Introduction to the case
IIH NORDIC TEAM
Gunnar Griese,
Implementation Engineer
Technical Lead
Milán Balázs, Cloud
Architecture Specialist
INDUSTRY
E-commerce
WHO IS THE CUSTOMER?
MandM, owned by Bestseller, is one of the world’s largest
online fashion retailers with more than 3.5 million active
customers and over 137 million website visits per year.
They offer more than 300 brands to their customers and
has eight localized websites, one of which is
the fashion portal Stylepit as we know it in Denmark.
MARKETING TOOLS
- Google Search Ads 360
- Campaign Manager
IIH NORDIC TOOLS
- GA4 360 (Google Analytics 4), incl. SA360
(Search Ads 360) - GTM (Google Tag Manager) server site i
combination with GCP (Google Cloud Platform) - Firestore as part of Google Cloud Platform
- Google BigQuery which allows for
real-time streaming
It pays to know your customers
MandM has revolutionized their digital strategy and achieved an impressive 85% increase in profit by leveraging insights into their customer behavior and product data, including their profit for each product for
all 300 brands. This is due to the implementation of a unique data solution that not only optimizes the marketing budget based on expected profit instead of pure revenue, but also manages and personalizes product views on their website in real-time based on customer behavior and profit on each product.
This allows them to automatically promote the most profitable products to customers both on their website and in their marketing on Google Ads and Facebook, significantly increasing their profits. The solution gives them control over their own data on both customers and products – and they can track and analyze all data in real time.
MandM operates in a highly competitive market where price and price optimization are crucial. Therefore, their goal was to increase internal trust in their data and make it easier for the entire organization to analyze: Who are the customers, what is their value and how do they act on the website?
Their experienced data team reached out to IIH Nordic and shared their three wishes:
- Maximize their profit
- Automate the use of their own data on Google Ads and Facebook
- Refine their business strategy by leveraging customer and product data even more
The digital solution in three steps
1 – Track and identify the behavior pattern
Initially, it should enable the company to track and identify different
visitor behavior patterns in real-time. The
is done by establishing a reliable data structure on the
website and increase the relevance of the data,
that the company can share internally.
They do this by implementing Google Analytics
4 and integrate a cloud solution. Next, it can
data is easily transferred to Google Looker Studio,
from which employees can share reports with
each other and follow developments on the website.
2 – Optimize and develop data setups
The next step in the process is to optimize the website to improve customer retention and encourage customers to add more to their basket. This is done by linking user data and customer data and creating a visualization of the collected data. This allows them to analyze customer lifetime value (how much the company earns from each customer) and churn (how many customers drop out). For this, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is used, which helps the company maintain an overview. IIH Nordic developed a unique Customer Data Platform for MandM that gives them full control over their data.
The innovative aspect of this solution is that it is an in-house platform – and MandM owns the data model. Not only is this convenient, but it also significantly increases the data security of their website. Typically, companies pay millions of dollars to get a similar data platform – despite the fact that it is located remotely and therefore has a higher security risk.
3 – Overview and execution
Finally, they should have an overview of their
product data and identified products with
highest profit, after which they can start promoting these products on their website,
Google and Facebook. It happens in the first instance
by connecting their entire data setup from step 1
and step 2 via (server-side) Google Tag Manager.
The company now has an overview of their
customers and the highest profit products.
Then they can start optimizing their bidding strategy on Google Ads and promote the products with the highest profit over products that only generate high revenue.
Smart solution is accessible to everyone
This digital solution can be easily implemented at other e-commerce companies where the goal is to maximize profits and get a better overview of customers and products.
The solution only uses Google tools that are available to everyone and that most e-commerce companies already use today, but often don’t utilize optimally.
IIH Nordic’s specialists succeeded in developing a unique and innovative digital solution that enables MandM to make better decisions that increase profits and equip them to remain competitive in a difficult market with many players. They can now highlight the most profitable products for specific customers, and this product knowledge is automatically transferred to Google Ads, allowing them to bid on ads based on product profitability.
After a short time, they were able to show an 85% growth in profit and a 72% increase in profit per order thanks to the new data setup.
“By teaming up with IIH Nordic and adopting server-side GTM, we’ve unlocked valuable insights and enhanced our data privacy. These changes have future proofed our tracking and empowered the MandM marketing teams to make better informed decisions based on more reliable data.“
– Tom Goode, Customer and Ecommerce Director, MandM Direct
