In a survey from last month, social advertising software provider Pattern89 found that 59 percent of online retailers expect to introduce new technology of some kind to their marketing by holiday season. The specific solution Pattern89 provides is marketing optimization for paid social media.
Brands and sellers of all kinds, from Pepsi to self-published authors, build a presence on Facebook. With all the pregnant women and their well-wishing family and friends who communicate over social, the platform is a natural fit for Bump Boxes, a subscription service focused on healthy products for expecting moms.
Bump Boxes co-founder Leland Deehring told me, “The concept for Bump Boxes sparked when my wife Christine and I were expecting our first child and felt overwhelmed about the lack of healthy pregnancy products.” He added, “We decided that moms shouldn’t have to worry about potentially harmful chemicals in pre-natal essentials, and launched Bump Boxes, an online retailer that offers subscription boxes with safe and healthy products for pregnant women. Our main target audience is expecting parents, as well as their families and friends.”
Having shipped their first box in 2015, Bump Boxes has grown to an $8 million company with 32 employees, as of 2018. Pattern89 wasn’t the first advertising optimization solution they’d tried before launching a two-week effort on Facebook and Instagram this summer.
“We have worked with similar AI companies in the past but were never convinced that they were delivering impactful results,” Deerhing said. “By partnering with Pattern89, our goals were to increase ad effectiveness and drive conversions in our niche market, while lowering advertising costs. We were also looking to determine which creative concepts generated the highest level of engagements with potential customers.”
According to R.J. Talyor, CEO of Pattern89, one of the biggest mistakes brands make is to “set it and forget it.” He explained, “Every day, our AI platform analyzes 2,900 different dimensions of an ad, from the image to the video length to the syntax to the targeting. Using this creative analysis combined with algorithms that parse more than $5 billion in similar ads’ revenue, Pattern89 can identify windows of opportunity that emerge, so Bump Boxes could quickly take advantage of them in a click of a button.”
Advertisers need to keep an eye on their social media presence, but they also have to manage their time effectively by adopting automated tech solutions that analyze data at scale.
“Time is the scarcest resource for marketers today,” Talyor said. “Wasting time and energy on a small amount of data results in false conclusions that aren’t statistically significant or predictive. Pattern89 uses AI that understands how a video, image, headline, copy, call-to-action, or other factors, drives performance.”
Knowing which elements drive the highest conversion rates helps marketers draw further connections to ROI. “By trusting the data-driven suggestions from the Pattern89 software,” Deerhing stated, “it allows you to make easy decisions and implement an entire digital campaign in just minutes.”
To add to the trust factor, Pattern89’s Talyor is also aware that transparency is important. “Unlike other ‘black box’ AI-driven platforms that hide data and algorithms from view, Pattern89 offers full transparency in the platform for marketers to get smarter as they implement and improve results,” said Talyor.
Across hundreds of DTC and eCommerce brands, Pattern89 reports seeing an average 21 percent lift in 15 to 30 days. Following their two-week implementation on Facebook and Instagram, Bump Boxes founded purchases increasing 24 percent, and cost per rating point (CPR) decreased 19 percent. Pattern89 alerts decreased some ad costs as much as 50 percent.
After two months, the numbers have continued to trend even higher: purchase volume increased 49 percent and CPA decreased 30 percent.
With features like Pattern89’s automated “Do This For Me” button, Leland Deehring and the rest of the Bump Boxes team take advantage of these promising results while continuing to grow the company in new ways.
“For a startup like us that has grown very quickly over the years, I juggle many roles,” Deehring said. “With Pattern89, I can spend less time focusing on the creation and execution of paid marketing campaigns. Its AI-driven technology shows me what aspects of a campaign drive the highest conversions and it takes a simple click to fully execute it. Now, I get to reallocate that time to other tasks and truly deliver the highest potential ROI for our business. It also helps with overcoming campaign fatigue, allowing us to launch new types of ads to different segments of our target audience and garner the results we want without oversaturating the marketplace.”
