Product Launch Through 360* Lens
Brand Introduction
The eBags brand is a private label travel gear and luggage brand sold on eBags.com, which at the time of this launch, was an ecommerce marketplace that made up of more than 900 brands within the travel industry from luggage to backpacks to packing accessories to tech and clothing.
The eBags brand was born from the idea that customers know best. By leveraging technology, it designed its products based on customer-driven feedback mined from millions of customer reviews.
Summary
In the luggage industry, branding, storytelling and innovative tech features were on the rise. And, with newcomers to the market like Away, the challenge was how to launch a product with a compelling message and storyline, and the need for speed in product development in order to keep up with industry trends and the competition.
Fortunately, the eBags brand had an existing carry-on on the market called the Fortis, but it was time to launch a 2.0 version.
I worked closely with the Director of Marketing and Product Development to take an insights-based approach, analyzing product reviews, customer surveys, and researching the industry to understand exactly what we needed to do to differentiate and enhance our product. Thus, the Fortis Pro was born.
Part of the pricing strategy was to offer it at a higher price point than the original yet slightly lower than the competition. After all, this product was going to be the highest dollar item with the highest profit margins in the brand’s history so it needed a successful launch to demonstrate the growth potential of this strategy—and also a different marketing approach that reinforced its image as a purveyor of high-quality products.
The Challenge
With the aggressive sales forecasts set out for the Fortis Pro, it needed a refined positioning, communications strategy, and clear go-to-market plan. However, the brand didn't exactly have a GTM strategy or playbook to pull from—and previous marketing techniques alone weren't going to be enough to deliver the ROI the product demanded.
The company needed a fully integrated marketing campaign, including PR support, a launch strategy, branding, messaging, and creative assets such as photography and video.
The Solution
Develop a new comprehensive product launch strategy focusing on brand awareness, building affinity and storytelling. The strategy included everything from pre-launch content development to cross-functional launch calendar to paid advertising to PR coverage to an immersive site experience to email sequencing to social media strategy and influencer marketing.
This approach became the go-forward playbook for future product launches—the stats speak for themselves:
Product sold out in 2 months
15% of sales came from pre-sale
7% of sales came from PR hits (vs <1% avg)
Email saw 16% lift in open rate & 35% lift in CTR
Paid social saw 2% lift in CTR & 4x ROAS (vs 2.5x)
Time spent on product page increased by :40
Gained over 1K assets from content creators
Organic social campaign generated 11M impressions, 1.5M likes & 41K comments
Most engaging & profitable campaign to date
My Role
Beyond partnering with the Director of Product Development and Director of Marketing to formalize a comprehensive GTM strategy, my main role in this project was creating the product's narrative, driving the look/tone/feel strategy, securing inclusive PR coverage, and developing and launching social and influencer campaigns.
This included everything from marketing strategy, product positioning, messaging framework, content strategy, wireframing, multi-channel copywriting, project managing, and driving the creative strategy for the photography and videography that would be used across the full digital eco-system.
Comprehensive GTM Strategy
Pre-Launch
Insight-based product development
Sample request
Comprehensive creative asset & content development
Ratings & review seeding
Cross-functional alignment and calendar
Launch
Pre-sell 2 weeks before official live-date
Inclusive PR coverage
Influencer campaigns
Immersive site experience
Post-Launch
Strategic CRM sequencing & rewards
Paid social and advertising
On-going PR support
Mobile-first landing pages
Market Research
In order to develop marketing strategies and copywriting that would raise awareness, drive customer growth and improve the eBags brand positioning, I conducted competitive research to analyze the market and understand customer behavior. These insights enabled me to make strategic data-driven decisions for multichannel marketing and audiences. It also helped determine what content to highlight in terms of information architecture and product feature prioritization.
From the research, we learned quickly that people either love the eBags brand, or they don’t know the eBags brand. What do they love? Organization. Practicality. Durability. The challenge was, how do you tell a compelling story around “organization, practicality and durability”? We needed to imbue these features with emotion and show audiences the value the eBags Fortis Pro Carry-On provides and how it will enhance their life on-the-go.
Creative Strategy
Creative briefing, translating, visual storytelling, product marketing
After defining what makes this product unique and differentiated, I began developing creative strategies and creative briefs, ensuring both align with the expectations for this launch as a whole. And, by clearly defining the project goals I was able to achieve cross-functional team alignment before moving forward with development.
