vanHaren is a shoe company founded in Rotterdam more than 90 years ago, with the aim of ensuring that “everyone could wear good, beautiful shoes without high costs”. Today it is part of the Deichmann Group, a family business and one of Europe's largest shoe companies.

As a leading team of media performance experts across digital channels and platforms, Greenhouse x GroupM Nexus provides enablement services and intelligence, powered by technology and AI that makes advertising work better for people. Greenhouse x GroupM Nexus' social teams build results-oriented, value-driven campaigns for clients using first-to-market benefits with the world's leading platforms.

Goal

As a leading footwear retailer, home to a variety of brands and styles for the entire family, vanHaren faces the complexity of presenting these brands and styles to different potential customers across the social commerce funnel. To stay relevant and stand out among its competitors, vanHaren wanted to reach their consumers with personalized experiences, starting with current weather or trends: sandals for warm weather, heels during wedding season.

Before partnering with Smartly.io, this was a major challenge for the Greenhouse & GroupM Nexus teams. They had to manually turn these creatives on or off at certain times or during certain weather conditions to tailor the ads to what was happening. This meant the team couldn't use dynamic ads based on the catalog, as this can only be done with static ads. Therefore, there was no way to automate the process without a tool.

Solution

With performance as a priority, the GroupM Nexus & Greenhouse teams partnered with Smartly.io and leveraged Workspaces, Smartly.io's campaign management and automation workflow, to automate the creation of these ads. By linking the vanHaren product catalog and additional data, such as a weather API or trend information, to campaigns, Workspaces automatically activated the right ad text, brand and product based on changing weather or current trends. By combining these options, it is possible to run relevant carousel and collection ads based on specified triggers.

Results

Thanks to the relevant ads shown to shoppers, the GroupM Nexus & Greenhouse teams were able to generate incremental sales for vanHaren and increase their relevance score. Additionally, the conversion rate on Add to Carts increased by 11%, the bounce rate decreased by 14% and the campaign resulted in a 6% increase in page visits.

Smartly.io's Workspaces enabled a new evergreen strategy for vanHaren with year-round weather and trend triggers. Based on the positive results, the GroupM Nexus & Greenhouse teams are working with vanHaren to further expand these campaigns.