Best digital marketing case studies are meant to not only inform us on significant accomplishments for this year but to inspire us in the year to come.

A digital marketing campaign is an online marketing effort by a company to drive engagement, conversions, traffic and revenue. 

While the best digital marketing case studies demonstrate integration, depending on the unique aspects of the business, certain channels can stand out.

Here are the 20 best digital marketing case studies of 2018 to inspire in 2019 across the areas of content marketing, ecommerce, mobile, social media, UX experience and video.

CONTENT MARKETING

• LEVONO: Developed a digital content hub called “Tech Revolution” to deliver technical news and technology information to IT decision makers for best digital marketing case studies of the year in content marketing. They were able to successfully engage with their target audience through this content marketing hub. The leads generated via Tech Revolution, were routed to their website, based on which sales executives were able to readily connect with consumers. The digital content hub had more than 250 articles with 34 million impressions, 308 link clicks, and was visited by 1,70,000 new web users, In terms of financials, $300 million in sales was attributable to this initiative alone.
• HUBSPOT: Coined the phrase “inbound marketing.” The main reason HubSpot has grown so fast is because of their content marketing strategy. Their blogs are central to their content strategy: one focused on marketing, the other on sales. The goal of these blogs is to help HubSpot acquire traffic to their funnel. Content marketing has been one of HubSpot’s main growth drivers. It helped the company go from being funded in 2006 to a $75 million run rate public company worth over a billion dollars.
• STR SOFTWARE: Attracted large businesses with big budgets and long, complex sales cycles. So instead of investing thousands of dollars to acquire each customer, STR Software decided to to set themselves apart by developing a content marketing strategy. STR Software promoted their “University” extensively throughout their site, including on their homepage, sidebar, and other articles. They also used email marketing to promote it to their audience. They saw 54% increase in website traffic, 67% increase in pageviews and 10% conversion rate on forms, up from 1-2 percent on other forms.

ECOMMERCE

• ENVELOPE.COM: Wanted to see if they could “rekindle the flame” and land some sales from hot leads using target followups in best digital marketing case studies for ecommerce. These are visitors who created an account and put an item in their shopping cart. So they tested out email sends at two alternate time lapses post cart abandonment; the first group sent the following morning at 11 a.m. and the second group 48 hours post cart abandonment. The emails sent after 48 hours delivered: 1) An open rate of 38.01%, 2) click-through rate of 24.71% and 3) a conversion rate of 40.00%
• RAW GENERATION: A company that makes drinking raw, unpasteurized juice from fresh fruits and vegetables more convenient. For their business, deal sites like Groupon, Gilt and Rue La La proved to be a major channel. After initially promoting on social media and getting no traction, Jessica, the founder was introduced to Lifebooker, a deal site. After promoting on Lifebooker, they hit a homerun. Once they discovered a marketing channel that working, they didn’t go seeking new marketing channels. Doubling down on the channel that’s working took ecommerce sales from $8K to $96K per month.
• BEARDBRAND: An Ecommerce store that sells beard oil and beard care products and that prides themselves in leading the movement for all the “urban beardsmen” of the world, chose not to put ads or not to put products on sale because they wanted their brand to be as consistent as possible in providing premium customer experience. Then focused on offering premium customer experience by using high-quality oils for beard care, high-end packaging, one-business-day shipping and offering no discounts on products. Within a year, they created an ecommerce business that went from $0 to $120K per month.

MOBILE

• CAROLINA PANTHERS: Wanted to elevate their ecommerce experience for their football apparel best digital marketing case studies for mobile. They enlisted the help of their official retail provider Delaware North Sportservice. One particular focus of the Panthers was to improve the mobile shopping experience. They not only looked at the desktop experience, but focused equally on the tablet and mobile shopping experience to be sure that customers would be able to navigate the site, find items, and checkout with ease –– no matter where they were shopping. Since the site has gone live, the Panthers mobile conversion rate, has increased 83%, with overall conversion rate growing by 37%.
• DUNKIN DONUTS: Launched a new text messaging promotion towards young adults in the Boston area. Via a local radio DJ, Dunkin’ Donuts advertised the text message promotion on-air and ran mobile internet ads encouraging people to opt-in to text message promotions. The result was 7,500 consumers opting in. 17% of participants forwarded or showed the text message promotion to their friends. 35% of the participants considered themselves more likely to buy lattes and coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. 21% increase in store traffic occurred due to the mobile promotion. 
• ARGOS: The British retail major wanted to deliver a multi-channel experience comprising 14 combinations of order and fulfillment. The British retail major wanted to deliver a multi-channel experience comprising 14 combinations of order and fulfillment. Its multi-channel sales comprised over 50% of the total sales. 

