How Sonos improved ROAS at scale with Sprinklr
The Challenge
Founded in 2002, Sonos had a vision to build amazing products using the latest technologies that allow music lovers to play any song, anywhere in their homes, wirelessly and with superior sound.
Like many consumer-electronics brands, the global pandemic forced Sonos to solve unanticipated disruptions and reimagine how it does business with their global customers. Because of lockdowns, customers were unable to go to physical stores to make their purchases, learn about new products, and speak to a sales associate in person. To maintain business continuity, Sonos quickly recognized the need to accelerate its digital transformation goals and shift to a digital-first mindset, giving their customers alternative ways to shop and share their feedback.
Ingrid Harris leads paid media for all of North America at Sonos. Because digital media changes so frequently with ever-evolving social platforms, Harris and her team must be nimble to react to changing technologies and priorities. The mission of the paid media department is to drive traffic to Sonos.com and focus on qualified customers, optimizing toward one clear key performance indicator (KPI) for return on ad spend (ROAS).
Sonos needed to optimize revenue growth and ROAS in a scalable way, simplify and streamline the process of budget allocation, and determine which paid media campaigns were performing best to further those investments. Sonos previously used Facebook Pixel metrics to measure paid social media transactions and used Google Analytics for all other channels. Because the single source of truth for Sonos is Google Analytics, they needed a way to better measure and determine the value of those transactions and optimize ROAS across channels. Sonos has been partnering with Sprinklr since 2017 but saw an opportunity to expand how it is using Sprinklr’s industry-leading unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform to:
- Reduce data discrepancies
- Receive real-time reporting from Google Analytics
- Share ad performance across teams in a scalable way
- Automate reporting and optimization to drive efficiencies
The Solution
Sonos turned to Sprinklr to help solve these problems by automating an integration with Google Analytics, allowing them to reduce inefficiencies and scale revenue growth.
Sprinklr integrates so nicely with Google Analytics, and allows for quick and easy pivots — which is essential with digitally-led campaigns. By tuning the AI to our specific metrics, we are able to eliminate manual data pulls and optimize our budget and media spend which ultimately saves us time and money while streamlining resources.
Marketing Manager, Sonos
With Sprinklr AI, the Sonos team was able to take advantage of real-time, automated optimization with AI-powered Smart Budget Allocation to increase ROAS. By removing manual labor from the existing team, it allowed them to focus on strategy and other business initiatives.
As campaigns rolled out, the real-time insights gave the team instant information on what was performing well, what wasn’t, and automatically adjusted ad spend in response. “We see automated insights in real time that the team can optimize toward the company’s determined KPI, which is Sonos’s true north,” Harris said. “We are able to see what’s performing well based on that goal, and with Sprinklr’s AI, make a decision about where to put more marketing dollars based on that metric. Without Sprinklr’s Google Analytics’ integration we would have needed to come up with a proxy to use for that KPI and it may not have delivered the same results or had accurate numbers.”
The community management team at Sonos also uses Sprinklr Social to directly engage with and respond to customers, providing feedback and trends on social media content to Harris’s team. That feedback is used to inform decisions on continuing to run successful ads, if ads need iteration, or, when necessary, pulled from the market entirely. And having a view of all social platforms in one place allows a unified view and the appropriate governance.
“The creative insights we receive from Sprinklr make our teams more efficient,” said Harris. “We run media globally, across all time zones, and the Sprinklr platform allows us to act quickly if we experience a negative reaction to an ad. The ability to immediately pause and reassess no matter what time of day it is is beyond valuable.”
The Outcome
Because of a digital-first mindset and their partnership with Sprinklr, the Sonos team was able to pivot quickly during a chaotic and uncertain time. The integration with Google Analytics, Smart Budget Allocation, and AI-informed metrics allowed Sonos to focus on optimizing toward ROAS and helped to meet revenue targets.
“Sonos still thrived during the pandemic,” says Harris. “We increased revenue and led us to the best performing quarter in company history.”
The partnership with Sprinklr helps Sonos:
- Optimize toward a single source of truth for performance metrics
- Triple return on ad spend for Social Google Analytics
- Decrease the cost per website checkout by 11%
Harris appreciates the Sprinklr team that she works with and knows that she can count on them, even during the busiest of times, like Black Friday through Cyber Monday. “Sprinklr is truly an extension of our team and their partnership in helping us to quickly and creatively solve problems is invaluable,'' Harris said. “That’s what’s most impressive about our partnership — everyone on the team comes from a place of knowing that we’re all in this together and we’ll get through any challenge thrown our way as a single team.”
Sonos partners with Sprinklr’s Strategic Advertising Services team. Learn how Sprinklr can help your team achieve similar results.