Ashley D. Su 
From its humble but spirited beginnings in an outdoor market in 2004, Portland, Maine-based Sock It to Me has grown into a powerful (and highly talented) team of over 40 employees creating over 400 original designs and serving over 4,000 wholesale accounts. like its own online store.
Its growth has been fueled by its unique product offering, personalized service, engaging brand personality and high impact philanthropy. Sock It to Me socks come in inclusive sizes for the whole family. The recent addition of colorful masks is knitted with special copper fibers, not just standard cotton.
In 2020, the company decided to expand its e-commerce capabilities to explore and capitalize on the higher margin potential of its website. To drive these direct consumer efforts, Sock It to Me selected performance marketing agency DMi Partners to help drive traffic to their website by exposing the brand to media and influencers. A strong affiliate marketing campaign introduced the brand to new audiences online, inspiring them to wear awesome clothes that defy the world’s expectations.
Impressed by DMi’s strong performance marketing results and its smart, brand-friendly approach, Sock It to Me invited the agency to take the lead in additional performance marketing efforts, which included engine optimization of research, pay per click and helping the business navigate a website redesign. . The successful and ever-deepening engagement between the agency and the client defied expectations. The increase in traffic to the e-commerce website has made the ordinary income impressive.
Sock It to Me’s engagement with DMi began with Affiliate Marketing. Seeing these efforts pay off quickly led the company to hire DMI Partners to perform an ADA audit of the Sock It to Me website. The agency is now leading the way for all SEO, paid search and social media efforts. paying the customer.
Goals
As it sought to develop its e-commerce capabilities, Sock It to Me set three main goals:
- Generate more income through e-commerce. The brand needed to market itself and establish itself in the market to generate revenue through its website, rather than relying on outlets for sales.
- Design an affiliate marketing campaign that builds brand recognition and excites customers with its unique product line. The brand needed to expand its reach and increase its audience by educating publishers about its offering.
- Build on the success of the affiliate marketing campaign to attract even more potential customers to the website. To gain the widest audience, generate traffic and generate sales, the campaign needed to improve its overall performance marketing strategy.
Innovation and creativity
Understanding that the strength of the Sock It to Me brand lay in its unique positioning and colorful personality, DMI strived to promote this character throughout the campaign. Just as the brand includes an original hand-drawn doodle with the receipt of every order, DMI has made sure to position the brand as fun, fresh, individual and cool. The DMI partners focused on the distinct message and approach of Sock It to Me, ensuring a match in their tone.
DMi set out to recruit a holistic mix of Affiliate Partners. The selected bloggers and influencers each received three to five pairs of socks and an attractive commission offer. One hundred and forty locations, including mass media publishers, have been secured throughout 2020. Much of the affiliate content, which contributed 13% of total e-commerce sales, has been redirected to social media of the brand.
Keywords have been researched and selected to drive traffic, increase sales, and match the brand’s message and tone online. Given the distinct needs and preferences of the target audience, the team had to think outside the box to maximize the impact of the brand’s unique voice. The main keywords for the website included funky socks, cool socks, and fun socks.
Additionally, DMi leveraged their creative team to produce fun and engaging, brand-friendly marketing materials like the History of Undergarments infographic to help the brand increase traffic and sales.
The agency was able to support and creatively influence the overhaul of the e-commerce site, launched in 2020, and has considerably improved the site’s navigation. Understanding how emotion plays an important role in the decision-making process of the target audience, the agency designed an experience that would allow consumers to “shop according to their mood.” This brand-specific experience proved to be successful, with a 12% increase in conversion rate.
Smart execution
The Sock It to Me brand was relatively unknown to consumers, presenting several challenges to DMi. To overcome this, DMi started an in-depth competitive analysis.
The information uncovered helped DMi determine which levers the brand should operate, and when. Understanding competitor promotional strategies allowed Sock It to Me to identify when a competitor’s 25% off offer would hurt their chances of exposure to Affiliate Publishers, resulting in increased commission rates during those times. to help soften Sock It to Me brand clothing.
DMi’s analysis also revealed the commission rates that the brand’s competitors were offering affiliates, allowing them to gain market share. The information gained also helped DMi secure placements with publishers and affiliates where the Sock It to Me brand would stand out.
Key publisher locations included:
- The Spruce: 8 best sock subscriptions of 2020
- Business Insider: 34 Space Toys For Kids Who Love Space
- Refinery29: 34 Unmissable Codes For A Single Day To Use Right Now
- My Subscription Addiction: Sock It to Me Review
- Men’s Journal: Looking for Valentine’s Day gifts that are off the beaten track? Discover Sock It to Me.
In the absence of paid search and paid social referrals, DMi was forced to take an experimental approach. The agency has met all paid search revenue targets, and it continues to strategically experiment on the path to transforming the channel into a revenue generator.
When tasked with helping Sock It to Me navigate their site redesign, DMi’s SEO team expertly handled new site issues and developed strategies to improve overall rankings. They helped web designers improve navigation and guided the design of the structure, including the taxonomy of the products and the title page. The website now ranks very well in the search for 50-60 main keywords with matching site, speed and accessibility scores.
Human contact
Working with a brand that responds to customers with personalized, human-sent communications, DMi knew how important it would be to ensure that their entire approach included a human touch.
While agencies often describe themselves as extensions of their client’s marketing department, in the case of Sock It to Me and DMi Partners, the teams have become more and more integrated with the results.
DMi’s “white glove” approach fostered a collaborative and unified team environment. As the client’s confidence in DMi increased, so did the levels of creative and logistical cooperation between the agency and the client. Additionally, DMi has assumed responsibility for auditing the brand’s website for ADA compliance. While this may not be a tedious task, the audit identified many ways the website could be creatively improved to provide visitors with the most consistent and smooth experience. possible.
Results and efficiency
The success of the affiliate marketing program has boosted Sock It to Me’s confidence in DMi’s capabilities so significantly that it has enabled the agency to take the lead in several growth initiatives for 2020 and beyond. of the.
- Affiliate Marketing: The affiliate program collected 140 placements throughout the campaign. Over 137 active click-through affiliates and over 30 active selling affiliates generated over 84,000 clicks and contributed 13% of total e-commerce sales.
- SEO : The team achieved a # 1 ranking on the search term “socks”. Over 90% of priority keywords achieved first page rankings. Over 50% of priority keywords reached the top five. The organic rankings of the website pages also generated a significant return on investment.
- PPC: We are currently meeting the PPC revenue and profitability targets after narrowing the search campaign to the most profitable efforts in the first quarter.
- Website: DMi helped the client navigate a site redesign and ecommerce platform migration, especially with regards to SEO, UX, and tracking.
“DMi has acted as a true partner in business development every step of the way on our journey together,” says Iwa Hooe, CEO of Sock It to Me. “He came to the table with a concrete plan to increase traffic to our site Web via SEO, Affiliate and Paid Media strategies. Shades were woven into these strategies that indicated he was paying attention to our brand and our consumers, which only affirmed the engagement he contributed. To our success. In the beginning, DMi exceeded our expectations at all levels. In addition to the transparency and collaboration he offered us every step of the way, his support and knowledge were instrumental in the success of our website migration project. DMi continues to guide us with tactics to improve site speed and maintain ADA and WCAG compliance, and now focuses on helping us maximize our traffic opportunities. we are lucky to have a partner like them! “
Kristina Nolan is Vice President of Affiliate Marketing at DMi Partners, a full-service digital marketing agency based in Philadelphia.