SOCIAL MEDIA

• CHEVROLET AND BUICK DEALERSHIP: Castle Chevrolet & Castle Buick GMC turned to Facebook Advertising, targeting the campaign to Facebook users who were located within a few miles of their showrooms as well as those that lived near Castle’s top competitors. The ads featured a map that showed exactly how close Castle’s dealerships were to the audience. The three-month campaign generated 2,212 unique visits to the dealership website at a cost of $0.98 per click. 23 vehicle sales were directly attributed to the campaign, providing a 23x return of advertising spend.
• DISNEY: Came up with a wonderfully simple idea. For every photo that featured Mickey Mouse ears and the hashtag #ShareYourEars uploaded to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, Disney would donate $5 to Make A Wish Foundation. The campaign for best digital marketing case studies of the year was a huge success and Disney ended up donating $2 million.
• SHUTTERFLY: A company who flagship products are photo books, came up with a promotion to offer a free personalised ceramic mug. And the audience they chose to target in best digital marketing case studies for social media? Mothers with kids at home. Using Facebook’s Offer Claims feature, Shutterfly reached out to their target audience and distribute a unique, single-use offer code to each person who clicked its ad. The three-day campaign resulted in over 16,000 offers reclaimed. But crucially there were 8,000 additional purchases generated, resulting in an 11-fold return on ad spend.
• STATE BYCYCLE CO.: Came up with a number of ways to reach out to cycling lovers. One of the most popular is their weekly photo challenge, where State Bicycle Co. reward the follower who submits the best snap on a given theme (e.g. the winner of the “most beat-up bike” theme landed themselves a brand new ride). State Bicycle Co. also offer unique discount codes on ‘Facebook Fridays’ and encourage followers to like posts to reveal sneak previews of new products. Since 2013 State Bicycle Co. has grown its followers from 4,500 to 480,000. Today, 12 per cent of State Bicycle Co.’s website traffic comes from Facebook, at a fifth of the cost per click of other platforms. Best of all? State Bicycle Co. attribute $500,000 in annual sales to coupon codes and traffic from Facebook.

WEBSITE DESIGN & UX EXPERIENCE

• CONCORDIA PLAN SERVICES: An insurance provider, had a major problem for best digital marketing case studies in UX experience. Its three disjointed websites made it nearly impossible for users to find information and forms. As a result, customers resorted to calling support with basic requests, tying up support lines, causing customer dissatisfaction and increased support costs. They consolidated three websites and over 800 disjointed pages into a single 60-page user-centric website. The new website makes it easy for users to find information, resulting in a significant reduction of support calls and resulted in an improvement in 92% customer satisfaction.
• HEARTLAND SENIOR FINANCE: (HSF): Australia’s largest leading provider of reverse mortgages, enables seniors to release equity in their property to help them live better in retirement. They developed content around solving problem to use keywords their customers used in organic search. They created a drop-down widget on the homepage which led to optimized landing pages, each focusing on one of the reasons for taking out a reverse mortgage. They did systems consolidations to ensure they converted as many leads as possible. In just a few months, the saw: 1) 29.5% increase in page views, 2) 25.38% increase in new visitors, 3) 81.2% increase in returning visitors, 4) 71.95% increase in guide downloads (leads)  and 5) 19.94% increase in conversion rate. 
• STANLEY: Consolidated two separate brand web properties into one site. The process needed to mitigate traffic disruption, improve traffic, and increase organic search results. So they focused on increase search rank of top performing keywords as the key measurement of web design success. The results? Almost 40% of keywords Stanley ranked for were on the first page of organic results, and the company generated a 100% lift in revenue.

