Case Otrium

Case Otrium: a multi-market PPC strategy to sell excess stock for over 400 fashion brands

Otrium was founded with the purpose that all clothing should be worn: one in ten items made are never sold – this is not only a huge waste of creativity and labour, but a waste of investment and natural resources.

Otrium is changing the way fashion is created and sold through technology which finds a match for every item on the platform, and then through data, informs demand-based clothing creation.

These dynamics also make advertising for Otrium challenging:

• Stock is rapidly changing (marketplace dynamics)
• 400+ brands
• Hundreds of thousands of products
• 9 markets (Europe & USA)

Each brand has their own demands about what Otrium is allowed to advertise on: from not advertising on the brand’s name, to no restrictions, and anything in between.

8 FTE’s were required to manage this for Paid Search, but alignment still proved to be difficult. With so many moving parts, errors were easy to be made.

As such, together with Otrium we implemented a new, fully automated, highly scalable and flexible strategy for keyword-, shopping- and DSA-campaigns!

Step 1: a masterview for optimal brand alignment

The first step was to create a scalable way of controlling the visibility of all the brands. We did this by creating a masterview in an online spreadsheet, in which we automatically imported all the brands that are in stock. In this overview, we could specify the specific wishes for each brand. For example which search terms we are allowed to advertise on, trademarks, specific communications and specific discount restrictions.

Besides this, we used the masterview to add synonyms, to exclude elements from the feed and to overwrite certain elements.

Step 2: using the masterview information as the foundation for the automated setup

We used this masterview, combined with the product feed, for the new automated campaign setup.

• Keyword- and DSA campaigns are now built and updated in Channable, based on product availability, combined with the policies of the brands in the masterview
• The shopping campaigns are also automated in Channable and the shopping feed is enriched with the information from the masterview
• By using a number of custom-scripts, we also created automated negative keyword lists for the right funneling of keyword- and shopping campaigns

We are now able to quickly adjust any changes of brands. With new brands being added every week, the time to market rapidly increased, while the room for error decreased.

Step 3: aligning the new automated setup with the business objectives of Otrium

Now that so much time was reduced for manual labour, we could focus on the next important projects: further steering Paid Search in line with the business objectives of Otrium. One important business objective of Otrium is to grow new customers. As such, we implemented Conversion Value Rules to pay the right price for different audience segments:

• We used the tool Segment (CDP) to create Customer Match audiences, based on their value in the CLV-cycle
• By using conversion value rules, we weighted the value of these audiences (the more loyal the customers, the lower the weight)
• This way, the automated bidding algorithms will steer more towards new customers

Results

Through automation, we were able to save a lot of time in manual labour. Moreover, it increased the overall visibility and relevance because of the extensive setup. This led to the following results: