Bonobos increased customer purchases by optimizing Facebook ads with Twilio Segment

The big win

As Bonobos’ digital business grew, it became increasingly important to understand how online spend was influencing offline behavior. Bonobos needed to correlate digital ad campaign engagement with in-store purchase conversions.

Bonobos implemented Twilio Segment to unify online and offline customer data and integrated Facebook point-of-sale to drive better insights and determine which in-store visits were the result of their Facebook ad campaigns.

Launched in 2007, Bonobos is an ecommerce-driven apparel company headquartered in New York City. The company designs and sells men's suits, shirts, pants, tees, hoodies, golf attire, outerwear, and tailored pieces. In 2012, Bonobos opened its first Guideshop location. Today, there are 60 and counting. Guideshop locations emphasize personalized attention and assistance and let people “try before they buy.” During 30-minute or one-hour appointments, knowledgeable “Guides” find the right items with the right fit and then ship them to customers’ homes or offices.

Bonobos, powered by Twilio Segment and AWS, has increased its return on ad spend as well as online and offline purchases by successfully unifying and activating its first-party customer data.

Marketing attribution without unified data

Bonobos built its popularity as an on-line brand. Adding a real-world component to the shopper’s journey, Bonobos wanted to encourage shoppers to make appointments to visit its brick-and-mortar Guideshop locations to increase offline clothing sales. 

 “Although Bonobos was born online, our Guideshop locations are an important touch-point to our customers’ shopping experience because they serve as an opportunity to experience our brand in real life. As our business grows, it has become increasingly important to understand how online spend influences offline behavior, which Facebook and Twilio Segment have made possible.” Micky Onvural, Co-President, Bonobos.

 To entice people to book appointments, Bonobos ran a series of Facebook ads in carousel format with creative that featured exterior and interior photos of local Guideshop locations. A call-to-action button encouraged customers to “Book Now” to make an appointment at their nearest Guideshop location.

 However, Bonobos needed to know if those ads were converting to sales. Because Facebook ads were displayed in the digital world, while purchases were made in store, it was difficult for the team to attribute the ads correctly.

 As the digital business grew, it became increasingly important to understand how online spend influences offline behavior. Bonobos needed to correlate digital ad campaign engagement with in-store conversions. The team turned to Twilio Segment’s  Facebook point-of-sale integration to determine which in-store visits were the result of the Facebook ad campaigns.

Bridging the gap between online and offline customer data

 To measure how many sales resulted from the campaign, Bonobos engaged Twilio Segment. Twilio Segment enables companies like Bonobos to easily collect first-party data about the omnichannel user experience and send that data to tools like Facebook, Amplitude, Amazon Redshift, and more. Twilio Segment enabled Bonobos to identify whether purchases were made online or during an in-store visit. Then, the Bonobos team could analyze the in-store sales to learn how many were a result of people seeing the Facebook campaign.

 The Facebook point-of-sale integration with Twilio Segment also allowed Bonobos to optimize its Facebook ads to attract more people to the Guideshop locations and make in-store purchases.

Optimizing ad spend and increasing conversion. Using Facebook carousel ads and Twilio Segment’s Facebook Offline Conversion integration, Bonobos was able to increase offline purchases by 3X.

• 3X increase in offline purchases versus control group

• 2X increase in offline purchase return on ad spend versus control group

• 3X increase in website purchases versus control group

• 2X increase in website purchase return on ad spend versus control group