VIDEO:

• CHILI’S: Decided to run a digital campaign to raise awareness of its 3 for $10 deal. The plan was to capture people’s attention using a made-for-digital 15-second creative spot that highlighted one of the meals from the promotion. Form ads — a new TrueView for action format optimized for lead generation — create a sign-up form that enables viewers to submit their name and email right below a video ad. It’s a quick and easy process that doesn’t interrupt the viewing experience. The campaign ended up generating over 7,800 form leads, a valuable addition for a campaign focused on brand consideration.
• OVERSTOCK: Personalized each of the 15-second pieces of creative on YouTube. While the first half was one of several funny plays on a person’s name, the second half was tailored to a specific set of products, like furniture, dining, or bedding. Overstock regularly used search ads. If someone is browsing online for, say, a table, the company can serve up a relevant ad featuring tables. Using a new YouTube tool, Overstock was able to take this understanding of what customers were actively looking to buy and apply it to video. Overstock used TrueView for action, a direct-response format, placing a call to action underneath the ad that told people to “Shop Now” or “Save Big.” When viewers clicked, they were taken directly to Overstock’s website. The direct-response video campaign an 80% increase in the conversion rate compared to other campaigns.
• NAVY: Shot their first made-for-digital creative and personalized it for those audiences for best digital marketing case studies of the year. The creative was built into over 60 different 15-second and six-second video ads, all tied together with the tagline “Forged by the Sea.” Finally, they served the ads in a specific order, making sure each viewer saw more than one. People who saw the ads two or more times were 16% more likely to consider joining the U.S. Navy, and users who saw the ads at least twice were 19% more likely to search for U.S. Navy keywords on YouTube within three days.
• PEEL: Sells thin phone cases, with the major selling point being they’re both functional and stylish. They used Facebook video ads to help tell the story of what separates their products from everyone else. When one of your brand’s major selling points is aesthetics, little details conveyed in video proved critical to messaging. The campaign proved successful resulting in a 16x increase in revenue and 3x higher ROI in best digital marketing case studies for video.

Do these best digital marketing case studies in 2018 provides inspiration for 2019? Does your business need direction in digital next year?

Digital marketing case studies show how businesses and brands produce great results with the benefits of digital targeting, media selection and data analytics.

Here are a few reasons why companies are moving in this direction.

• 86% of women turn to social networks before making a purchase (Alist daily)
• 49% of organizations do not have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy (Smart Insights, Managing Digital Marketing research report)
• 40% of marketers say proving the ROI of their marketing activities is their top marketing  challenge. (HubSpot, State of Inbound)

Here are examples of companies large and small, B2C and B2B to help spark great content, creative thinkingand execution at your organization, 12 inspiring digital marketing case studies that prove ROI.

