Gearing up for growth
for Cycle King

Cycle King had three major challenges. First, their brand visibility was very low compared to their store footprint and inventory scale. Second, Cycle King had no commonality of content to support their seasonal campaigns such as Christmas Club or their promotional events such as Black Friday. Third, email; the only marketing channel that is directly linked to revenue — had little connection to social media messaging and campaign storytelling. Cycle King needed to quickly develop a multi-channel campaign framework to assist them in reaching high levels of intensity during their retail periods, whilst also developing new ways to represent their brand and developing internal confidence in their marketing efforts.

Working with Vivid and marketing consultant Giles Polito, Cycle King developed their marketing strategy based on establishing their marketing activities around defined campaigns instead of just posting random content. They took the time frame from September through February and assigned it to key retail moments;  Back to School, Christmas Club, Halloween Safety, Electric Savings, Black Friday, Christmas sales and the January Sale. Each of these campaigns had a specific objective, set of assets and messaging focus.

They also specifically defined the roles of each channel; Facebook would be a reach and traffic channel, Instagram would be an engagement and audience growth channel, and email would be their primary revenue channel. By defining the purpose of each channel, Cycle King was able to ensure that their content was optimised for the way users are using each channel rather than trying to use the same messaging on every channel.

Using social media, Cycle King established consistent visual systems and campaign identities to replace the generic posting of products. To extend the brand beyond pricing messaging, Cycle King used safety-focused educational content, service-differentiating content such as same-day repair, seasonal content and lifestyle-based creative.

By using campaign storytelling, Cycle King was able to drive their customers from being aware of their brand (Back to School safety, Visibility in Autumn) to considering purchasing (Christmas Club, product launches) to ultimately to converting (Black Friday and January Sale).

Cycle King continued to send email communications at a high frequency; 35+ campaigns were sent over a 6 month reporting window. Rather than focusing on short-term tricks to get their subscribers to open the emails (such as unique subject lines), Cycle King focused on the long-term benefits of creating sustained volume, clearly communicating promotional events, and aligning their social campaign themes to create a seamless experience for their customers — regardless of which touchpoint they interacted with (social, website, or email). As a result, customers who received an email promoting a sale or event also experienced the same campaign messages across social media and the website.

Facebook – Reach at Scale

Facebook became a major contributor to Cycle King’s visibility and traffic generation. During the reporting window, Cycle King achieved 909,300 views; a 1,200% increase over the prior reporting window, reflecting the scale of growth possible when building from a near-zero digital base. Clicks on links increased by 620%, and visits to the Cycle King website increased by 186%. Whilst Cycle King did see some level of engagement with their content on Facebook, they were looking for much higher levels of engagement; this was typical for promotional retail content on Facebook. Whilst Facebook did not produce a community building experience for Cycle King, it did provide a huge amount of visibility and traffic to the website.

Instagram – Community, Built

Instagram produced a very different performance profile for Cycle King – producing a large amount of engagement and growing their own audience. Starting from a minimal base, the number of people interacting with their content increased by 10,900%, and the number of followers increased by 926%. Of those visiting the profile, 39% converted to a follower – meaning that those people believed the brand was relevant enough to subscribe to the brand. Whilst Instagram did not perform as well as Facebook in terms of driving traffic to the website, it did grow the owned audience by a large margin, giving Cycle King a solid foundation for their future campaigns.

Email – Revenue, Earned

Email was still the only channel that provided direct measurable revenue attribution for Cycle King. Over the reporting window, Cycle King sent 1,25+ million emails across 37 campaigns and saw no decline in their average open rate (15%) excluding mobile-only opens, indicating that their customer lists remain healthy and engaged. Cycle King leveraged their email campaigns effectively, using events such as Black Friday and the January Sale to drive revenue and demonstrating the value of a long-term, structured email campaign programme.

During the planned campaign timeframe, Cycle King’s overall digital marketing shifted from a fragmented/stand-alone marketing effort to a structured campaign marketing process. In terms of visibility, Cycle King’s digital footprint increased significantly, the company grew its social media audiences rapidly, and it consistently produced solid sales results via email. Perhaps most importantly, Cycle King transitioned from simply being reactive with the content it posted on social media to having a plan for executing a series of campaigns, which will provide the foundation for Cycle King to sustainably achieve higher levels of performance moving forward. It is also a model that Vivid is able to replicate for any retailer looking to build a coherent, high-performing digital presence from the ground up.