The Challenge
No brand-book, guidelines, this, that, or the other
With no brand-specific font treatments, colors, voice or the like, I needed to develop a product-specific narrative that was going feel cohesive across channels while keeping all of the creative and content as ageless as possible. The aim? To lean into the quirky heritage whilst at the same time being fresh and innovative: giving an inquisitive but selective audience a fresh take on what it means to travel well-organized, in-style and with a luxury item with an affordable price tag.
Shaping the Narrative
A customer-first approach to telling better stories
Even though the brand's visual identity was absent, the brand was known for being customer-centric at its core. Given that, it was paramount the creative was easily digestible and enabled quick micro-wins for the customer. I began to answer these questions:
What does the eBags Fortis Pro customer really want?
What customer-problems does the product solve?
What is travel like right now without this product?
What is travel like with this product?
How is the customer going to be able to do something they weren't able to do before?
What are the competition doing and not-doing?
The Solution
Bring the features to life in a meaningful way that feels both practical and relatable
By identifying the priority features of the product and clearly defining the target audience, I was able to craft contextually relevant creative assets for site and marketing channels. I directed a team of photographers, animators, and digital imaging editors from end to end to create the following assets:
A series of product GIFs that would turn each unique feature into a <3 second visual story
A lifestyle video asset shot in a real-world scene
Additional stylized imagery for marketing and web placements
Content Strategy
Research, ideate, wireframe, write
The team and I felt strongly that a memorable page experience was going to help us stand out from the competition while also positioning us as the leader in our category. From a product page perspective, there was a lot of room to tell better stories below the fold. Before diving deep into the weeds, I took a 360 view at how the content—and creative—would translate across channels and audiences then I got to work.
The Process
The focus was to engage and not overwhelm the consumer
The process included research, ideation, wireframing, writing/editing and design. We conducted quick competitor research and analysis and found what we liked and disliked about their websites. We noticed emerging trends from other direct-to-consumer brands and marketplaces and used this data to guide our own UX wireframing. The goal was to create an informative user-first page experience that would engage yet not overwhelm the user. I set out to answer these questions:
What can be done to elevate and optimize the product page experience?
What UX can be realistically built within the time frame and combines cognitive psychology, brand personality and functionality?
How can we leverage the creative assets to educate our customers and demonstrate how they can get the most out of this product?
The Solution
Educate and demonstrate the value this product provides
To align the UX with the creative strategy, we created a multi-tiered page experience that was designed to engage and showcase customer-wins. I broke the content into 3 information buckets so each of the 9 product GIFs would be visually organized and easier to digest. I then wrote customer-benefiting headlines for each GIF keeping the messaging framework concise and with a touch of smart wit when possible.
We used visual cues to create micro-interactions such as swipe throughs and content peek-a-boos to get the customer engaging with the page—whether they were on desktop or mobile.
And, we leveraged smart elements like iconography, PR quotes, UGC, and relatable messaging to help inform and inspire consumers. All of this combined gave customers confidence in their purchasing decision.
The Result
Increased conversion and customer engagement
This content strategy was undeniably a driving factor for increasing conversions and customer engagement. Overall time spent on page increased by 40 seconds and conversion improved by 20% when comparing the original product or other similar products sold on ebags.com without such content.
LivenIntent
By leveraging the short product GIFs to drive traffic to our product pages, we were able to capture customers’ attention while telling the unique product story. Eventually, we evolved our creative strategy to drive consumers to long-form landing pages specifically tailored to this channel. This approach allowed us to optimize the content and scale with email as an acquisition channel.
87% higher ROAS
25% lower CPA
7% lower bounce rate
*compared to advertising on other acquisition channels
Paid Social & Ads
Drove strong conversion by leveraging the feature-rich product GIFs and lifestyle video
Most profitable campaign to-date given the Fortis Pro's higher PCM and GM. In addition to paid soial advertising, we ran ads in google, display, taboola, and other networks to gain traffic and generate sales.
Story-inspired email sequencing with introduction, feature-focused and urgency messaging
CTR +35% above monthly average
+700k emails sent
2% CVR compared to 1% overall
Influencer
Influencers and content creators helped expand reach and grow the brand's creative library
Gained +1K assets
11M impressions
1.5M likes
41K comments