1. BRITISH TELECOM: Managed to save £2m per year by routing around 600,000 contacts per year through social media instead of its call centres. This also improved the customer experience, as these people preferred to deal with BT via social instead of phone or email.
2. CLEAN & CLEAR: Used Snapchat to help raise awareness of its Morning Burst facial cleanser among females age 13 to 24. Clean & Clear partnered with Snapchat to run animated Snap Ads that reached the right people at the right time. Clean & Clear used Snapchat’s Lifestyle Categories to optimize its Snap Ads between Stories campaign and reach Snapchatters more likely to be interested in beauty. Clean & Clear’s Snap Ads and Filters campaign generated an 11.2% lift in Aided Awareness (5.5X higher than Millward Brown Norms) and a 7% lift in brand favorability (3.5X higher than Millward Brown Mobile Norms).
3. CREME EGG: Switched ad spend from TV to Facebook in this example of digital marketing case studies. A seasonal social media campaign invited people to ‘Have a fling with Crème Egg’ on Facebook, created a long series of one-off posts that fed into an overall narrative across the three months. Facebook matched TV in driving brand consideration for a third of the cost increasing sales by 7% as a result.
4. FISHER TANK: A welded steel tank constructed with a sales cycle of 12 months to several years. They used an Inbound Marketing approach would attract more (and more qualified) prospects to their website and give the company a chance to demonstrate how they think and what they do. They developed a more visually attractive site, and one that was a magnet for search engines. They included calls-to-action to download content of interest and value to prospects (primarily engineers, owners and facility and project managers) and integrated a blog with social sharing abilities, established company social media profiles, and optimized the site with the right long-tail keywords to get Fisher found in more searches. As a result, 1) website traffic increase by 119%, 2) quote request increased by 500% and 3) drove up the value of qualified sales opportunities by $3.4 million.
5. HCC MEDICAL INSURANCE SERVICE: Infographics have been overused in recent years, but they’re still an effective medium for content marketing.HCC Medical Insurance Services (HCCMIS) managed to increase blog traffic and email revenue using an infographic aimed at its travel customers. Compared to its normal sales emails the infographic achieved a 96% lift in email revenue, while on Facebook the post that featured the graphic had more than 2,000 interactions compared to an average of 10.Overall HCCMIS’s blog post featuring the graphic achieved 3.9m views, of which 90% were new visitors.
6. IBM: trained its sales people to use LinkedIn and Twitter, and also gave them access to a content calendar so they had relevant things to share. In this example of digital marketing case studies, the program resulted in 4x more sales year-on-year, though there are a few caveats to take into account.
7. KLM: Noticed, from one of its employees, that a lot of people were asking about social payments, so they spoke to KLM’s IT and accounts teams to see if it was possible to set it up.This resulted in a new social payments tool, which cost €3,500 to setup and now takes €80,000 per week in sales.
8. MANN FAMILY DENTAL: A comprehensive family care and cosmetic dentistry practice, wasn’t generating leads that would convert to patients. The creation of a blog on their website saw an immediate rise in phone calls. They used social media to strengthen and increase that organic referral web by engaging with their patients on Facebook. They focused on long tail keyword with local geographic terms. Mann Family Dental saw a: 1) 270% increase in web traffic 2) 10X increase in leads and a 3) 50% increase in patients generated from the website.
9. NEUTROGENA: Used shopping basket data to identify competitor products loyal customers were already buying that were within their own range. Neutrogena knew they had a loyal base of customers, but 75% of shoppers were only buying items within a single segment of the Neutrogena range. They created a “product pairings” campaign delivered through video, banner ads and coupons to drive sampling. Consumers were targeted based on their personal buying habits. They saw an Increase in incremental sales with 18.1 million households reached and a  £5.84 return on advertising spend (ROAS).
10. NILLA WAFERS: used Facebook to reinvigorate its Nilla Wafers brand and boost sales. A study showed Nilla Wafers sales increased 9% in test market locations among consumers who saw Facebook ads versus a control group of consumers over the course of a five-month campaign. The Facebook ad campaign for Nilla Wafers also was able to reach 11.3 million households through 190 million total impressions (16.8 impressions per household).
11. SNICKERS: Targeting fat-fingered typists, this clever search campaign from Snickers used misspelled words in Google keywords to capture hungry office workers’ attention during the working day. The chocolate bar brand managed to reach 500,000 people within just three days of launch, without any seeding and for less cost than bidding on brand keywords.
12. W HOLLYWOOD: Knew their luxury condominiums were expertly-crafted. Vibrant homes in the L.A. spotlight are eye-catching to many people. They created a lead-generation strategy which included SEO and Facebook ads to drive engaged visitors to the site. Google AdWords campaigns targeted specific areas within the California region and other cities where qualified lead potential was determined. The campaign resulted in: 1) 115% increase in conversions from Google Adwords, 2) 63% increase in site visits from SEO and 3) 1,800 goal completions from Facebook.

Do these digital marketing case studies inspire you? Did they prove ROI to your satisfaction? Could a creative digital marketing program help increase business in your organization?

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using a digital strategy, technologies and tactics that include search, paid advertising, social media and many other properties.

But channels and technologies don’t do justice to the ways some brands are putting it all together.

Here are the 10 most inspiring digital marketing stories of 2016.

