Dell owes much of its success to relentless improvement of its direct-to-consumer model via its online retail platform, Dell.com. But even huge brands with rock-solid site performance need to innovate to stay ahead.
At Dell.com today, visitors can build highly customized computers, tablets, and other devices based on their needs and budget. Dell previously employed a solution to use this data to generate ad creative that would retarget site visitors. Yet this ad-serving tech was not serving Dell or shoppers effectively. To overcome a misalignment between personalization strategy and media targeting, Dell sought an improved content optimization solution and chose Choreograph for a pilot program.
The challenge: from site visits to sales
When consumers visit Dell.com without making a purchase, it’s a missed opportunity. Data from those visits has been used by Dell for retargeting, but the previous managed service was not able to effectively deliver customized creative to individual customers.
The service couldn’t respond dynamically to consumers’ unique needs and place targeted ads that would entice revists and completed shopping carts. Dell needed closer alignment between their demand-side platform (DSP) and dynamic creative optimization (DCO) platform.
Our approach: A higher-performing DCO platform
Dell has had an existing ad serving platform, one that used e-commerce and product fulfillment data to craft a unique experience. As visitors navigate through the site, data is captured that can help retarget them with personalized creative messages. Yet the previous solution did not have the alignment between creative and Google audiences needed to truly target the right profiles. It lacked the transparency and scalability needed to optimize campaigns and make them perform to expectations. It lacked continuous testing that could further improve results.
Choreograph offered a benchmark test that would pit the old, ineffective solution against a more robust and strategic delivery of creative optimization to increase revenue.
In the initial pilot project, the dedicated Choreograph team worked closely with Dell to analyze existing intelligence, establish baselines for performance, develop data gathering requirements, locate those data sources from third parties, and execute a plan to re-target consumers. The solution would improve targeting efficiency while maintaining strict compliance with privacy regulations and best practices.
Create supports feed-based dynamic display ads with creative decisioning aligned to the user’s website browser — the ability to associate types of products, product images, and supporting ad copy, with consumer profiles. With this approach, each audience received a more relevant creative, one that was then tested against a default creative. The Choreograph algorithm and the self-service model allowed for faster turns and a detailed testing roadmap. Dell ad serving strategies were better aligned to media signals and enhanced product serving capabilities.
Instead of a generic laptop ad, users received creative messages that mirrored content from their last page visited, or the contents of an abandoned cart. Create used privacy-compliant consumer data gathered from the Dell.com site to determine which products were viewed the most and then used the images and copy of top performing product ads in new creative for retargeting. Because this data is near-real time, it’s immediately put to use to target customers.
The same retargeting creative was then also presented as new ads to consumers who didn’t initially interact with the individual products. This creative also out-performed the default creative, resulting in higher response rates and revenue.
Results: More visitors return to complete carts
The initial pilot project was a success, showing that Chorograph’s proprietary DCO model, approach to partnership and transparency, and closed loop testing and strategy could potentially drive increased revenue.
During the pilot campaign, shoppers who had visited Dell.com without making a purchase were targeted with ads that contained specific messaging related to products they’d viewed onsite. These ads were presented on ad servers and third-party websites. Mid-campaign adjustments to creative assets made for a constant feedback loop between presentation, performance, and analysis.
During the first phase of the engagement, Dell migrated 20 campaigns in 11 markets in 7 languages, encompassing 130 decision-tree rules. The result was more than 3.5 million unique creative versions.
The previous DCO solution utilized a $20m media budget investment to drive $168m in revenue for Dell. The Choreograph Create pilot campaign drove a 54% revenue uplift and could result in $16.8m incremental revenue assuming a full migration.
uplift in revenue
million in potential revenue
million unique creatives generated
In addition to providing quantifiable benefits that could be directly applied to sales and drive down costs, the strategic benefits of the campaign were significant as well. The increased understanding of consumer behaviors and campaign effectiveness offers Dell greater control over campaigns and strategic planning. The fully self-service operating model also offers Dell teams the ability to quickly make changes to campaigns and test strategies.
The increased potential revenue and the efficient generation of unique creative — virtually impossible to achieve manually — validated the service and encouraged Dell to initiate additional migrations with similar results.
