Ideally, shopping for the latest trends is as effortless as the perfect runway strut, but the customer experience isn’t always seamless. Today’s fashion market is full of options. This is a good thing; it allows today’s customers to choose from nearly endless brands and styles.

However, having too many choices can be overwhelming for consumers. Modern fashion enthusiasts need a starting point for fashion to streamline their shopping experiences.

Enter Zalando, a leading European online fashion and lifestyle destination with more than 50M active customers in 25 European markets offering fashion, lifestyle and beauty choices across diverse categories, styles and price points.

To cement its reputation in the fashion world and continue to capture the hearts of stylish shoppers, Zalando knows that it’s necessary to always stay ahead of the trend cycle. This prompts a classic challenge: How can the e-retailer optimize its brand awareness and consideration efforts while keeping up with the rapidly evolving digital experience landscape? How can Zalando stand out from the crowd even as customer expectations are shifting by the minute?

The Potential:

INCREASING FOCUS, UNLEASHING EFFICIENCY

While Zalando is no stranger to looking great in the spotlight, behind the scenes, the retailer was grappling with a considerable challenge: the complexity of managing a staggering lineup of 364 brand awareness and consideration paid social and programmatic campaigns.

Launching each individual campaign requires meticulous attention. Zalando knows its customers have a keen eye for detail, so each campaign needs to be perfect. The process of ideating and creating each campaign, however, was laborious, time-consuming, and costly. Zalando’s team was stretched thin.

Zalando realized that being able to roll out these marketing efforts well would require more focus and efficiency. The company needed a partner who could weave its efforts into cohesive campaigns without a necessarily repetitive creative process.

Innervate’s promise of a simple, modern, and unifying solution sounded like a perfect fit.

The Solution:

A FASHION-FORWARD FIX FOR FRAGMENTATION

Innervate’s dynamic design templates and automated campaign management capabilities opened the door for Zalando to leave manual work behind and embrace elevated efficiency. Innervate was able to understand the assignment at once and help Zalando move forward with agility.

“Innervate was forthcoming and approachable,” Ivan Ponce, Director of Media said. “Their customer service and support is simply outstanding, and one can really feel like Innervate also wants you to succeed no matter the challenge or case.”

Onboarding was swift, and with Innervate’s solution onboarded, Zalando was free to mix and match ad elements intuitively and at scale. This allowed Zalando to curate captivating brand awareness and consideration campaigns with a laser focus on resonating with every segment of its diverse audience.

Even better, Zalando was able to accomplish this goal while conserving precious time and resources.

“Innervate offered out-of-the-box automated processes that were previously done manually and quickly created a fully automated approach,” says Ponce.

Zalando is now free to achieve its goals at a much faster pace.

The Results:

365 DAYS OF BRAND AWARENESS AND CONSIDERATION CAMPAIGNS

With its new fully automated marketing approach, Zalando’s brand marketing business units were able to create and release myriad personalized brand campaigns without overloading its teams.

This allows Zalando to run campaigns consistently across 25 markets 365 days a year. These campaigns are fully in sync with the latest trends and customer needs—a definite feat in the world of dynamic CX.

This year-round rollout of impactful campaigns makes Zalando stand out and contributes to the company’s goal of becoming the definitive starting point for fashion among its loyal—and expanding—customer base.

At the same time, Innervate empowered Zalando’s creative team by giving them the time necessary to focus on out-of-the-box creative and next-level strategy, thereby ensuring that Zalando will be able to continue to evolve its campaigns as needed.

Says Ponce, “By efficiently utilizing and repurposing all the content and assets available on Zalando’s website... Zalando saves both time and internal resources that would otherwise be spent on producing content specifically for a short-lived campaign, which would not be used again in future campaigns.”

The Future:

ZALANDO DELIVERS CONSISTENT
MARKETING CAMPAIGNS WITH INNERVATE’S INGENUITY

The lightning-fast launch of Zalando’s campaigns speaks for itself, but Zalando’s team noted that the experience of working with Innervate went beyond the results achieved.

“Working with Innervate could be summarized in three words: fast, efficient, and adaptable. Innervate is an advertising tech powerhouse with impeccable customer support. Our teams are amazed at the speed that it took us to lift this project from the ground and the efficiency of developing custom solutions,” says Ponce.

Zalando expects to continue reaping the benefits of automation. The company plans to uncover more ways for its marketing team to use its new automate-to-innovate approach, enabled by Innervate’s solution. With Innervate’s support, Zalando is excited about the future possibilities in efficient, effective, and automated marketing campaigns.