Our many years of retail marketing experience have shown us that generating an air of exclusivity can be a real trigger to generate a buzz and create demand for a particular outcome or objective when implementing a strategy for marketing in ecommerce. On this basis, we created a ‘secret sale’ that people could sign up for which offered a significant discount on end of line stock. The secret sale was only available via social media and when signing up to the brand's newsletter, with the heavy discounts acting as the incentive, along with a promise of advance notice to future sales and promotions for subscribers.

Social media ads on Facebook and Instagram were created, which were carefully targeted to relevant users, and a landing page on the website was developed to facilitate the sign-ups.

As part of the ongoing strategy, we adjusted messaging seasonally e.g. Black Friday and pre-Christmas ads changed to the launch of the Spring/Summer collection. This kept the creative fresh and ensured more cross-appeal to a wider range of customers.

The social media ads promoting the secret sale pushed visits to the website, resulting in an increase in immediate purchases measured at a ROAS of 7. Additionally, more than 27,000 (and counting) new email subscribers were generated from the initial campaign.

The activity brought in 80% new audience and re-engaged 20% of users who had previously visited the site. The campaign period gave the client their biggest four months of sales ever, with many lines of stock completely selling out.

The initial four month of activity was extended indefinitely due to the success of the campaign.