RMS Beauty Brings Their Performance Media Strategy In-House and Achieves 7–9X ROI with AdRoll
- Ownership of performance media strategies
- 7–9X ROAS
- White-glove service on strategy and execution
AdRoll products used: Retargeting, Managed Services, and Reporting Tools
Beauty is a competitive industry, with tens of thousands of brands and millions of products vying for customers. Customers are loyal when they find products they love, but they’re often up for trying something else. Because there’s always something new, it’s crucial for marketers to get their content in front of the right people.
That was the case for clean beauty brand RMS Beauty. Founded in 2009 by master makeup artist Rose-Marie Swift, RMS Beauty is a cosmetics and skincare brand committed to using only the safest ingredients in their high-performance products. They're known for quality and transparency, disclosing all of their raw, organic, and food-grade natural ingredients. They manufacture responsibly, package sustainably, and stand strong against animal testing. Known for their health-first mindset, the company aims to help customers feel beautiful inside and out.
When Alejandra Tenorio joined the company in 2022 as the Director of Digital Marketing, her role was to spearhead growth in direct-to-consumer ecommerce and everything touching the dot com experience alongside Miranda Ellingsen, VP of Marketing. RMS Beauty's biggest challenge is one that many younger brands will recognize: limited control over their performance media strategies.
Before Alejandra joined, RMS Beauty had outsourced the creation and execution of marketing campaigns to various agencies and consultants, which made it difficult to develop a cohesive approach.
“We really wanted to answer the question: ‘How can we break through the noise and get people to fall in love with products that we know are phenomenal?’” Tenorio said. “We needed to have full control of our strategies throughout the customer buying journey and see how the customers were perceiving us at every touchpoint.”
AdRoll's platform and white-glove service expands the capacity of a small team
The first step was bringing more of their marketing activities in-house.
“Bringing our paid media management and execution in-house would allow us to have full control of strategic execution while staying on top of social's ever-revolving trends and directly working closer with our paid partners,” Tenorio explained.
Prior to late 2022, RMS Beauty didn't do much direct marketing outside of Facebook. At that point, Tenorio partnered with the VP of Marketing, Miranda Ellingsen, and together, they decided late 2022 was the perfect time to try more direct marketing.
“We knew that in order to reach our customers and prospective customers, we needed to meet them wherever they were,” said Ellingsen. “This meant diversifying our marketing mix.”
In particular, they wanted to explore the possibilities of display marketing.
There were many marketing platforms claiming to meet RMS Beauty's direct marketing needs, and with a combined 15 years of industry experience, both Ellingsen and Tenorio were familiar with AdRoll and its competitors. AdRoll was the only platform that had both retargeting and display marketing capabilities to help the team achieve their goals. It was exciting to finally be in a place where Ellingsen and Tenorio could onboard the platform.
Since the two-person team is responsible for the entire ecommerce and dot com experience, any potential partner needs to work as an extension of that team. AdRoll did, offering a level of strategic guidance they hadn’t experienced before. Tenorio and Ellingsen quickly developed a strong relationship with their AdRoll account strategists, and that relationship is one of the things that sets AdRoll apart. They provide white-glove service both on strategy and execution, in addition to day-to-day account management and platform hygiene.
The timing was critical, too—RMS Beauty started using AdRoll as their display platform right before the holiday season so they could take full advantage of the additional traffic. It was a gamble, but they were confident it would work.
A robust retargeting strategy delivers 7–9X ROI with the AdRoll Display
Display marketing turned out to be a critical piece of the marketing puzzle for RMS Beauty.
“Display marketing became a prominent piece of our strategy to make sure we were cutting through the noise and adopting a true omni-channel strategy,” Ellingsen said.
The AdRoll team's guidance and robust retargeting technology generated a 7–9X return on investment (ROI), revenue attributed to the last click on a 30/30 attribution window. Their newfound ability to directly position the products that were most top of mind to RMS Beauty's customers and guide them down the purchase funnel played a key role in capturing a missing piece of the sales funnel.
Picture the scenario: Someone sees an ad for RMS Beauty on Facebook or Instagram and clicks through to the website. Then, they get distracted and abandon their shopping cart. Previously, the team was unable to reconnect with those customers. AdRoll enables RMS Beauty to find those customers again with targeted display ads that appear wherever they’re browsing online. The ads remind them about the products they left in their cart, hopefully nudging them to complete the purchase. Beyond bringing customers back to the RMS Beauty site to complete a purchase, retargeting offers a seamless, consistent experience that reinforces the company's branding and messaging.
“With AdRoll, the platform and our display retargeting strategies have played an important part in our full funnel paid performance strategies,” Tenorio explained. “As the customers move down the funnel and demonstrate purchasing intent, our retargeting ads kick in. So it's been really instrumental for us.”
Building on the momentum of successful campaigns
Tenorio and Ellingsen continue to modify and tweak campaigns after they launch, and it’s easy to make changes through AdRoll. The platform is intuitive, and the ease of use enables the pair to monitor campaign performance and adjust strategies quickly based on metrics. Combined with personalized support from the AdRoll team, the platform allows them to quickly scale their efforts and prepare for busy seasons.
Other platforms offer display advertising, but lack the strategic partnership that helps RMS Beauty burst through the noise.
“The caliber of strategic support and account management AdRoll provides is unlike other similar platforms in the industry. We are able to work closely with AdRoll's team to ensure we are meeting business goals and objectives, and the AdRoll team is great about staying proactive in our execution,” Tenorio said.
For that reason, Tenorio would recommend AdRoll to anyone looking to diversify their paid media strategies or optimize their display strategies, regardless of industry.
Partnering with AdRoll gave RMS Beauty the tools to own their marketing story. It provides the support needed to bring their performance media strategy in-house, take control of the customer journey, and receive an exceptional ROI. They continue to push forward on their growth goals, with the expectation that the coming holiday season will be their most successful yet.
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