Boston Proper

A/B Testing Our Way to A+ Results Across Facebook and Instagram

Challenge

Boston Proper has been a pioneer in the fashion and apparel industry, building a business based on print catalogs that regularly feature over 200 new styles. Since 2020, Tinuiti has been supporting Boston Proper across paid media management across Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram, Shoppable Media, and Creative Strategic Planning.

Given the client’s focus on print catalog advertising, their creative process was hyper-focused on the catalog, while digital assets took a back seat. Tinuiti partnered with Boston Proper to audit their existing creative process and develop a series of structural changes and recommendations to ensure that whenever a new concept for a print catalog came to life, the digital assets for paid media are being taken into consideration as well.

Over the course of a year, Tinuiti’s Creative team executed a series of A/B testing on Facebook and Instagram in order to understand what ad format was resonating with Boston Proper customers.

Creative

Paid Social

“Adding Creative to our existing Tinuiti team made complete sense. We were looking to perfect our incredible assets into the paid social landscape, and this offered us the opportunity to do so seamlessly. The team took the time to understand who we are as a company, and more importantly who our customer is. They worked within our timelines and offered best practices and strategies that allowed us to see immediate increases in our paid social campaigns, which have since grown year over year, post-pandemic. The cooperation is augmented by having Creative integrated within the team, allowing us to move effortlessly from testing one creative to another while gleaning results. We look forward to maximizing our efforts further in the year to come along with the addition of influencers.”

– Bari Horton, Director of Marketing, Boston Proper

Results

“Best Foot Forward” ads after six weeks

+37%

click-through rate (CTR)

+11%

return on ad spend (ROAS)

BP_Tie-Dye-Style-GIF-PS_Feb_Version2_static

How We Did It

The A/B tests deployed by Tinuiti’s Paid Social team examined ad format via video length, copy length, on-video/image copy inclusion vs. exclusion, and branding, with the goal of finding an evergreen format that universally worked for Boston Proper’s audience.

Since the client releases products on a collection basis, we administered A/B tests in each collection, allowing our team to refine and optimize each subsequent campaign. Once a trend began to emerge, we made small testing adjustments to see if we could create something even better.

Our Creative team worked closely with our Paid Social team to run these tests for a month at a time and that data was analyzed by the creative strategist to help determine the next steps. Using these testing results, we leaned into the ad titled, “Best Foot Forward”, which included four main components:

Priority lifestyle imagery look from the associated catalog
On-image copy with brand font that tied into catalog language
Static format
Platform copy that speaks to the brand as a whole (awareness + consideration)

The goal of this ad was to focus on Boston Proper’s newest catalog release through the lens of a single look. Through our testing, we found that customers were much more responsive to a single image with a show-stopping look rather than a video or GIF that cycles through multiple images.

The “Best Foot Forward” ad is now a staple in the Boston Proper’s marketing mix. Since May 2021, it has consistently been the top-performing ad format run on the client’s account with the highest amount of purchases, most efficient CTR, and greatest ROAS.

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