roll out a beta phase for brands.

?Our workflow covers the entire process from message creation all the way to attributable Web conversion,? said Brian Lewis, president, chief data scientist and co-founder of Accomplice, San Francisco, CA. ?The rest of the space is all doing the same thing: either deploying ads or social posts; or building dashboard tools that report on what's happening, but not actually following through by providing a strategic method for doing something about it.

?We've brought those parts together, and use proprietary data science and technology to uncover the relationship between each effort and business goals like sales and sign-ups.?

Accomplice was previously known as Fractal Sciences.

Alternative Apparel?s solution
The basic apparel company came to Accomplice with the goals of developing an efficient Facebook campaign to balance paid and organic efforts to reach target users, while also using existing Facebook fans to drive revenue and new visitors to the Web site.

Accomplice was able to help the clothing brand deduce which content yielded the most effective results by creating five distinct audience groups based off of its psychographics and demographics. Those were then matched with over twelve different types of images and messaging languages.

?Some ads were sales language, some focused on seasonal product, while others were for core staple products,? Mr. Lewis said. ?We then ran mobile and desktop versions of these ads.

?This created hundreds of variants of the ad/audience, but we used our platform to streamline the publishing process and our tracking script to show which combinations of ad and audience actually led to conversions,? he said. ?Our optimization system refocused Alternative?s spend away from underperforming ads, and toward the ones that were showing clear revenue gains.

?Ultimately, this gave Alternative Apparel a 161 percent increase in revenue from Facebook, plus valuable marketing insights for future campaigns.?

Advice for other retailers
Mr. Lewis advises other retailers seeking to bolster their mobile strategies to hone in on two key elements: targeting and testing. Accomplice has seen significant revenue gains and conversion rates from detailed targeting specifics for social advertisements.

Brands should roll out focused segments of ads so that they may learn what their audience prefers to consume on each channel of communication.

Marketers can also test different kinds of lifestyle, sales and brand messaging with each designated user group to receive insights they can draw return on investment from and create future campaigns with.

?My advice is for retailers to build a social media strategy that is well connected to their overall company sales goals,? Mr. Lewis said. ?Many social media companies are afraid of talking about sales and ROI, but that's what retailers care about.

?In order to use social media to drive sales a brand needs to start with understanding their audience and how they like to engage with the brand. This is especially important in the social space, because audience attention is so scarce.?

Final Take
Alex Samuely is an editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York