CASE STUDIES
Emerald X
Behavioral and Growth Strategy
The Brief
Most engagements don’t last this long, but I worked with Emerald X for a decade. The engagement started on one trade show, ASD Market Week, and expanded to 14 across the portfolio as the work compounded: NY NOW, MJBizCon, ReMind, Outdoor Retailer, COUTURE, JA New York, Digital Dealer, Industrial Fastener Expo and more.
The event categories had almost nothing in common with each other, but the objectives were the same across all of them: audience growth, sales growth, and acquisition efficiency. My job was to figure out what was actually moving each market and architect marketing strategy to fit what was driving each of these three areas at the time.
Revenue growth, sales growth, and audiences and attendance growth all came from two things – reading digital audience behavior and understanding platform algorithmic changes.
The first driver of success was reading digital audience behavior and adapting to platform changes as they happened. What that meant in practice was that I had to continually read digital channel behavior and build strategy to fit what was moving. Platform algorithms, audience use of those platforms, trending narratives and interests were dynamic factors that not only evolved over time, but they became more complex as the platforms themselves became more expansive and added features.
The Approach
The second driver of success was the measurement infrastructure underneath that let the practice scale. Standardizing Google Analytics across the portfolio, dimensionalizing the conversion funnel and building the UTM and tracking frameworks that became the company standard across more than 100 Emerald properties were the foundation that made every behavioral read defensible. The standardization started inside one group and rolled out across the organization, becoming the single readable view of cross-channel performance with variables when necessary.
Results
What started with one group became the standard for many other divisions within the company. The measurement and tracking infrastructure built inside the original engagement became the standard across more than 100 Emerald properties, supporting a portfolio generating $300-500 million in annual revenue. The advisory scope expanded continuously across the decade because the frameworks underneath it held up against every change in the digital environment.
Learnings
Continual iteration and review is required in order to operate successfully to drive growth of any kind. The discipline is reading the behavior continuously, holding the KPI steady and being willing to move the tactics, channels and investment of time and resources to fit the new digital landscape. That's what produced a decade of compounding results across categories that had nothing else in common.
Camille Candella, EVP Marketing and Sales, Emerald Retail Group