From bringing tech stories to life to building solid social sales leads

Challenge

Dedagroup Stealth is a well-established Italian retail technology provider with a turnover of €29 million and more than 300 retail specialist employees. It works with leading luxury brands Gucci, Prada, Fendi and Versace supplying back-end software that enables the integration of sales information and production processes and supply chain. The tech crucially enables retail and wholesale companies to become fully ‘ominchannel’ as well as driving optimum value and efficiency from their businesses.

From the factory to the store, the core product ‘Stealth Retail’ ensures data consistency and substantially reduces complexity. Knowing what their solutions can help retail brands achieve, Dedagroup wanted to crack the UK market, by demonstrating the performance-boosting power of their technology.

Objectives for the 6-month 2018 UK campaign were to:

• Generate brand awareness within luxury fashion brands, in the UK
• Build a substantial pipeline for the sales team by delivering solid leads
• Integrate marketing, PR and social media activity

Strategy

Target audience: UK luxury fashion retailers (IT Directors, E-commerce Directors and Chief Technology Officers) that would benefit from specialist omnichannel software to become truly future-proof, and competitive enough to survive in today’s tough market. Industry commentators, influencers and journalists.

The strategy was to bring two ‘fashion fix’ stories alive with glossy, gated case studies, that would resonate with busy readers, cut to the quick of what Dedagroup’s tech can achieve, and spark interest from the retail trade press. The campaign needed to deliver leads, so that the sales team had contact details of interested parties. Too often retail technology is promoted without clear examples of exactly what it does and how retailers are using it day-to-day.

Lead-generating case studies: Fieldworks rose to the challenge of presenting complex technology implementations in a readable way that taps into a pressing industry needs, and generates leads. This ‘problem-solving’ (hence ‘fashion fix’) content was gated – via Point Drive on LinkedIn, and on Dedagroup’s website, to ensure email addresses were captured. The content could also be leveraged for wider social media amplification and thought leadership articles for trade publications.

Over a 6-month campaign, this would ensure the insightful stories, and the Dedagroup name, landed in front of the people who matter – the top tech decision makers in UK fashion.

Implementation and creativity

Church’s and Trussardi case studies were researched and written with a very clear focus on what operational problems the technology helped these luxury brands overcome, and the commercial wins. It was felt a high-profile UK brand name was essential, to resonate in the UK market, alongside a European brand. High fashion product images were used in the designs (and landing pages) to add catch attention.

The SEO-optimised case studies were written to include the retailer’s voice and learnings, easy-to-digest bullet points summarising powerful business benefits, and direct quotes explaining the technology in simple terms, short and long term wins, ROI insights. Landing pages were written and designed to draw in readers, with snippets to spark interest, and a clear call to action: ‘Download now to learn more about this project’.

In burst one, both case studies were initially available on PointDrive (through a key Dedagroup sales team member’s LinkedIn profile) with sponsored LinkedIn promotion to build interest. In burst two, social cards were designed to push eye-catching messages (e.g. preparing for London Fashion Week) driving interested parties direct to Dedagroup’s website – where the full case studies were gated, again to capture leads.

The third (6-week) burst of the campaign involved thought leadership articles being sold into the press, and a series of blogs utilising the case studies, fully supported by PR.

As well as UK impact the Fieldworks team was able to leverage the existing content from the Trussardi case study, for the German market, with great results.

Results

Lead generation from Case Studies:

Top of funnel

Delivered 154% of target clicks through to the Deda Stealth website Click through rate approximately 3x higher than 0.50% LinkedIn benchmark

Lead generation

Delivered 132% of clicks vs target

Achieved 200% of lead form completions vs target

Overall
Impressions 63,279

Clicks 564

Average CTR 0.89%

A total of 29 leads from prospect companies were generated, including Jimmy Choo, Burberry, Top Shop, Alexander McQueen.

Press coverage in the industry:

Church’s Case Study

• >423k opportunities to see generated
• 10 pieces of UK coverage in agreed target media
• 70% of coverage included a Dedagroup spokesperson

Trussardi Case Study

• >547k opportunities to see
• 8 pieces of coverage
• 75% of coverage included a Dedagroup or Trussardi spokesperson

Trussardi (Germany)

• Key results – 6 pieces of coverage,
• 100% wholly owned
• >1m opportunities to see

Thought Leadership

In addition, to maximise on existing blog content, Fieldworks developed thought leadership articles.

• Supporting the luxury fashion industry of the future
• Customised fashion for the ‘me-generation’
• Market of One
• Faster Fashion
• Sustaining success: luxury fashion and the environment in 2019
• Forecasting prowess: 10 top tips for the luxury fashion retail world in 2019
• Digital success in luxury retail isn’t so Farfetched

Additionally through feature tracking, Fieldworks secured coverage in Computer Weekly in an article titled ‘Fashion retail’s sustainability challenge and how technology can help’.