How Kuru Leverages Rockerbox to Scale Social Spend by 350%

Meet Sean from KURU

Sean McGinnis is the current President and Integrator at KURU Footwear. He brings years of executive marketing and ecommerce operational experience to his role at KURU. Sean remains actively engaged within the digital ecomm community and makes regular appearances on popular tech podcasts and Twitter chats. Prior to Sean’s time as President, he also served as KURU’s Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President of Ecommerce and Customer Experience. 

Why KURU partnered with Rockerbox

As KURU was evaluating its data stack in 2021, the need to select an attribution solution was obvious. 

“We needed to move beyond basic dashboarding and visualization tools and last-click attribution measurement to REALLY understand the value of our marketing activities. Only then could we ensure we were prioritizing our investments properly.”

In terms of Rockerbox selling points, the flexibility, customization, and dynamic nature of the Rockerbox data model were paramount. When questions or issues arise, Sean says that Rockerbox can create something new and innovative within a short period of time—a huge win for businesses, like KURU, that need to move quickly.

“We view our partnership with Rockerbox as just that, a true partnership. There’s a customer service level and ongoing touchpoint with our account team that’s invaluable to us. We need to make good decisions that are in our best interests, and we’re looking for answers to real questions. Rockerbox provides better, quicker, cleaner, answers to those important business questions.”

How KURU Benefits from Rockerbox Data

While seeing rapid growth over the last two years, KURU’s marketing efforts were primarily focused on capturing the demand that already existed. KURU excelled in channels that lend themselves to last-click measurements, such as Paid Search, Shopping, Email, and SEO. Seeing the potential to move “up the funnel” and start creating demand, it was important for KURU to ensure they were investing wisely and that those investments were really paying off prior to scaling spend in those channels.

KURU Further Explores Paid Social

Many DTC brands represent somewhat low-risk and/or inexpensive products. KURU’s offerings, on the other hand, are fairly expensive and solve a real pain point (pun intended) for their customers. Coupled with poor last-click performance when measured through Google Analytics, the KURU team was skeptical that Paid Social could be profitably scaled for its brand the way the channel had for so many other DTC brands. 

Today, thanks to Rockerbox, paid social has become a more prominent part of the marketing mix at KURU. Rockerbox has helped the KURU team figure out how to get creative at scale while also solving some of the brand’s messaging challenges, allowing them to scale spend by 350% since onboarding, with even greater scale expected over the coming months.

In addition, Kuru has leveraged Rockerbox’s user-level path to conversion data to quantify the impact of Facebook in driving users to convert faster. New Kuru buyers with Facebook as their first touchpoint convert on average in half the time of a user with non-branded search or shopping as a first touch.

Rockerbox Enables
Better Business Decisions

According to Sean, Rockerbox allows KURU to move up the customer funnel for demand generation needs with a level of certainty that contributes to enhanced directional results. This means that KURU automatically gains the ability to make more informed business decisions using real-time data and analytics.

Because KURU is a “need” brand and not a “want” brand (meaning that the product makes a clear promise to resolve a specific pain point), marketing efforts need to match. For Sean and his team, that means asking important questions such as “How can I explain why this strategy is working for us when everyone else is doing something different?” 

Rockerbox offers heightened visibility into approach, methodology, and strategy. 

Even if other direct-to-consumer brands are implementing other channel tactics to achieve results, KURU can think and operate outside the box based on what works uniquely for their specific brand in a very targeted market. 

What Does the Future Look Like?

Similar to most brands, Sean and his team are carefully evaluating the market and ensuring that their contracts and digital investments are paying off. The precise methods that worked during the pandemic buying spike are not working any longer. Customers and businesses are diversifying and spending differently, which means that it’s more important than ever to fine-tune messaging.

“In this age, we’re constantly evaluating our tech partners. This isn’t a time when you can just throw money away on solutions. We need to see data in a cleaner, more efficient way and ensure our partners can support our business now, and into the future.”

With Rockerbox data, KURU is looking forward to optimizing paid social channels and finalizing both the brand messaging and architecture. These steps will help the brand overcome new challenges associated with iOS updates, Google core algorithm updates, and changes in SEO strategy.

Start Your Own Rockerbox Journey

At Rockerbox, we’re committed to helping you learn the marketing techniques that help your brand win—at scale. Whether that’s optimizing paid social or understanding the buying journey and lifetime value, Rockerbox attribution models can help you pinpoint what’s working and change what isn’t.

If you're interested in learning more about how you can also utilize the Rockerbox Attribution Platform, sign up for a demo here!