ICEMULE is an outdoor adventure company that sells soft backpack coolers. It’s targeted towards hikers, kayakers, backpackers, tailgating, etc. Their cooler keeps drinks + food ice cold for an astounding 24+ hours. Black Friday is typically where Ecommerce businesses make the most amount of sales during the year. ICEMULE wanted to take advantage of this, and realized they needed needed an expert team to help them win BIG time during the 2019 Black Friday/Cyber Monday craze.
Historically, they had only run 1 campaign with 1 retargeting audience and didn’t do any A/B testing. Last year’s November and December had a 0.65 ROAS, with the average cost per purchase being over $100. This year, they reached out to our team of Facebook experts, hoping they could achieve a ROAS above 4 and $5K in ad spend if possible.
Targeting Warm Audiences First
ICEMULE decided to hand over the reins for their FB ad campaign to TDM after completing an initial Facebook Ad Account Analysis. They quickly realized all of the places they could improve upon their strategy when it comes to FB ads in order to gain more profitability and stop missing out on sales.
They started with a compelling offer: 20% off their products sitewide. It is important to always run a good promo (at least 15% off, ideally higher). We took that promo and showed it in front of people who’ve been on their site, past customers, and people who’ve engaged with their ads on FB/IG the past 60 days. We created catchy short videos, crisp and well-designed graphics, and also utilized their catalogue for dynamic product ads. 
The Nitty Gritty
In addition to this, we ran a lot of traffic ads, bringing new audiences to the site to warm them up. We also ran engagement ads for the same purpose and to generate more engagement overall.
ICEMULE’s retargeting audiences were HUGE and prior to TDM taking over, had been run in a cluster vs individually. Running them individually helped us optimize the ads better resulting in a higher ROAS and lower cost per purchase. We then retargeted several different warm audiences (those who know ICEMULE) with the 20% off promotion and the limited time frame of the promotion. Retargeting correctly is imperative to any ad campaign’s success. Warm audiences are always your lowest hanging fruit.
We were able to surpass all of ICEMULE’s goals and then some! Their ‘19 Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale finished with a whopping 6.52 ROAS and an average of $15.69 per purchase! This blew their goal of 4 ROAS out of the water and gave them over a 6x return on investment. This is an 880% ROAS increase from their 2018 Black Friday Sale. We were also able to scale the ad spend higher as per their wishes as well. We finished with over $9k in ad spend, with $5k being their initial goal, all the while making sure their campaign was insanely profitable. Wow! 
Make sure that you A/B test. It is crucial to execute comprehensive split testing in order to get you the highest ROAS and lowest CPP.
Separate out audiences. Using clusters of audiences can work well, but will not be able to find out which audience performs the best that way. Parse out the different aspects of your campaign, including different audiences. There is no way to cut corners here, and separating out audiences will usually get much bigger gains.
Engagement optimized ad sets work better for this type of business than traffic optimized ad sets. Engagement ad sets are more efficient at bringing more traffic and generating additional engagement. We focused on this type of ad set so that we could retarget these engagement audiences (which have produced a high ROAS).
Use reviews in your ads and ad copy. ICEMULE had dozens and dozens of amazing reviews to support their product, which greatly aided in the success of the campaign. Positive reviews are very important in creating trust with a new customer and building social proof.
Highlight the end date of a promotion and create urgency. Using key phrases like, “Limited time only” or, “Ending soon” can create urgency and cause a customer to convert more easily.
Invest in professional product photos. Working with GREAT product photos makes a drastic difference in ad performance. ICEMULE’s product photos and solid branding guidelines made it easier for our agency to create ads that converted well.
Do you run ads for your outdoor gear Ecommerce store but don’t know how to A/B test or optimize for better results? Do you see a lot of potential with your products, but don’t know how to get the right people to buy via paid FB ads? Get in touch to find out if our team is a good fit for your biz goals!
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