Evans Cycles Taps Data Insights for Better Advertising

Evans Cycles is one of the UK’s largest cycle retailers, selling bicycles, clothing, accessories and parts, as well as building and repairing them. It operates stores across the UK and has a large online presence in the UK and across Europe.

However, the retailer faced an increasing challenge when trying to increase engagement and sales amongst consumers who were not its core audience of cycling enthusiasts.

The brand wanted to reach a wider audience, particularly ‘seasonal cyclists’, who are likely to cycle during the summer months only when the weather permits. Evans Cycles needed to undertake both a brand awareness campaign, as well as a campaign which would drive incremental sales online.

One of the main challenges for the digital marketing team at Evans Cycles when trying to target a wider audience was the plethora of data available. They could generate many potential advertising opportunities, but it was not clear which elements of their campaign would be the most effective – Evans Cycles did not know in detail how the seasonal cyclist audience would behave online ahead of a purchase.

In order to solve this challenge, Evans Cycles needed to take a customer-first view of its digital marketing and use data to get under the skin of the purchase and media consumption habits of its “seasonal cyclists” audience. Attempting to apply the same campaign strategy as for the “cycling enthusiasts” audience to this new audience profile would not work for this less engaged, and not yet loyal consumer.

Evans Cycles began using Turn Campaign Suite for programmatic advertising to identify and target key audiences, and gather a single customer view of how cyclists behave online. Achieving a single customer view was important for Evans Cycles because the retailer was keen to position itself as a fully multi-channel retailer, available to the customer no matter what device or channel they were interacting on, and serving relevant content at all times.

The detailed insights Turn provided about these audiences allowed Evans Cycles to implement campaign optimisation for particular audience segments, for example, reaching seasonal cyclists without impacting the performance of messaging directed to their core cycling enthusiasts. Insights from this campaign confirmed that this wider audience was not always looking at cycling websites (which their core audience did regularly), but instead was spending a lot of time on specific marketplace sites, such as eBay, or news sites such as The Guardian online.

This knowledge enabled Evans Cycles to expand the programmatic ad-buying strategy beyond the obvious contextual targeting, to engage the audience based on their wider interests and preferences. As a result, the retailer was able to employ additional tactics around Private Market Places, retargeting and site extensions to ensure it could reach the right audience profiles. Having a detailed understanding of this audience was key for Evans Cycles to able to deliver the most effective digital marketing campaigns through higher Click-through rates, lower Cost per Acquisition, and higher sales.

Additionally, by gaining invaluable insights about the way customers behave throughout their purchase journey, Evans Cycles was able to develop better digital marketing integration across channels, and provide planning insights for other departments across the business.

Following the first two months of implementing the data-led, audience first strategy with Turn, Evans Cycles reported that the prospecting campaigns exceeded cost per acquisition objectives by 47% Year-on-Year, with a simultaneous 80% YOY increase in sales attributed to the campaign.

About Amobee

Founded in 2005, Amobee is an advertising platform that understands how people consume content. Our goal is to optimize outcomes for advertisers and media companies, while providing a better consumer experience. Through our platform, we help customers further their audience development, optimize their cross channel performance across all TV, connected TV, and digital media, and drive new customer growth through detailed analytics and reporting. Amobee is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tremor International, a collection of brands built to unite creativity, data and technology across the open internet.

If you’re curious to learn more, watch the on-demand demo or take a deep dive into our Research & Insights section where you can find recent webinars on-demand, media plan insights & activation templates, and more data-driven content. If you’re ready to take the next step into a sustainable, consumer-first advertising future, contact us today.