July 24, 2015

Ella’s Friends Conversion Strategy

The Client

Wickedweb have had a successful year managing the digital strategy for Ella’s Kitchen, the leading global organic baby food company. Wickedweb have been working with Ella’s Kitchen for over 2 years, and during this period have delivered a suite of global websites with locales, and digital marketing activity to support the overall annual brand plan. Ella’s Kitchen has an exciting and ambitious brand vision, and Wickedweb’s digital activity supports key marketing objectives. Digital plays a strong role in meeting marketing objectives.

The Challenge

Our key focus for this case study is the ‘Ella’s Friends conversion strategy’ which involves harnessing digital techniques to grow the database of Friends to the target level. This database is then used to build engaging relationships on a sensorial level, which ultimately feeds into Ella’s Kitchen core objectives.

Wickedweb were responsible for conceiving and implementing a strategy that encompasses:

Website evolution to support the mechanics of the campaigns
Consumer engagement via campaigns
Data capture and acquisition
Online marketing tactics such as PPC and SEO

The Solution

How did Wickedweb approach this challenge?

Website – Wickedweb recommended fundamental evolution for the site to encompass our usability studies, content development and revised IA. This is to improve the user journey to drive sign up volume. The ‘become a friend’ landing page was streamlined to collect minimal data at the first interaction, with a subsequent e-marketing retention programme to better understand our friends.

The ‘Make Friends’ strategy was an incentivised push, to include latest offers, coupons and recipes to try. As a result, there were clear callouts on key website templates. At the back-end, the database underwent further scripting and validation alongside CRM objectives.

With this work in place, Wickedweb could then focus efforts on the campaigns below to drive traffic to this area of the website. (For tracking purposes, Wickedweb executed a duplicate page in order to measure on site sign ups compared to external digital ad drivers).

Specific results: The overall Friends acquisition results superseded expectations as we hit 150.5% of the target. The website improvements above will have undoubtedly contributed towards this.

Feed our senses campaign – Wickedweb supported this campaign by managing the online mechanic. Here is the background to the overall campaign. To drive data conversion, this was a 2-pronged campaign aimed at both nurseries and parents – two very salient audiences. It was limited to 3,000 nurseries and uniquely complements the Early Years Foundation Stage by encouraging little ones to explore new tastes, textures and eating occasions. This encourages children to explore using all their senses.

The mechanic was a DM piece mailed to nurseries which also included information to be given out to parents. One call to action was to visit the specific landing page, inviting both target audiences to register. Alternatively they can apply offline. In exchange, the nursery receives a resource kit including posters, stickers and activity plan. The parents receive guides to weaning and sensory downloads to do with their children. Upon registration, parents are also then eligible to access the Ella’s Explorers member section, with further engaging sensory content.

Specific results: To date, 7% of nurseries have requested resource packs by registering as a friend. Of this, 62% of requests have come in via the offline mechanic, with 38% coming in online.

Hungry for Fun campaign – Wickedweb were thrilled to play a part in this campaign by way of implementing the digital aspects. This is a strategic partnership between Ella’s Kitchen and the Early Learning Centre and is intended to drive sales penetration and data capture. This integrated on pack promotion offers 20% off merchandise in ELC stores. Wickedweb executed the digital aspect of the campaign which consisted of a daily competition to win £100 of toys using a SMS mechanic:

  • Setting up of a short code phone number able to receive incoming SMS
  • Developing a conversion tool where emails gathered are automatically added to the ‘Friends’ database
  • To develop a tool whereby email addresses gathered are input into a randomiser for the prize draw and to notify the winner by email.
  • To effectively communicate with entrants to improve on initial data capture and convert to a full registration.

The back-end database was an integral part in managing all data acquisition activity, including these SMS competition entries. To achieve this, Wickedweb created:

  • A new import script and validation method to capture from source.
  • API Push and Pull integration with e-marketing platform (with delist member automation).

Specific results: This 3 month campaign ran 1st April – 30th June 2011. Of the 12,672 entries, 89.9% of these entrants were new Friends.

SEO activity – Critical to the success of the acquisition programme, the strategy was to focus on 3 key search category terms during this period. This was a dormant area of activity previously.

Specific results: As a result of our SEO efforts, organic search traffic has increased by a marked 56%, with conversions to the Friend registration page at 11% which is strong. Their first key search term has achieved and subsequently maintained 1st place in Google rankings for the past year. The second search term had no previous ranking at the start of this SEO activity and now occupies 5th place. Their third key search term used to rank 12th in Google and as a result of this activity is now 3rd.

Overall, approximately 50% of new friend acquisitions for 2010 / 2011 came via the website. From this total, 61.3% of registrations can be attributed to organic search engine traffic.

Pay Per Click activity – A PPC strategy was planned for the last quarter of the FY to drive additional friends acquisition. This was executed for the period March 2011 to May 2011 across weaning related search terms.

Specific results: The results were robust. Of the total traffic, the conversion rate was 26.1% for friend registrations.

Summary of results

The digital strategies executed above have played a key part in feeding into the overall marketing strategy and in particular the Friends Acquisition drive. The website provided a key tool in support of Ella’s Kitchen marketing activity. In addition, Wickedweb have been able to drive a significant amount of registrations as a result of the digital implementation of the campaigns devised by Ella’s Kitchen. . The SEO and PPC activity has driven Friends sign ups further, in a transparent and measurable way. In addition to over achieving the acquisition target, Wickedweb’s activity also continues to support brand awareness.

Client testimonial
“Wickedweb have a very strategic approach. They understand our business, and more specifically how to activate our overall strategy to our consumers through digital channels. I am delighted that the results of our Friends conversion strategy has surpassed our targets, and we owe much of this success to Wickedweb and the effective digital strategies they have executed for Ella’s Kitchen”.

Samantha Crossley – ‘Makes Friends’ – Ella’s Kitchen