Context
Maniko is a direct-to-consumer eCommerce brand specializing in adhesive gel nail polish, designed for a convenient and speedy at-home manicure. Committed to innovation in the nail polish industry, Maniko sets itself apart with its vegan and cruelty-free UV gel strips, providing revolutionary and long-lasting manicure solutions. With a vision to transform the nail polish industry, Maniko is dedicated to delivering lasting impact.
Challenge
Maniko was looking to expand from the usual advertising channels that direct-to-consumer eCommerce brands frequently use: Meta platforms (especially Instagram), Google, TikTok, and influencer marketing. Maniko had scaled well on some of these channels but was struggling to find incremental audiences and reach. Leveraging in-app video inventory through the Kayzen platform presented an opportunity to reach new, incremental audiences with high-impact creatives. While Maniko’s adhesive nail polish has very clear USPs for the consumer, it needs a detailed explanation to articulate the core benefits of the product in a crisp marketing message and create the impulse to make a purchase right away.
The characteristics of full-screen video ads with up to 120-second lengths and interactive post-video experiences promise to be an effective way to create the level of attention, interest, and desire in the product that will lead new audiences to decide to try it and make their first purchase.
Approach
At Kayzen, we implemented Smart Ad Sequencing, a strategy that targets users at different stages of the conversion funnel, all while using video creatives in combination with interactive experiences that allow users to engage with the product playfully:
- Attention: We approach users with the goal of showcasing Maniko’s products and gathering data on users’ interaction with the ads. The strategy involves running wide-reach campaigns that specifically aim at Maniko’s target demographic, and identifying “engaged users”. For this specific case, we used the following indicators to detect engagement:
- Users who watched one of Maniko’s videos until the end, even if they had the option to skip it before completion. Video durations ranged between 15 and 120 seconds were used.
- Users who interacted with a companion ad associated with the video that delivers an interactive experience shown after the video. In this case, we utilized one of Kayzen’s Video+ solutions, Product Gallery.
- Interest: Users who were identified as “engaged” in the attention step are targeted once more in order to increase the chances of conversion. To enhance their experience and interaction with the product, we utilize another one of our Video+ solutions, Quizzes.
This strategy allows advertisers to create engagement before the website funnel and start optimizing and focusing on higher-value users before they hit the landing page, generating more efficient conversion rates once in the following steps of the purchase process.
Impact
Kayzen’s Smart Ad Sequencing strategy showed that the conversion rates in the interest stage are three times higher than in the attention stage.
On top of this, through our Video+ ads, we were able to increase retention throughout the website funnel, increasing the conversion rate from the collection page to the purchase by 40%.
In terms of revenue, Kayzen is currently showing the best ROAS among all of Maniko’s ad channels for new customer acquisition. Our strategy enabled us to grow ad spend consistently month over month, becoming one of the most relevant ad channels for our client after Meta and Google.
In order to evaluate if the users reached through the Kayzen platform are bringing incremental sales, Maniko implemented a full-funnel attribution solution across all their marketing campaigns to measure the real contribution of each channel toward the final sale, going beyond a simple last-click attribution model.
Maniko found that 19 out of 20 new customers attributed to Kayzen’s Video+ ads were purely incremental, which means they would not have discovered and purchased Maniko’s nail polish if they hadn’t been exposed to these ads via Kayzen. Even more so, Maniko found that a large part of the purchases they were getting through other channels which tend to perform well based on a last-click attribution model (such as Google & Meta), had originated from Kayzen’s Video+ ads. This means, Kayzen majorly contributes to the purchase journey of users who end up converting after a “last click” via ads served on Meta or Google.
By using an advanced full-funnel attribution model that considers the entire customer journey, Maniko can now allocate its marketing spend efficiently across all channels to maximize the real return from each ad dollar invested in customer acquisition.
