Case Study
Lavazza partners with Wavemaker, Acceleration, and GroupM to reengage customers using AMC
Goals
- Understand customer behavior across direct-to-consumer and Amazon channels
- Gain insights into direct-to-consumer customers versus customers who bought from Amazon
- Optimize advertising strategies to drive sales and improve return on ad spend
Approach
- Used AMC to uncover insights and find overlap between direct-to-consumer and Amazon customer pools
- Created custom AMC Audiences based on AMC analytics
- Activated AMC Audiences in Amazon DSP for always-on lower-funnel campaigns
Results
- 134% improvement in return on ad spend for performance campaigns in Germany
- 50% of German performance campaign revenue was driven by AMC strategies
- 2x Sleepers category users purchased on Amazon after AMC retargeting strategy activation
- 11% increase in average shopping cart value in Italy
Lavazza is on a mission to bring authentic Italian coffee to people everywhere. To reach more people, Lavazza consistently seeks deeper insights into their customers’ behavior so that they can optimize ad campaigns and tailor their messaging across channels.
Some customers who previously bought directly from Lavazza’s website have switched to purchasing the company’s products on Amazon. Lavazza wanted to better understand customer behavior trends like this. In 2023, they partnered with Wavemaker and Acceleration—two global media agencies who are operated by Amazon Ads partner GroupM and who specialize in driving growth through content, technology, and data. Together, the teams analyzed customer behavior using Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC).
Uncovering deep insights into customer behavior
Wavemaker, Acceleration, and GroupM used AMC analytics to uncover the correlations between Lavazza’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) and Amazon customers. First, the teams combined information from Lavazza’s customer data platform (CDP) with the data obtained through AMC. Their analysis focused on Lavazza’s core markets—Italy, the U.K., and Germany—where the company’s DTC and Amazon strategies coexisted.
Wavemaker, Acceleration, and GroupM then conducted cross-channel analyses between DTC and Amazon sales, examined month-on-month customer migration from DTC to Amazon, and assessed the impact of promotional periods on sales performance. The analysis revealed a significant overlap between the Amazon and CDP customer pools. In Italy, 36% of Lavazza’s CDP customers were found to be Amazon customers, while 43% of Amazon customers were also Lavazza CDP customers.1 Similarly, the overlap was 52% and 57% in the U.K. and 48% and 55% in Germany.2
“Thanks to the AMC analysis provided by Wavemaker, Acceleration, and GroupM, we have taken a concrete step forward to understand customer behavior across channels. We’re using AMC insights to build an audience strategy that will help us be more efficient and effective on Amazon DSP.”
- Valeria Bandiziol, global media performance manager, Lavazza
Creating custom AMC Audiences
Based on the insights from AMC analytics, the partners used AMC Audiences to improve sales and return on ad spend (ROAS) results. They developed a DTC Sleepers audience, which included users who had not purchased Lavazza products on the company’s website in the last 12 months but were active Amazon customers for Lavazza products. Additionally, they created multiple cross-channel audiences based on users’ interactions with Lavazza’s sponsored ads.
To create the DTC Sleepers audience, Wavemaker, Acceleration, and GroupM used CDP data to identify users who met the specified criteria. For the cross-channel audiences, they defined rules based on users’ interactions with Lavazza’s sponsored ads, such as ad exposure, product detail page engagement, conversion status, and time since the last conversion. With this approach, the companies were able to create audience segments tailored to specific behaviors and engagement levels.
Wavemaker, Acceleration, and GroupM then activated the AMC Audiences in Amazon DSP for Lavazza’s existing always-on lower-funnel campaigns. To analyze performance, they set up dedicated line items within the campaigns to measure metrics such as sales, ROAS, and customer engagement. They assessed the increase in average spend and number of purchasers for the DTC Sleepers audience over a 6-month activation period. For the cross-channel audiences, they analyzed the improvement in ROAS for nonbrand campaigns in Germany, where Lavazza had previously seen low performance.
Successfully reengaging previous DTC customers
Using AMC analytics, Wavemaker, Acceleration, and GroupM developed effective strategies that drove more than 50% of the total revenue for the campaign.3 In Italy, the average shopping cart value of the DTC Sleepers audience increased by 11% over the 6-month activation period.4 After activating the DTC Sleepers audience, the number of purchasers in Italy increased by 100% in 6 months.5 In Germany, ROAS for the programmatic lower-funnel campaign improved by 134% after the companies activated cross-channel audiences—turning a negative ROAS into a positive one.6
During the 2024 fiscal year, Lavazza plans to expand their use of AMC by investing in paid features to bolster audience engagement and data analysis capabilities. The company will also connect their customer relationship management system to AMC to gain even deeper insights. With these advancements, Lavazza is poised to enhance customer relationships and drive multiregional growth.
AMC helped us deliver meaningful insights to Lavazza, going beyond pure media to provide deep customer knowledge. In the future, this kind of analysis will be crucial to drive value and data-driven decisions.
—Santino Gatani, technology director, GroupM Italy
1 Lavazza, IT, 2023
2 Lavazza, UK, DE, 2023
3 Lavazza, IT, UK, DE, 2023
4 Lavazza, IT, 2023
5 Lavazza, IT, 2023
6 Lavazza, DE, 2023