Kendra Scott + January Digital, Unprecedented Ecommerce Growth in 2023 

Industry Description

Kendra Scott is an American lifestyle brand known for its custom-designed and often customizable jewelry. Founded by Kendra Scott in 2002, the jeweler has grown to become a prominent player in the jewelry industry, recognized not only for its stylish and versatile designs but also for its philanthropic efforts, supporting various charitable causes and community initiatives. With a focus on affordable luxury and a strong emphasis on customer experience, Kendra Scott has established itself as a well-regarded name in the contemporary jewelry market.

Challenges

Legacy brand, Kendra Scott, set out to implement a cohesive media strategy that would support efficient growth in ecommerce in 2023. 

January Digital, media agency of record, was challenged to exceed industry and category growth levels in 2023. To position Kendra Scott for success, January Digital launched renewed customer-centric full-funnel digital media ecommerce campaigns for the brand, capitalizing on automation to drive efficiency, and customer data integration to inform campaign development. 

Building new and improved strategies, media campaigns, audiences and creative through the chaos of the holiday shopping season for retail in Q4 2022 was a challenge, but also critical to Kendra Scott’s success in 2023. In order to balance out revenue for the year without relying on the holiday season, the team leaned more heavily into key gifting moments throughout 2023 to maximize sales throughout the year. January Digital and Kendra Scott collaborated on more efficient processes for media planning, optimization, and insights sharing to ensure all teams, including the Kendra Scott leadership team, were all properly informed and in sync with decision-making. The key to making this work seamlessly was by building paths of communication to the different teams such as ecommerce, website, brand, finance, and creative to ensure the flow of information never bottlenecked to create flexibility and fast action to the campaigns. As the media strategy was evolving, there was a need for new assets to successfully deliver and match the pace of the newly implemented multi-channel strategy. Knowing that creative is one of the greatest influencers on performance, January Digital placed significant emphasis on the need to constantly develop this area of the business to drive growth above the category. 

January Digital launched full-funnel media campaigns with refreshed and diverse audiences and creatives leveraging tactics such as: 

• Expanded into a full-funnel YouTube strategy focused on driving awareness, consideration, and conversions for Kendra Scott. This updated structure contributed to growth in brand demand, total Google searches for Kendra Scott, and their highest brand lift studies to date with a +4.7% lift in ad recall and 1.8% lift in consideration.  
  • The team leveraged new audience targeting strategies, such as targeting users based on their favorite musical artists, to connect with users across personalized touchpoints. January Digital focused on reaching users who had not been exposed to Kendra Scott prior, but have an affinity for shopping. To narrow down those users, the team also layered in placement targeting for popular Gen Z YouTube channels and Millennial and Gen Z top artist Vevo channels. 
• Capitalized on highly relevant cultural moments, such as the Barbie x Kendra Scott collaboration in tandem with the release of The Barbie Movie, with a full-funnel activation across Meta, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok.  
  • Full-funnel support contributed to launch day bringing in the highest influx of new users to the site to date, as well as a +36% increase in CTR engagement compared to other key brand moments.  
• Leveraged high-impact TikTok Top Feed placement, a first for Kendra Scott, during the holiday to drive awareness and engagement with content focusing on the Holiday season’s hero product.  
  • Top Feed was instrumental in connecting with Gen Z throughout the holiday season, with this key cohort driving +40% above-average CTR engagement for the activation.  
• Began testing into influencer content across key social channels, a first for Kendra Scott, in Fall 2023 and leveraged learnings to launch an expanded influencer strategy in support of holiday gifting.  
  • Refined influencer strategy and increased creative diversity across these channels led to a +20% lift in social engagement. 
• Refined creative approach for holiday gifting by reducing the total number of brand messages in-market by -55% to avoid potential customer confusion and simplify our holiday messaging while also adapting to shifting consumer trends by launching gifting messaging earlier in October than the brand ever has before.  
  • Reduced messages in-market and an early launch of gifting messaging contributed to a +12% lift in CTR YoY.  
• Expanded audience strategy for key gifting moments during Valentine’s Day. Utilized high production assets which played into how “Men can Buy Better Gifts with Kendra Scott”. January Digital used this video and tapped into ESPN inventory to capture male attention during sporting events on CTV.

Results

By focusing on innovative media strategies, leveraging customer-data-driven learnings, and increasing testing of creative and usage of organic content, January Digital’s 2023 full-funnel media ecommerce campaign exceeded client expectations, goals, and industry benchmarks. 

The results included: 

• Exceeding client ecommerce revenue goal by 18%. 
• Improving marketing effectiveness by increasing ROAS +12% YoY. 
• Driving +29% YoY traffic growth to Kendra Scott. 
• Record-breaking Q4 holiday season with ecommerce exceeding revenue goals and growing +21% YoY. 
• Awareness lift as a result of improved creative and marketing efficacy, with Google searches for Kendra Scott up +51% YoY in Q4 and +24% for the year.