Gifts Category

Project Details

The team at CustomMade had long known there was some correlation between gifting and users' propensity to transact on the platform. In preparations for the 2014 holiday season, myself and two marketers brainstormed a solution that would provide an evergreen 'Gifts' category within the CustomMade catalog. This strategy made a lot of sense compared to standard one-off holiday marketing plans that would cost just as much, and have a shelf-life of just a few months. In redefining our project scope to an evergreen execution with seasonal campaign capabilities, the team would then have a year-round framework for marketing and testing additional gift based acquisition, onboarding and conversion strategies.

Informed by audience research and peer audits, our strategy became three-pronged: shop by price point (under $50, etc.), shop by person (for moms, for dads, etc.), and shop by persona (for foodies, for outdoorsmen, for gardeners, etc.). Benefitting our users, this approach added 35 new galleries to the product catalog, filled with beautiful highly relevant, and highly curated items for sale. Establishing the beginning of long-tail SEO value for the term ‘gifts’ and any other associated phrases was also a win. Additionally the team now had a truly eMarketable landing experience for all other giftable occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. As a result, CustomMade drove meaningful holiday sales for the first time in 2014.