Rise Interactive helps StarTech increase sales through insight-driven Amazon Ads strategy

Founded in 1985, StarTech is a global organization offering connectivity accessories that support more than 200 different technologies. Following a shift in business-to-business (B2B) shopping behavior resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, StarTech looked to optimize their performance in the Amazon store. They sought a holistic Amazon Ads strategy that would help them reach new audiences and increase revenue and return on ad spend (ROAS) in the Amazon store. They also wanted to better understand campaign performance, breaking it down by audience and by marketing channel.

StarTech teamed up with Rise Interactive—a marketing agency specializing in digital media, analytics, and customer experience—to help drive their Amazon Ads strategy.

StarTech was looking to better understand how Sponsored Products and Amazon DSP ads work together and enable audiences to engage with their brand in the Amazon store during their purchase journey.

With the change in remote-work norms resulting from the pandemic, StarTech needed to shift their Amazon Ads approach. As a historically B2B company focused on IT professionals, StarTech wanted to expand their audience to reach new customers and also include small to medium businesses. To help set up the brand for success, Rise Interactive identified a testing strategy and implemented a measurement support plan. Success would be measured based on campaigns’ ability to help drive growth in year-over-year revenue, while maintaining ROAS goals.

To help StarTech tell their brand story while driving ROAS, Rise Interactive utilized a wide variety of Amazon Ads solutions to create a custom Store and product experience. The agency primarily used test-and-learn insights informed by Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), an advanced measurement tool that can help provide event-level insights into campaign performance across channels.

“The core idea of our approach was to systematically test reaching a broader audience, and if the product mix connects the right audiences with the right messages,” said Dan Ripes, group vice president at Rise Interactive. “We would validate all of our tests through AMC.”

Rise Interactive started by building out substantially more campaign types including Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Brands video, and Sponsored Display, helping cover the entire shopping journey. The agency increased the volume and variety of ad types across channels, including video and custom images, using AMC to better understand which products and placements resonate best with key audiences.

The agency also expanded awareness strategies to help StarTech increase long-term brand consideration and reach more relevant audiences, including B2B audiences. To help increase reach, Rise Interactive launched prospecting campaigns in relevant audience categories through both Amazon DSP and Sponsored Display. Informed by audience reports generated with AMC, they also set up Amazon DSP reengagement campaigns to help reconnect with audiences who had already interacted with StarTech, with the goal of increasing brand loyalty.

Through a metrics-driven approach to performance results, Rise Interactive was able to learn how to help uncover opportunities for StarTech to improve performance across Amazon Ads channels. Using AMC to help analyze paths to conversion, they learned that StarTech’s conversion rates and sales revenue were highest when sponsored ads were combined with Amazon DSP.

After implementing AMC learnings, StarTech observed 21% year-over-year growth in shipped cost of goods sold, double their goal, from July to December 2021, compared to the same period from July to December 2020.¹ The brand exceeded their ROAS goal by 62%, and revenue from repeat customers grew 51% year over year.²