The Brief

Northern partnered with Boathouse to determine the success of their paid media campaigns, conversion attribution, and optimization for growth. With a clearer picture of where conversions were happening, we delivered incredible results for Boathouse. 

The Challenge

From humble beginnings, Boathouse first opened in St. Catharines, Ontario in 1973 catering to adventurers and athletes. Now with 80 stores across Canada and a robust eCommerce presence, Boathouse is no longer a small business but still keeps to its roots: offering premium apparel, accessories, and footwear for the outdoor thrill-seeker in everyone.

With Boathouse’s continuous growth, they needed to truly understand the impact of their paid media campaigns across all publishers. They needed to determine how their ads on each publisher were driving incremental conversions, both online and offline. Boathouse needed a clearer picture of how conversions were attributed to determine which campaigns and publishers were making the most impact.

The Strategy

Boathouse partnered with Northern Commerce to perform advanced analytics on their campaigns across all publishers. But first, our team needed to ensure conversions were attributed properly.

Custom conversions were set up to more accurately measure specific audience actions. This was done by creating specific rules and events for web pages so conversions were more accurately attributed and audiences were better understood. Based on this new data, Boathouse was able to use more accurate audiences to better target their ads, determine in-store pick up of an online purchase, or if a purchase was made by a repeat customer. In turn, lift could be measured on those behaviours to paint a detailed picture of their customer behaviour.

To verify campaign effectiveness, Boathouse conducted a cross-publisher conversion lift test. This tested Facebook against one other publisher to measure incremental conversions. This test works by randomly assigning audiences into four groups: people who could see all Boathouse advertising, people who could only see Facebook ads, people who could only see ads from the other publisher, and people who couldn’t see ads from either publisher. The test then compared the difference in conversions across all audiences to understand how seeing ads from each publisher, as well as ads from both publishers together, drove conversions.

How We Did It

  • Created more specific attribution rules to accurately measure conversions.
  • Tested to measure incremental conversions using a cross-publisher lift test.
  • Improved reporting to track and analyze campaign results.
  • Optimized campaign targeting, budgeting, and media planning for future campaigns.