One Kings Lane, the home furnishings and décor e-tailer, puts a lot of time and money into its blog. With home tours of celebrities and tips from professional designers, the content evokes luxe shelter magazines.
Plus, there are shoppable links within each post.
While the content team used to promote the posts, the rise of content recommendation tools like Outbrain inspired the One Kings Lane marketing team to take over just less than a year ago. (One Kings Lane posts around 30 articles a month, which are automatically put into an RSS feed and amplified via Outbrain.)
After adding in Outbrain’s custom audiences retargeting tool, One Kings Lane saw conversions increase fourfold and cost per acquisition drop 50%. “It’s not quite as effective as dynamic retargeting, but it’s in the same category,” said Nisho Cherison, director of online advertising for One Kings Lane.
The e-tailer segments potential shoppers into retargeting groups, each with its own campaign. One Kings Lane’s analysis aligned certain behaviors with conversion propensity (though it keeps that data close to its chest), and it focuses resources on those users.
It also refreshes the content it promotes frequently because its products are constantly changing and older posts may feature out-of-season or out-of-stock products, making content automation critical to success.
“For us, the blog is the best representation of our brand,” said Julie Zischke, associate marketing manager at One Kings Lane. “It’s a pride for us as a company that our editorial voice is so strong, and it’s important for us that this experience be a quality moment because of the thoughtfulness and quality of the writing and images.”
While content recommendation engines can be filled with clickbaity headlines, One Kings Lane purposely avoids anything gimmicky. It wants its users to feel satisfied by the content.
“People still want to get a click by any means possible, and here are a lot of clickbaity-type articles, “ Cherison said of the content recommendation space. “We believe in seeing quality content.”
One Kings Lane expects further efficiencies as Outbrain updates. For example, Outbrain is allowing onboarding of CRM data via LiveRamp, which One Kings Lane plans to use.
Content-focused paid media will continue to be a critical part of the One Kings Lane’s marketing mix. While “organic trumps paid anytime,” Cherison said, channels like Outbrain offer the next best thing: paying to amplify posts designed with organic engagement in mind.
