Unlocking Growth With Dependable Data & Clear Customer Journeys: KITSCH

“Northbeam is my single source of truth and an analytics tool that every advanced marketer needs. I don’t even look at Facebook’s stats anymore and rely only on Northbeam to make tactical adjustments. Northbeam shows me metrics I didn’t even know to look for.“ 
–Carly London, Marketing Consultant, KITSCH

KITSCH is a Los Angeles-based women’s accessories brand built on positivity and hard work through supporting its community with elevated beauty products. Founded in 2010 by Cassandra Thurswell, the $87M brand started with a simple hair tie before expanding into beauty and personal care, including a popular silk sleep line. After iOS14 changed the digital privacy landscape, the brand grappled with identifying signals from noise across all channels, but found Facebook especially difficult to figure out. KITSCH realized they could no longer rely on third-party data and looked to find a first-party solution for the next phase of their growth journey.

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Wasted Spend from Incomplete Platform Data

KITSCH was used to making marketing allocation decisions based on in-platform data. However, after iOS14 reduced the efficacy of Facebook’s tracking, Carly London, KITSCH’s Marketing Consultant, noticed the ROAS and revenue metrics she was seeing weren’t matching with reality and struggled to understand the true performance of her campaigns. 

“It’s so confusing to figure out what’s really going on with Facebook. I wasn’t able to get a complete and accurate picture of performance,” London said. “Sometimes Facebook would report positive ROAS on campaigns but I wouldn’t see results after we spent more.”

She realized the platforms were using limited modeling practices to extrapolate favorable results for their own products, even if underlying metrics like CTR or time spent on site indicated questionable traffic quality. Tired of wasting spend on campaigns that weren’t driving results, London began looking for an attribution software that doesn’t leverage third-party data or modeling that she could rely on for objective metrics. 

The Northbeam Difference: First Party Data and World-Class Modeling

After onboarding, KITSCH was able to take advantage of Northbeam’s proprietary pixel to begin collecting first-party data, ending their reliance on in-platform reporting. Northbeam doesn’t use any third-party platform data in their attribution modeling, so KITSCH immediately noticed more plausible metrics that were in line with revenue performance. Northbeam also gave the team a sharper understanding of customer journeys by leveraging world-class Machine Learning models to accurately stitch users across sessions through a bespoke identity and device graph. 

Armed with a clear picture of how campaigns were actually performing in Facebook, KITSCH began setting new benchmarks based on Northbeam’s attribution modeling. London used Northbeam’s Clicks Only model to compare ROAS across different campaigns to identify top-of-the-funnel strategies responsible for bottom-of-the-funnel conversions. Northbeam uncovered several hidden prospecting campaigns that Facebook had been underselling, so London began scaling spend to take advantage. With these insights, KITSCH was able to increase their Facebook ROAS +22% and revenue +60% while actually lowering CAC -17%. 

With the top channel back on track and performing well, Yingying Kuang, Senior Director of Marketing, turned her attention towards optimizing KITSCH’s media mix to find new audiences. The team had been experimenting with Google Ads, but couldn’t figure out if spending on other platforms would have an incremental impact on their bottom line. Kuang used Northbeam’s Common Click Touchpoints feature to analyze platform interaction and discovered that Branded Search overlapped heavily with Facebook prospecting campaigns with an excellent conversion rate of about 50%. KITSCH now spends almost 20% of their media budget on Google with revenue up +88% and ROAS +70%. 

Pursuing Omni-Channel Perfection

Northbeam gave KITSCH a much better grasp of marketing performance and a holistic understanding of which touchpoints were ultimately driving sales. Thanks to Northbeam’s first-party data and modeling, KITSCH was able to make effective allocation decisions driving +75% more revenue and improving ROAS +39% across all channels. KITSCH even saw an increase in spend efficiency with CAC decreasing 21%. 

“The difference after Northbeam was night and day,” explained London. “We were stumbling around in the dark before, but Northbeam helped us cut through the fog and gave us the confidence to trust our metrics. We’re able to make smart and timely choices, and thanks to that we’re on the path to profitable growth.” 

KITSCH continues to leverage Northbeam by using the platform’s ability to stitch users across multi-platform journeys to optimize their media mix. Due to the potential they saw with Google Branded Search, they are now testing out Bing and TikTok ads because they’re both discovery platforms. Although they only represent a small portion of total spend, KITSCH is already seeing promising results on both: Bing revenue increased +175% and ROAS +61% while TikTok ROAS also increased +64%, due to an efficiency gain with CAC down 35%.

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