EltaMD finds growth with CommerceIQ’s automation and optimization

EltaMD, a skincare brand originally founded in Switzerland, entered the US market in 1988. In 2007, the brand expanded from skin healing products to sun care. The brand prides itself on the quality of its sun care, skin care, and post procedure products. EltaMD launched on Amazon’s online store in 2017, shortly after Amazon created the Professional Beauty category in their store. EltaMD has strong ties to the dermatology industry and considers its offerings as professional grade products. The Premium Beauty category on Amazon allows EltaMD to own their brand and manage relationships with 3rd party Amazon sellers. While the brand began leveraging Amazon Ads upon launching on Amazon, their initial investment was small as they weighed the value Amazon Ads solutions would bring to their business. Upon seeing sales success, EltaMD scaled their investment. And in late 2020, the beauty brand brought on CommerceIQ, a partner with Amazon Ads expertise to further help identify opportunities for improvement and growth.

CommerceIQ offers prospective clients a complimentary and comprehensive Amazon audit, identifying multiple areas of opportunity, from content improvements, to assortment optimizations, to search keyword best practices and advertising budget allocation recommendations. They did a thorough analysis of EltaMD’s Amazon presence near the end of 2020 and identified multiple areas of opportunity that could potentially drive meaningful business impact for EltaMD. For example, they recommended detail page content optimizations, assortments optimizations, and aided in keyword best practices. After CommerceIQ reviewed their findings with the brand, EltaMD recognized that partnering with CommerceIQ for their technology solutions and Amazon Ads expertise could help EltaMD achieve its goals on Amazon. After partnering with CommerceIQ, EltaMD tasked CommerceIQ with helping the brand meet its top-line sales goals in 2021.

CommerceIQ was tasked with maximizing EltaMD’s incremental sales on Amazon while managing sponsored ads and Amazon DSP campaigns more efficiently. While EltaMD had driven impressive Amazon growth in 2020, their sales goals in 2021 were more robust and necessitated an acceleration of new sponsored ads strategies.

After a thorough review of the catalog and analyzing each category, CommerceIQ developed nuanced strategies for each of EltaMD’s product lines and launched 150+ campaigns to maximize learnings, control budget allocation, and while enabling automations to manage daily optimizations. Here are some of the strategies CommerceIQ implemented:

• Optimizing sponsored ads via automation: CommerceIQ’s retail-aware advertising tools were central to avoiding the promotion of out of stock ASINs or products that weren’t as profitable. This technology-driven foundation immediately made an impact on inefficient allocation of campaign budgets. CommerceIQ then implemented their Hourly Bidder and Budget Optimizer tools to help EltaMD reach audiences during key shopper moments. Given the brand’s priority to increase share of voice (SOV) on priority keywords, CommerceIQ’s proprietary tools also allowed the brand to focus on key placements for their most important terms. Holistically, this combination of automation and strategy served to ensure that EltaMDs’ Amazon Ads investment was allocated to capture incremental demand.
• Driving brand engagement with Sponsored Brands video: CommerceIQ identified that click through rate (CTR) on Sponsored Brands video campaigns was substantially higher than Sponsored Brands product collection campaigns, amongst the same set of shopping terms. Leveraging this insight CommerceIQ increased investment in Sponsored Brands video with a specific focus on telling EltaMDs’ brand story to shoppers who might not be familiar with their products.
• Encouraging new-to-brand customers with Sponsored Display: CommerceIQ launched multiple Sponsored Display campaigns for EltaMD in 2021 with a primary goal of attracting new-to-brand customers through the utilization of Amazon’s product targeting capabilities. This helped maximize the brand’s presence on relevant Amazon product detail pages. With the implementation of CommerceIQ’s Sponsored Display strategy and automated optimization tools helped EltaMD double new-to-brand orders on their Sponsored Display campaigns.

EltaMD found digital advertising efficiencies and drove impact with CommerceIQ’s strategic plan, with the combination of expertise and automation driving fast results for the brand’s Amazon Ads performance.

CommerceIQ credited EltaMD for taking a strategic leap into assess how their brand could grow holistically by leaning into new advertising strategies and solutions.