Published by isobel.regan@dontpanicprojects.com
Published Date 25.11.2022 
Contrast is on a mission to become the best eCommerce marketing agency in the UK. We always knew we were experts in our field. But for anyone who needs evidence, we have the awards to prove it. This time our Founder, Elliott Davidson, won the Rising Star Award at the UK eCommerce Awards.
What is the award?
The annual UK eCommerce Awards are a prestigious celebration of businesses and individuals within the eCommerce and digital marketing industries. The Rising Star Award is for professionals under 30 years old who have achieved exceptional success in their eCommerce career so far. With this award comes the recognition that Elliott and the Contrast team are exceptional at what they do and are leading the way within the eCommerce and digital marketing industries.
Why have we won it?
What led us to winning this award is our hard work, dedication and specialist knowledge, as well as the approach we take to eCommerce. By developing our own proven growth framework through working with clients and on our own eCommerce businesses, our success has excelled.
We stand out from other digital marketing agencies because we focus purely on eCommerce and we have the experience of developing and managing our own successful eCommerce businesses (bringing in 7 figures annually). Our framework is also unique from other agencies as we focus on both customer acquisition and customer retention rather than customer acquisition alone.
Why do we do this? It’s all in the data. Acquiring new customers is 5 times more expensive than retaining your existing customers. And your existing customers are 9 times more likely to make a repeat purchase. Ignoring customer retention is just leaving money on the table you could profitably generate.
So let’s have a closer look at our framework. It’s split into 3 sections: Demand capture (acquisition), demand generation (acquisition) and Customer retention. Combined, our framework works to get you the best short-term ROI, while still looking to the long-term success of the business.
Demand capture – Use paid media and SEO methods to capture the attention (and generating sales) of people already searching for your products. Short term, paid media (like paid shopping, paid search and paid retargeting) will bring in the fastest ROI. In the long term, SEO methods will ensure sustainable sales to people at the bottom and middle of the funnel.
Demand generation – Moving up the funnel, we use Digital PR, influencer marketing, top of the funnel SEO and paid social campaigns to generate awareness and desire for your products and brand. To do this we use our ad creative team to create scroll-stopping content that actually converts.
Customer retention – We target existing customers to take advantage of the cheaper and more successful retention conversion rates. To get you back in front of these existing customers we run paid remarketing, loyalty, email and SMS campaigns.
So now you know our methodology. But you want evidence that it actually works. Here’s some of our recent successes:
Y Frame Discounts: As one of our own eCommerce businesses, we have experimented with different strategies to get the best results. At the start of 2022 we set a goal of increasing turnover by 50% in the first half of 2022 compared to the second half of 2021. We implemented a new, more efficient pick packing system at our warehouse and cleansed our order management system product data so we could list more products on different sales channels. By June 2022 we had exceeded our goal with an increase in turnover of 65%.
EV Cables: Our success with our client EV Cables is still in progress as we have a couple of live campaigns (including email retention campaigns expected to bring in 10% of their overall revenue over the next 12 months). What we can tell you is the success we’ve had so far. What we did: Identified underperforming aspects of their site, implemented a theme replacement and customisation, and changed the navigation structure to reduce the click depth caused by an old botched replatforming. The result: A 44% increase in conversion rates from 1.37% to 1.97% and a 79.25% increase in organic revenue from £7,780.68 to £13,946.83 (in just 30 days).
Want to find out more of our success stories? You can find our case studies here.
“This rising star (Elliott) shows enthusiasm and a real passion for eCommerce and entrepreneurship…we are excited for (Elliotts) future in the eCommerce industry”
– UK eCommerce Awards judges
What’s next?
Yes we’re award winning and it’s nice to be able to showcase our success and have industry recognition. But awards don’t define us. What defines us is our proven growth framework and our successes with both clients and our own eCommerce businesses. So we carry on with what our plan always was…to become the best eCommerce agency and build our own mini eCommerce empire. We’ll still enter awards to prove our worth to those who need it, but our priority will always be our work.
“Our focus has and always will be on our mission to become the best eCommerce agency. Watch this space.”
– Elliott Davidson, Rising Star Award winner and Contrast founder
