Adobe® Marketing Cloud Success Story
TOP-TOY Group
Winning the data game
Leading European toy retailer uses Adobe Marketing Cloud to
help boost annual revenues by 250%, control costs, and shape
data-driven strategies
TOP TOY
Tune, Denmark
www.top-toy.com
Responsys
https://responsys.com
Results
• Helped to boost online revenues by
250% annually
• Increased conversion for email
campaigns by up to 400%
• Measured a 25% average quarterly
growth in traffic from mobile devices
• Supported additional strategic
online initiatives without expanding
marketing budget
• Adopted repeatable optimization
processes, leading to up to 10%
revenue increases per cycle
• Standardized on a mature
marketing platform to support
current and future initiatives
• Optimized campaign rollouts for
spend and timing
• Enabled the reallocation of
resources to higher-value
marketing activities
A family-owned business since 1963, TOP-TOY Group has grown to be the largest toy
business in Northern Europe with nearly 4,000 employees in offices in Scandinavia,
Finland, Germany, and Hong Kong. The company operates in both the toy wholesale
and retail markets, functioning under the BR and Toys “R” Us brands.
The company’s rich history of capturing children’s imaginations with fanciful storefronts turned a corner
in 1999 when TOP-TOY began to offer toys, games, and more through the Internet. At the outset of
diversifying its retail strategy, the eCommerce team at TOP-TOY relied on the past experiences of its
executive team and market trends to drive the direction of marketing campaigns, web design, and
merchandising strategies. However, in 2010, the company’s online strategy shifted and refocused as
new digital channels and devices emerged and its need for relevant data grew to drive decision making
and maintain its competitive advantage in the market.
“When I joined TOP-TOY a few years ago, our Online team had only two members responsible for our
website and customer care for the digital channel,” says Mads Vangkilde, eCommerce manager at
TOP-TOY Group. “It wasn’t just our staffing model that hindered our ability to innovate in the online
space, we lacked analytics and optimization solutions to make ourselves more effective.”
The company considered digital marketing solutions from multiple vendors, including Google, but
found that it couldn’t get all of the capabilities it needed in a single platform. Equally challenging
was getting disparate tools to integrate effectively. In the end, TOP-TOY chose Adobe Marketing
Cloud—including Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target solutions—with help from trusted consultants
at eCapacity and Adobe Consulting.
“Adobe Marketing Cloud was ideal for us since all of the products are integrated and work seamlessly
with software from our other vendors, such as Responsys, enabling us to realize better results than we
could from each vendor individually” says Vangkilde. “Adobe Marketing Cloud provides powerful
solutions that scale with our business as our digital marketing strategies evolve.”
More advanced play
To lay the foundation for its next-generation online properties, the TOP-TOY eCommerce team
began using Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target solutions to better understand customer behaviors
and preferences, as well as to gain deeper insights into customer traffic patterns. The initial goal for
the implementation was two-fold—to create a baseline understanding of the online business for
future marketing decisions and garner additional buy-in from stakeholders across the organization.
Key findings helped to achieve these strategic goals. For instance, the team discovered that the in-store
availability button on product pages—a tool directing customers to the nearest store with the item or
items they wanted—was receiving four-times the clicks of any other button on the pages during peak
shopping periods. “When we showed data points about how our online channel impacted in-store
traffic and sales, it created a shift towards a more data-driven culture. It was clear that Adobe solutions
delivered value to the business overall,” says Vangkilde.
With Adobe Marketing Cloud, TOP-TOY has a rich, integrated platform for gaining
a deep view of customer behaviors and traffic that drives critical decisions about
optimizations, campaigns, and investments into its digital properties.
Challenge
• Gaining a richer view of customers
to support more strategic decision
making
• Standardizing on a single marketing
platform, while enabling advanced
integrations with third-party
products used by outside vendors
• Achieving higher revenues and
controlling costs
• Increasing conversion
Solution
Standardizing on Adobe Marketing
Cloud, including the Adobe Analytics
and Adobe Target solutions, TOP-TOY
Group is gaining a comprehensive view
of customer behaviors and visitor traffic
to make more informed decisions
about optimizations, campaigns, and
marketing spend
Systems at a glance
Adobe Marketing Cloud, including
Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target
solutions. Capabilities used include:
•Adobe SiteCatalyst®
•Adobe SiteSearch™
•Adobe Recommendations
•Adobe TagManager
•Adobe Genesis™
•Adobe Test&Target™
Adobe Consulting
Since Adobe Marketing Cloud was deployed, other data points—including trends on which devices
and channels customers are using to access the website—are helping to shape development and
merchandising strategies. “Using Adobe Marketing Cloud, we’ve measured an increase of 121% in
users accessing the website with mobile and tablet devices for the same quarter year over year, as
well as an average quarterly growth of 25%,” says Anders W. Beese, traffic manager at TOP-TOY.