1. ALWAYS: Girls’ confidence takes a nosedive once they hit puberty, Always’ commercial launched an efforts to  help teach confidence to girls and young women through a variety of means. They’ve partnered with TED to create a series of educational videos on confidence that are shared with teachers and students worldwide, and even created the Always Confidence Curriculum, which was unveiled at the Always #LikeAGirl Confidence Summit. Meanwhile, the company continues to push out short, inspiring message via the hashtag #LikeAGirl.
2. AMERICAN EXPRESS: Open Forum is a collaborative website, on which American Express invites guest authors from a variety of sectors to share their business knowledge and wisdom.  The result of this digital marketing is a content-rich mega-site that’s popular with the search engines – all created without American Express needing to shell out cash to content contributors.
3. DACIAS: A subsidiary of Renault is one of Europe’s fastest growing car brands. Best known for their functional cars that offer amazing price-to-value ratios, the customer market grew by 60,000 cars in the last three years. By using Facebook’s boosted posts, Dacia placed ads related to their Sandero, Logan, and Stepway models. They focused on both desktop and mobile users. By incorporating data from past activity, the company ensured that a wide variety of ad testing was done, essentially optimizing the advertisement’s impact based on where their customers were in the buying cycle.
4. DALLAS PETS ALIVE: Renamed shelter dogs after the most searched and trending topics to increase their chances of adoption — with pooches being named everything from Obamacare to Kim Kardashian’s Butt. The push was promoted by a funny online film and a Paid Search campaign. The digital marketing campaign grew traffic to its website by 98% and increased adoptions year-on-year by 200%.
5. DOMINO’S: Really wants to make it easy to order pizza. The company let customers request delivery of their favorite pizza by tweeting to the @Dominos Twitter account, or by using the hashtag #EasyOrder. The tweet-based order system earned Domino’s media coverage from the likes of USA Today, Forbes, and Good Morning America, not to mention a Titanium Grand Prix award at Cannes. More than 50 percent of Domino’s orders come from digital marketing channels today.
6. GIRL SCOUTS: Noticed that a lot of customers had issues with finding their nearest Girl Scout Representative when Cookie Season was in full swing. They wanted to drive cookie booth searches on their official website and also boost the number of downloads for their Girl Scout Cookie Finder mobile app. This would not only benefit the organization but also, be a massive help to consumers looking to buy cookies. @GirlScouts used an App Card (showcasing their delicious products) in a Twitter App Install campaign, which easily and conveniently allowed users to download and open the Girl Scout Cookie Finder app from their Twitter account. The result was 19,500+ Twitter-driven app installations.
7. KRYLON: A spray-paint company, sent “DIY experts” to buy 127 “worthless” items along the route and transform them into something desirable, according to the company. After the yard sale ended, Krylon listed all of its transformed items for sale online, becoming the first brand to use Pinterest’s buyable pin feature. All of the proceeds (roughly $2,000) went to charity.As a result, Krylon’s Pinterest following increased by 4,400 percent, and the company estimates it gained $2.7 million in earned media on a $200,000 budget
8. PWC: Has managed Oscar balloting for 82 years. For the 2016 awards ceremony, the company sought “to create a modern and savvy campaign” aimed at millennials by using Snapchat “to generate buzz internally and increase external visibility around the firm’s involvement with the Academy Awards,” according to the company. In its first two weeks, PwC’s Snap Story on Snapchat jumped to over 700 views. Within three weeks, the campaign received 1,062 related tweets on Twitter and 406 Instagram mentions.
9. SPOTIFY: Created a very clever personalized video in December of 2015. They called it ‘A Year in Music, what did your 2015 sound like?’. This message was posted across the companies social channels, along with a generic video supporting that message. It then encouraged users to login to listen and watch their personal video, which was comprised of the users most played and favorite sounds of the year. The benefits for Spotify were that this built elements of customer loyalty, making users feel a little bit special – and it also made a lot of their users login when they may not have planned to previously.
10. THE WIRECUTTER: Affiliate marketing can be a bit sleazy, but it can generate big results when done properly and genuinely. The Wirecutter has set the standard since its launch just five years ago. Labeling itself a simple “list of the best gadgets—like cameras and TVs—for people who don’t want to take a lot of time figuring out what to get,” the site generated $150 million in e-commerce transactions in 2015.

Do these make your list of best digital marketing stories this year? Are there any others you would add to the list? Do they inspire you to create a digital marketing story for your brand next year?