Challenge

• Kate Spade New York is a global life and style brand, with handbags, ready-to-wear, jewelry, footwear, gifts, home décor and more, founded more than 25 years ago.
• The brand continues to bring thoughtfully designed and innovative products to the market, and recently released a new generation of its popular scallop smartwatch earlier this year, for which KSNY wanted to build awareness with very specific audiences.

Solution

• Kate Spade New York had never run ad campaigns on LinkedIn previously, but their marketing team identified it as a strong fit for reaching an audience of busy, successful professionals — the ideal customer for the scallop smartwatch. 
• "It’s important to us that the message we are sharing with consumers fits on the platform we are using," says Krista Neuhaus, Senior Director of Global Digital Marketing. "We want it to feel smart, contextual, and have it capture their interest in a natural way."

Results

• With a primary goal of driving traffic, the campaign ran across four different platforms, and LinkedIn delivered the highest click-through rate of any.
• One ad, featuring a picture of actress Busy Philipps wearing the smartwatch alongside copy customized for LinkedIn’s audience, reached more than 143,000 unique members while healthily exceeding LinkedIn’s internal benchmarks with a 2.44% engagement rate and 1.78% CTR.

2X above benchmarks for engagement rates and click-through rates

5X total engagements for one high-performing ad on LinkedIn

Not just for B2B

• There’s a common misperception in the marketing world that LinkedIn is only a space for B2B organizations, but Kate Spade New York savvily understood that it’s also a great place to reach and engage with the right B2C audiences.
• The platform’s segmentation capabilities enabled KSNY to zero in on its ideal target customer, for whom the product and content would be most likely to resonate. 
• "LinkedIn gave us an opportunity to speak to a specific group of professional women that know and love our brand, but now we are able to target them directly with a product that will fit seamlessly into their existing lifestyles," Neuhaus explains.

It’s about mindset

• Not only did LinkedIn help Kate Spade New York reach the right type of professional, but more importantly, helped engage these members in the right context. 
• "Being able to show consumers a product that can directly benefit their busy lives, while not having to sacrifice style was the goal," says Neuhaus. "It really allowed us to match a product with a mindset."

Onward and upward

• With this successful test run in the books, Kate Spade New York plans to continue investing in LinkedIn as a platform to reach their customers and build community.
• For other marketers who are considering LinkedIn campaigns, Neuhaus recommends being mindful of not only of who is in your segmented target audience, but what their contextual mindset is like as they peruse the platform. KSNY found traction by hitting this sweet spot.