“By uncovering this trend, we can now see the value of investing in a targeted, mobile-optimized
experience to reach a growing segment of shoppers.”
Smarter, more-informed decisions
The TOP-TOY eCommerce team can now easily identify whether or not marketing efforts are delivering
the returns they want. For example, at Christmas, the company ran a social campaign through its online
property where customers could share wish lists via social media pages, such as Facebook. The team
found that very few customers actually used the tool—exactly four customers in five countries—
prompting the decision to immediately cut the campaign, saving the company significant development
resources and enabling it to reallocate assets towards higher-performing initiatives.
In addition, with Adobe Marketing Cloud, the TOP-TOY eCommerce team has better identified seasonal
traffic patterns, helping to execute on campaigns more strategically. Specifically, the team identified a
two-week period during a holiday season when 65% of its annual online business was realized.
“Adobe Marketing Cloud gives us a comprehensive view of our customers and helps us identify the
strongest, highest yielding activities across channels,” says Beese. Improved insight into visitor traffic—
including the ability to view what keywords brought them to website, click pathing, and conversionregression analysis—all help TOP-TOY best allocate its resources.
Through advanced integration between Adobe Marketing Cloud and the advertising platform used
by the company’s media agency, TOP-TOY can monitor the effectiveness of marketing activities.
“We can see exactly how our marketing dollars are spent and the resulting ROI, so we can decide
where to increase funding and what area to cut,” says Beese. Similarly, TOP-TOY uses integrations
with Responsys to monitor its email campaigns and increase campaign effectiveness.
Enhancing experiences, driving conversion
Being actively engaged with customers—and targeting interactions based upon data—has become an
increasingly important at TOP-TOY. For example, integrations between Responsys, Adobe Target, and
Adobe Analytics, enable the company to deliver targeted recommendations to customers based upon
viewing and purchasing affinities. As a result, TOP-TOY has increased conversion during campaigns
between 300% and 400% on average.
“We’re able to identify critical areas with Adobe solutions where
we can optimize experiences and increase conversion by 1-2%
on individual pages. The net effect on overall revenues has been
as much as 10%. We’ve repeated similar processes several times
to continue boosting returns.”
Anders W. Beese, traffic manager, TOP-TOY Group
By viewing customer traffic and click-through analyses in Adobe Marketing Cloud, the TOP-TOY
eCommerce team can also make optimizations that increase conversion, leading to higher revenues.
“We’re able to identify critical areas with Adobe solutions where we can optimize experiences and
increase conversion by 1-2% on individual pages,” says Beese. “The net effect on overall revenues has
been as much as 10%. We’ve repeated similar processes several times to continue boosting returns.”
Using online surveys, TOP-TOY is proactively engaging customers, working to understand how
shopping experiences can be even better. The Adobe solution also helps the team to isolate and
target specific issues on its websites, accelerating solutions for out-of-the-ordinary issues.
Bottom-line benefits
Since TOP-TOY first integrated Adobe solutions into its multichannel marketing strategy, the
company has opted to expand the use of Adobe Marketing Cloud and grow its eCommerce team
from 2 to 13 people—with the expectation to grow headcount by three members in the next year.
However, the team’s budget hasn’t expanded since the beginning of 2010. Vangkilde attributes this
specifically to the team’s ability to use Adobe Marketing Cloud to work more strategically and focus
on the highest-value activities for the organization.
With the help of Adobe solutions and its skilled team, TOP-TOY has seen digital channel revenues
grow by 250% over the past two years. “As a manager, my success is measured by how I’m controlling
costs and generating returns, plain and simple,” says Vangkilde. “Adobe Marketing Cloud enables us
to cover both sides of the equation.”
In the future, the eCommerce team at TOP-TOY plans to further expand its use of Adobe Marketing
Cloud, including for advanced A/B and multivariate testing, increasing its in-house marketing and
optimization capabilities.
For more information
“We’re continuing to mature as a digital marketing organization, and Adobe solutions support us
every step of the way,” says Vangkilde. “We know we’re really just in the beginning of being able to
optimize and maximize our digital strategies.”
Adobe Systems Incorporated
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San Jose, CA 95110-2704
USA
www.adobe.com
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