Shopify Case Study: Universal Works
Looking back at our long-running work with the British menswear brand, Universal Works
Universal Works might just be one of the most well-respected names in British menswear. Since 2009 they’ve been making reliable, interesting clothing for modern life—taking influence from classic shapes of the past to create seriously wearable gear for the present day.
“As we have grown and matured as a digital brand this past few years, nativve have expertly steered and encouraged us along the right paths…” — David Keyte, Universal Works co-founder
The brand’s built on integrity—not just in the clothes they sell but in the way they sell them, so they were rightfully precious about their advertising and how it was conducted. As well as wanting to grow their D2C business, they wanted to be protective of their brand, avoiding aggressive advertising and marketing that might have short-term gains but damage their brand long-term.
We’ve worked with Universal Works since 2018 on a huge variety of projects, from helping them get the most out of their Shopify site to supporting store launches and building a retailer collaboration campaign. We understood the value of protecting their brand and set out to show them how digital marketing could be used effectively to grow the brand in a way that fit in with their ethos. In basic terms, we wanted to show them that digital marketing didn’t have to be irritating.
Here’s how we did it…
A Brand-Conscious Digital Ad Strategy
Universal Works do a lot of interesting stuff. Whether they’re opening a shop or collaborating with another highly-respected brand, they’ve got a lot to shout about—so their ads need never be ‘ads for ads sake’.
We have our own creative team, but Universal Works have always managed and produced the assets for each season and collaborative project in-house. From AW20 to collabs with revered brands like Saucony, Birkenstock, and Karhu, the video and stills are produced to showcase the details and quality of the pieces as well as encapsulating the tone of the brand.
Using these assets across paid digital activity, our job is to maximise the efficiency of the channel without impacting the brand’s integrity. Throughout the production process, we feed updated best practices for channel creative, discussing where it’s necessary to deviate from these to avoid the potential of cheapening the brand. We rule out certain placements and platforms altogether and keep a close eye on frequency alongside attributed sales metrics to avoid brand fatigue.
Despite this more cautious approach to digital advertising, the ads have been incredibly effective. The site has seen a huge increase in visitors, and monthly ad impressions are up by 1420% since July 2020. Our ads are incredibly effective—and so far this year they’ve had an average ROAS of 11.39.
Building a Retailer Collaboration Campaign
Universal Works have a strong relationship with their wholesale accounts—and they want to keep it that way. Whilst they were keen to grow their D2C business, they didn’t want to do it to the detriment of the shops they’d worked with for years. That meant making decisions that would impact immediate ad sales, like foregoing competing against them in branded search campaigns.
In 2020, we worked with the brand to develop a retailer collaboration campaign that would actively strengthen the brand/retailer relationships they’d worked hard to build and to bolster the launch of that year’s AW collection. The European-wide campaign incorporated over 9 retailers across 7 countries, all key wholesale accounts. Working directly with the stores, we ran localised ads through their social accounts, paid for by Universal Works and managed by us.
The campaign worked wonders. In supporting the retailers’ reach, awareness and sell-through, they not only strengthened Universal Works’ relationship with those accounts, but built local awareness directly from a local authority. Across nine retailers the ads had a reach of over 215,000, making 676,254 impressions and 10,762 link clicks—all with a cost-per-click of just £0.21.
Getting the Most out of a Mailing List
When we started working with Universal Works, they already had a healthy newsletter audience and kept their customers up-to-date with regular broadcast emails. What they weren’t doing was utilising email to its full potential, using features like automated workflows to hit individual subscribers with well-timed messages.
As email marketing experts, we knew how the brand could get more out of their mailing list. First, we suggested they move from Mailchimp over to Drip. Mailchimp can be effective, but with more advanced workflow and segmentation capabilities, Drip was better suited for Universal Works’ audience and objectives.
Once we’d managed the transfer of data between the two platforms, we used Drip’s expanded capabilities to update their email strategy. We developed a new, optimised template that was a better fit with the brand. We created a welcome flow for new sign-ups, offering new subscribers a taste of what they’d be receiving by showcasing a round up of some of the great stuff Universal Works had done.
Alongside this, we set out to grow Universal Works’ email database, using email lead ads across platforms to convert the already-engaged audience and new purchasers into subscribers. With these, we split-tested numerous subscriber benefits from early new season access to getting first dibs on new collaborations.
Since we started working with Universal Works their mailing list has almost trebled—with an open rate that’s regularly well over 50%.
The Story So Far
Beyond the numbers, we’ve built a strong foundation for clever, respectful digital marketing that complements this highly-renowned brand—with plenty more projects planned together for the coming season.
The team at Universal Works are pleased to be working with us too. Universal Works founder, David Keyte, said, “We’ve worked with nativve for more than 6 years now. We love working with Tim and the team as they 100% get us. They understand our unique ways (!), our strengths and our weaknesses, and they adapt accordingly, supporting and directing where required.
“They are very much like an extension of the team rather than a 3rd party agency. As we have grown and matured as a digital brand this past few years, nativve have expertly steered and encouraged us along the right paths and we have grown in a very positive and profitable way together.”
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