Tracking an online marketing campaign by looking at online sales is just one part of the equation. Working with coupon technology company RevTrax and online marketing firm Kenshoo, Staples Canada ran a campaign to link its online marketing efforts to offline sales.

“The majority of purchases still occur in-store, so evaluating the success of a digital marketing campaign through an e-commerce-only lens provides a limited and inadequate definition of success,” says Jonathan Treiber, CEO and co-founder of RevTrax.

Staples Canada offered consumers $10 off a Copy & Print order of $30 or more. The coupon could be printed, accessed as an online code or displayed on a mobile device. Staples Canada supplied the redemption data to RevTrax, which matched the search campaigns and keywords to those in-store redemptions. Kenshoo integrated the keyword-level conversion data into its platform, which allows Staples Canada to optimize campaigns in real time by updating ad copy.

“We had several goals for this campaign, including driving online and in-store sales and uncovering deeper insights into customer behaviors and coupon redemption patterns,” says Arthur Marcoviciu, digital marketing supervisor for Staples Canada. “We learned that business customers drive the highest average order value when converting through non-brand keywords. Since most coupon redemptions occur in-store, we wouldn’t have been able to drive this level of cross-channel insight without this partnership.”

During the three-month campaign, Staples Canada saw a 200% increase in its return on investment for paid search campaigns and a more than 9% increase in average weekly redemptions. Redemption of the offer also increased 148% from the first week, before Staples Canada optimized campaigns, to the last week. Overall, the campaign garnered more than 1.4 million impressions. The average cost-per-click dropped 11%, and two branded keywords drove 50% in revenue during the campaign.

“Using data from one channel to inform another has become a best practice for marketers, and Kenshoo has been leading the charge on this front with offerings such as Kenshoo Intent-Driven Audiences, which uses consumer search intent to automatically deliver targeted social ads,” says Gary Nafus, managing director, Americas, for Kenshoo. “The biggest hurdle for many marketers in this regard is uniting online and offline efforts; partnerships between industry leaders like Kenshoo and RevTrax deliver solutions to bridge the gaps and achieve great results.”