Mamas & Papas increased investment in ecommerce significantly in 2020 to mitigate the revenue losses from being forced to close their 30+ UK stores for long periods during lockdowns. This led to record PPC revenue, with a calendar year increase of +64% YoY.
The objective was to continue to grow PPC revenue, in spite of the anticipated fall in online demand as consumers went back into stores.
Mamas & Papas work to a profitability model that meets their business needs. To ensure flexibility in the key Black Friday trading period, we managed the M&P COS target efficiently throughout the year. This resulted in +17% Revenue YoY (21) and +11% on our target. During the uncertain times of COVID, we had to deliver an innovative approach to reporting. Our strategy was…
· Collaborative Budget Reviews: Weekly reviews of spend vs budget, adjusting weekly COS targets based on performance.
· Sophisticated sale period management: M&P have 10-12 “offer” periods throughout the year, running from 2-5 weeks each. Demand varies significantly between sale and “fallow” periods. We made full use of the “seasonal adjustments” functionality to ensure we were able to track these shifts in demand and manage the transitions between offer and fallow weeks, maintaining a consistent COS.
· Categorised Shopping campaign structure: A new Shopping campaign structure (introduced in July ’21) to split products by category. This allowed us to give valuable insights to the client, as well as giving us greater control over our levels of investment between these categories while considering different category margins.
· Agile approach to new ideas: Genie has been working alongside M&P since March 2017. We have a very strong and open working relationship, enabling us to share ideas and move quickly from conception to implementation. In 2021, successful projects included developing a scalable process to run Supplier-funded activity; Local campaigns to promote in-store shopping post-lockdown; video campaigns to support new product launches; developing a dynamic process to manage priority shopping campaigns.
PPC revenue for 2021 came in at +17% YoY and +11% on our target. COS was also within target.
As a result of the aforementioned higher COS target for the Black Friday sale, revenue in this period increased +17.4%.
Whilst revenue from Search campaigns was virtually unchanged YoY, Shopping revenue was up by +48% YoY. The immediate impact of the Shopping campaign structure change was that Shopping revenue YoY increased from +33% (Apr-Jun) to +52% (Jul-Sep).
