The Challenge
Perfect Personalised Gifts, a Leeds-based manufacturer and retailer of custom gifts, was looking to re-focus on the corporate market to counter a slowdown in demand from personal customers.
Specialists in creating bespoke gift items, PPG design, manufacture and despatch from a workshop in Leeds and have traded successfully on sales channels such as Not On The High Street, Etsy and Amazon Handmade.
However, with discretionary spending squeezed, gifts are sometimes regarded as ‘non-essential’ by many personal customers, who are dealing with a cost of living crisis.
The gift and home sector is also a very competitive price market, and the commissions charged by some channels can be as high as 35 per cent.
In response, PPG wanted to extend the reach of the business and offer personalised, branded merchandise for the corporate market.
Their new proposition works with an order quantity as small as one, appealing to businesses of all sizes.
They asked Ascensor to develop a website for their new venture, Perfect Branded Gifts, as well as create email marketing campaigns to generate leads and organic social posts to boost brand awareness.
The need to move quickly was key to the whole project.
What We Did
Recognising the time constraints, we suggested a quote-based design would provide the fastest route to market for PBG, rather than a full Ecommerce site which would take longer to launch.
Using the existing Perfect Personalised Gifts website as a starting point, the development team created a customised Shopify site with 19 separate product pages showcasing PBG’s range of personalisable products.
We used the Matrixify app to make the bulk importation, migration and updating of products and inventory levels much more efficient.
The initial build was completed within two weeks, and a soft launch allowed PBG to begin trading immediately.
Concurrently, we began email and organic social campaigns to generate leads for the new venture.
Ascensor’s marketing specialists curated target data focusing on industries that potentially would be looking for branded goods to send to clients and team members.
Compelling email campaigns centred on specific types of branded product or seasonal campaigns are now regularly sent to thousands of contacts using Omnisend, generating leads and orders from businesses nationwide.
Our social team is now posting purposeful, engaging content three times a week on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram for PBG, showcasing their unusual bespoke items including branded vegan travel sweets, personalised cheeseboards and branded cycling gifts.
Since the site’s launch we have also built out compelling landing pages on a monthly basis, each focusing on a specific product range or key event in the sales calendar.
Results
The site is already performing far above the client’s expectations, with traffic levels and conversions growing dramatically since launch. New corporate clients include car retailer JCT600, Bradford Bulls RLFC, Campuslife, Movin Legal and Leeds homelessness charity Simon on the Streets.
The speed with which the business has taken off has allowed PBG and Ascensor to start work on a fully functioning, conversion-focused Ecommerce site, which is expected to launch in the coming months.
Email and organic social campaigns are also ongoing, with open rates and engagement increasing month on month.
What PBG said:
We have worked with the team at Ascensor since 2014. They have always been a huge part of our continued success online, assisting us with new websites, marketing, SEO and personal LinkedIn branding.
They take the time to really get to know us and our brand values. The team listen to us and work with us to bring to fruition our goals and vision. We wouldn’t work with any other digital agency – they are the best at what they do.
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