Van de Velde is a premium lingerie company founded in 1919, Belgium. Currently, they have successfully expanded to multiple countries (BE, DE, FR, NL, SV, UK, US) and hold several brands (Marie Jo, Prima Donna, Andres Sarda) as well as their own Retail Store concept (Lincherie, Rigby & Peller). Early 2022, Van de Velde reached out to Artefact because they wanted to increase their sales of the brand Marie Jo during the Summer Sale in the above-mentioned countries.

Strategy

The objective was to achieve a 20% increase in the sales of Marie Jo during the Summer Sale of 2022. To realise this objective, we created a new sales strategy that was based on three topics.

Ad implementation

Firstly, Marie Jo has two major sales during the year with each having two waves in which ad copy changes are needed. In the previous sale strategy, these ads were uploaded manually in bulk. Every sale and wave, new ads were created. This resulted in a clustered account, with data being spread across ads. In the new strategy, we used Ad customizers. This way, all data remains within the same group of sales ads, across multiple waves and sale periods. In addition, the strategy saves implementation-time for future sales.

Brand identity

Secondly, Marie Jo is a premium brand with items at a higher price point. Therefore, they only discount a limited selection of the Marie Jo catalogue during sales, unlike some of their competitors. Thus, it is important to highlight the brand identity and distinctive positioning. This was tackled by generating (RSA) ads that contained a limited number of headlines and descriptions of sale messaging. The remaining headlines and descriptions were filled with ad copy that is also used in off-sale periods. This ensures that brand voice, USP’s and slogans, also present in our ‘always on’ ads, are present and recognized by the consumer.

Sale tiredness

Lastly, customers were confronted with sale items too much, resulting in declining interest and sales after two weeks (sale tiredness). We approached this challenge by creating an improved landing page that not only contained sale-priced items, but also included full-priced items. Before implementing the improved landing page, customers were directed to a page that hosted sale-priced items only. By also including full-priced items, Marie Jo not only decreased the sale tiredness customers experienced, they also maintained their premium brand identity. All channels have benefited from this approach.

While creating this strategy, we considered every step around UX, sales performance, brand experience and overall campaign performance. We took all elements into consideration by applying basic SEA optimizations but also taking a bold approach by including full-priced items to appease the entire target audience. A time-efficient and tech-savvy way was used to generate more sales by overcoming sale tiredness, maintaining brand identity while still showcasing and pushing sales.

Results

The results exceeded our initial expectations.

  • The CTR increased with >25% instead of the expected 10% increase.

  • A >65% increase in conversions instead of the expected 20% increase, while maintaining the original ROAS.

  • A >10% increase in conversion rate.

  • And lastly, an increase in full-price revenue share of >10%.

If you want to get in touch to learn more, please send an email to: hello-benelux@artefact.com or fill out our contact form.