Currently one of the fastest-growing consumer markets - if not the trendiest – is craft beer’s journey from hobbyist pursuit to the epicenter of themed bars, supermarket shelves and subscription services that has taken everyone by surprise.

The only problem for beer fanatics is knowing what to try next, especially when faced with thousands of potential choices. Craft beer is also a major export in markets like Belgium, Germany, the US and Australia, but there’s always the challenge of getting a foreign tipple delivered to the door. That’s where Beerwulf comes in. 

Part of the Heineken Group, Beerwulf is an international brand that connects beer brewers with beer lovers. Its online shop has a wide variety of kegs and equipment for dispensing their contents, giving customers a way of enjoying a premium draught product in the comfort of their own home. Rising levels of competitiveness around craft beer have made it even more important for brands like Beerwulf to have ways of incentivizing customers looking for a go-to beer merchant.

With the Netherlands a more mature market for Beerwulf and there being a constant focus on the customer lifetime value, Beerwulf tasked Awin to find a new method of driving more traffic and sales for its Netherlands shop and improve the retailer’s customer acquisition and retention.

The approach

Awin and Beerwulf deemed Redbrain - an incremental sales engine - the perfect partner to reinvigorate the brand’s affiliate activity without having to overhaul its current online presence. Redbrain’s technology-driven approach works by examining data from the brand, their products and existing PPC strategies to improve the ways in which it captures relevant customers on platforms like Google Shopping. Because of this, Awin and Beerwulf felt the partnership with Redbrain was essential to turning an important corner for success in the Netherlands. 

Collectively, the team set three main objectives:

• Grow Beerwulf’s new customer base by 5%
• Increase overall website visitors by 20%
• Generate 10% total website visitors via Redbrain

Smart execution

Once objectives were determined, Redbrain’s idea was to use PPC targeting to reel in customers searching for bottled beers, kegs and taps on Google, following the below three-pronged process to drive results: 

1. Run Beerwulf’s datafeed via its optimization system
   By pulling Beerwulf’s datafeed and sending it through Redbrain’s optimization system, the team was able to ensure Google had the best source of information possible.
2. Utilize RedBrain’s Machine Learning engine to better understand the performance of Beerwulf’s products
   After gathering enough bidding data in its Machine Learning engine, Redbrain was able to ascertain Beerwulf’s current account performance, which products were selling, what wasn’t selling and, most importantly, why.
3. Implement easy, actionable tweaks to improve PPC performance
   Following the analysis, its PPC team was able to implement strategic recommendations that produced better quality results - including reviewing search terms, identifying best sellers and giving any overlaps an additional push. Furthermore, through creative use of Google’s custom labels feature, Redbrain could efficiently segment Beerwulf’s categories and products into buckets based on performance. This allowed Redbrain to bid more aggressively on higher-performing products and terms, while maintaining higher levels of control over low demand products. This process was ultimately applied at device-level – thereby bidding strategically per item on each device.

The results

At the close of 2020 – and the partnership between Beerwulf and Redbrain ongoing – it was evident Redbrain was very successful at driving traffic for the retailer:

• +12% new customers, 140% above the initial goal
• +30% overall website traffic, 50% above the objective set
• +23% total website visitors from Redbrain, 130% to goal