Brooks Running Improves Paid Search Click-Through Rate by 260% Using Amperity on AWS

Brooks Running (Brooks) centralized siloed data systems, developed comprehensive customer profiles, and fulfilled its runner-centric mission with the help of Amperity, an AWS Retail Competency Partner. Brooks, an athletic apparel and equipment company, lacked a single source of data and needed to gain valuable insights and metrics to assess its performance and personalize the customer experience. Using Amperity’s Customer Data Platform (CDP), the company improved data visibility, personalization, and analytics. Since engaging Amperity, Brooks gained a 128 percent return on its advertising spending and improved paid search click-through rates by 260 percent.

Brooks has a mission to place the runner’s needs at the center of its operations. The athletic equipment company designs and markets sneakers, clothing, and accessories that are sold in over 60 countries. Previously, the company hosted data on multiple systems and relied on third-party agencies for certain marketing and analytics services. To gain more actionable insights and better serve its runners, Brooks needed to break free from its siloed data systems and unify customer data across channels.

After discovering Amazon Web Services (AWS) Retail Competency Partner Amperity in 2018, Brooks implemented Amperity’s CDP on AWS and onboarded all its customer data. Since the implementation, the company has unlocked key business benefits and advanced its analytics capabilities.

Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Amperity helps brands better understand their customers, make strategic decisions, and improve the customer experience using data. Amperity primarily serves the retail, travel, and hospitality industries and has achieved the AWS Retail Competency, which recognizes AWS Partners that provide innovative technology offerings that accelerate retailers’ modernization and innovation journeys. “Our solutions operate using a software-as-a-service multitenant environment powered by AWS,” says Christian Saffici, partner solution consultant at Amperity.

Brands can use Amperity to ingest, pull, and analyze data across multiple sources, such as loyalty programs, email, ecommerce activities, and mobile sites. Amperity makes this data available to brands when they need it. When Brooks engaged Amperity with a goal to gain a comprehensive view of its customers, Amperity knew its CDP and accompanying suite of tools, especially Customer 360, could help. “We use Customer 360 to condense multiple records into one known customer profile,” says Saffici. “Our approach was to activate this solution for Brooks and unify all the customer data within its system.”

Amperity onboarded Brooks quickly to the CDP. “Brooks contracted with Amperity to run a 10-week proof of concept and ended up accomplishing more during the test than during the entire engagement with the other provider,” says Mark McKelvey, Vice President of IT at Brooks. “The technology was up and running within 90 days.” Within 10 weeks of engagement, Brooks unlocked key improvements while using Amperity’s solution.

Amperity captures and streams Brooks customer data to storage on AWS using Amazon Data Firehose, an extract, transform, load service that reliably captures, transforms, and delivers streaming data to data lakes, data stores, and analytics services. This raw data is stored on Amazon Redshift—which uses SQL to analyze structured and semistructured data across data warehouses, operational databases, and data lakes—or Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.

Using Amperity’s solutions, Brooks ingests and analyzes customer data from a variety of sources and formats safely and securely. “Our AWS-powered solution provides Brooks with a complete view of unique customers, regardless of which system they originated in,” says Saffici. “We provide a consolidated view of transaction and behavioral data from all of Brooks’ global customers in one database. With Amperity, Brooks can understand its customers better, reward loyal consumers, and know when to present an offer to a customer segment.” 

The company has seen significant benefits since centralizing its siloed systems and implementing Amperity’s Customer 360. Now Brooks employees have the data they need to approach runners in the right way, at the right time, and with the right language. For example, when a customer calls for support, agents can use Customer 360 to access key data about the caller, such as purchasing history. Agents can then use this data to resolve the issue and expedite the support request, improving satisfaction rates.

After the implementation, Amperity engaged Brooks to test its AmpIQ solution, which provides personalized insights and smart customer segmentation. Using AmpIQ, Brooks can access valuable customer data insights and analytics tools, expanding its previously limited data analytics capabilities. The company used insights from AmpIQ to drive significant marketing success. “We’ve seen an incredible rise on search,” says Melanie Allen, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Brooks. “We look around the table, and we wonder, ‘are these real numbers?’ Our click-through rate on paid search has gone up 260 percent since we started working with Amperity.” By using insights on Amperity to inform marketing decisions, Brooks unlocked a 128 percent return on its advertising spending. After realizing these benefits, the company is now using these insights to inform its overall business strategy. 

Brooks also used insights on AmpIQ to develop personalized email campaigns, targeting certain customer segments based on behavioral data. Using this solution, the company improved its email open rate by 2.4 times. “What this data shows is that AmpIQ is funneling a smart personalization engine into all our marketing channels,” says Allen. “We’re able to feed those channels and gain those insights, which helps us communicate with runners in the multiple ways they consume media and information.” Brooks has also seen a 150 percent increase in its paid social engagement metrics, indicating a higher level of interest among its customers in its marketing initiatives.

In the future, Brooks will continually evolve its customer data capabilities and drive business growth using Amperity’s suite of AWS-powered solutions. It will continue to onboard more customer data and conduct tests to improve its communications.

With Amperity, Brooks will drive greater personalization across its channels, improving the customer experience and promoting long-term loyalty. “Amperity and Brooks are long-term business partners focused on delivering value to the customer,” says Aiasha Khalid, Partner Marketing Manager at Amperity. “Brooks is a great example of what’s possible when you really want to understand your customer data.”