Driving Efficient CPAs Using SLM’s Market-Based Approach.

Primary is an online children’s clothing company that focuses on providing high-quality and versatile apparel for kids. Primary aims to simplify the process of shopping for children’s clothing by offering a curated collection of essential basics in a wide range of colors. By avoiding logos, slogans, and graphics, the brand allows kids to express their individuality through their own personal style.

Before partnering with SLM, Primary knew who their ideal target audience was but they struggled to find what markets their target audience was highly saturated in. After seeing strong CPAs in the Moms and New Baby national modeled mailings and their core market-based mailings, there was an appetite for additional scale outside of those target audiences. The city/market-based mailings provide a large opportunity for scale as SLM lists between 6-8MM circulation each month. The challenge for Primary was determining which markets they should test and run consistently in as their goal was to increase scale in the channel and prove out the market-based targeting approach.

SLM was able to review lifetime matchback results for Primary’s shared mail campaigns and identify markets which historically produced the strongest results based on Primary’s key metrics for success. These markets were grouped into three categories, top performers (CPAs <$40), medium performers (CPAs $40-60), and low performers (CPAs $60+). SLM recommended that the top performers be mailed whenever offered within the program. Middle performers were recommended during times of high seasonality. Lower performers were placed on an indefinite pause. For the top performing markets, SLM recommended testing into a few of the surrounding markets to see if the larger geographic area performs strongly as well. With monthly matchbacks, the data is enriched after each mailing further optimizing campaign performance.