Flash-sale apparel retailer JackThreads sees its growth stemming from driving shoppers to buy while on their mobile devices, says Jonathan Newcomb, the retailer’s vice president of acquisition and retention marketing.
There’s a good reason for that thought—mobile is at the heart of the retailer’s business. JackThreads, No. 175 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Mobile 500, gets 68% of its total traffic from mobile devices and mobile accounts for half of the retailer’s revenue, with the brand’s mobile app accounting for 90% of those sales.
But it is a constant challenge to drive new consumers to download and use its app, Newcomb says. “We’re always working to get new people using our app,” he says.
And while it has long run mobile app install ads—which drive shoppers to download an app in either the Apple Inc. App Store or Google Play store—on an array of platforms including Facebook and Pandora, until earlier this year those ads weren’t available on Twitter.
When Twitter launched mobile app install ads in April, JackThreads was interested. Twitter’s audience is particularly appealing to JackThreads because its users aren’t necessarily the same as those the retailer finds elsewhere, Newcomb says. “It has a big audience that might not be engaging in other areas where we’ve been running these ads,” he says.
Working with digital advertising vendor AdParlor, the retailer targeted male iPhone users whose behaviors on Twitter—based on the Twitter handles they follow, their stated interests and what they post about—suggest they’re interested in fashion. It also targeted Twitter users similar to the followers of brands that JackThreads carries. It used Twitter’s Image App Card, which is an ad unit that features a large image and a large Install button. The ad appears in targeted users Twitter feeds notifying them it is a promoted post by JackThreads.
In the first month of the campaign, JackThreads found that the cost per new app user registration was 23% less than its other mobile app install ads. Twitter charges based on the advertiser’s objective, in this case, per app download. Using Tune Inc.’s MobileAppTracking software, JackThreads found that 12% more users made a purchase after downloading the app, compared to other shoppers who downloaded the app after viewing an ad.
“Twitter provides us with an audience that we weren’t reaching before,” Newcomb says.
JackThreads is No. 264 in the 2014 Top 500 Guide.