Australian online retailer, Costumes.com.au, pushes creative boundaries in digital marketing with Dotdigital

Based in Melbourne, with more than 10,000 items for people of all ages, the retailer ships costumes all over Australia and New Zealand. Turning 13 in 2021, the company has shipped more than 500,000 costumes to date.

Challenge

With the growing popularity of costumes in Australia and New Zealand, Costumes.com.au wanted to enhance its marketing strategy to gain a competitive edge. Additionally, the team realized that the company’s sizable database needed a thorough clean-up to segment active and inactive customers. Hence, the retailer was on the lookout for a marketing automation partner to address those challenges and market more strategically to engage customers.

Solution

In November 2020, Costumes.com.au partnered with Dotdigital as its marketing automation provider to help with segmentation, gain detailed customer insights and ultimately drive increased customer engagement. “Technology has been our strong suit and at the forefront in addressing issues along the way,” said Anita Williams, Marketing Manager at Costumes.com.au. “Thanks to Dotdigital, not only do we have access to more customer data and insights, but also better engagement rates.”

Costumes.com.au has used Dotdigital to run successful automated programs – welcome series, anniversary email campaigns, abandoned cart and abandoned browse programs. As part of the welcome series, the brand has sent emails to customers asking about preferences. This strategy has seen positive traction, with an increasing number of customers updating their profiles, enabling the team to use the data to craft personalized campaigns.

“The journey with Dotdigital has been a huge success; our creative vision and Dotdigital’s capability to turn it into reality has delivered outstanding results,” said Anita. “Deep diving into customer interests and data, effective segmentation, and targeting has resulted in lower unsubscribe rates, better open rates, and zero email fatigue. Our anniversary campaign resulted in revenue uplift, while our recent Easter campaign, had amazing customer engagement.”

As parties and celebrations came to a pause during the COVID-19 pandemic, the brand created innovative ways to engage with customers. Known to push its creative boundaries, Costumes.com.au educated consumers on alternate, safer ways to party. The brand never failed to engage with its customers, encouraging them to download free invitations for online celebrations, celebrating Halloween at home, while encouraging parents to host virtual parties for kids.

“One of the key projects on the horizon is the Magento 2 migration. In the near future, we plan to run loyalty and rewards strategies using the Dotdigital Recency, Frequency, and Monetary (RFM) value modelling tool. We are also excited about our upcoming Halloween-based lead nurturing program,” commented Anita.

Results

The Christmas-themed abandoned browse emails performed exceptionally well with a 39% open rate and a 25% click-to-open rate. The abandoned cart campaign witnessed a 34% open rate and a 16% click-to-open rate. Additionally, the ‘Book Week’ campaign saw an average open rate of 27%. Overall, the client recorded a 30% year-over-year increase in revenue from email and an 11.35% increase in the loyal customer segment, since partnering with Dotdigital.