Building stronger customer connections with Amazon Marketing Cloud

In a crowded digital landscape, where the average person sees more than 4,000 ads per day, how can advertisers cut through the noise and connect with potential customers? 

The answer is data. 

Companies need to know who their customers are, what they want, and when they’re ready to buy. Armed with this information, they can meet their customers exactly where they are—at the moment they’re ready to buy.

Amazon Ads asked Slalom to help prove the power of Amazon’s unique data signals to target customers more effectively and affordably. To do so, we partnered with one of the most recognizable brands on the planet: The LEGO Group. 

LEGO marketers wanted to grow Amazon sales of the company’s toddler-focused LEGO^® DUPLO^® line. They knew that understanding customer behavior was crucial for expanding market share but needed help translating the data into actionable insights.

The challenge for LEGO marketers was to optimize their return on ad spend (RoAS) while finding the right audience in a sea of potential buyers. They needed to target customers more effectively for the preschool product line and make sure digital ads were driving conversions.

Our Slalom team started by analyzing the LEGO Group’s advertising and purchasing data through AMC to identify the company’s most valuable customers—those spending three times more than the average buyer. This helped us create detailed customer profiles and audiences, allowing LEGO marketers to identify high-value customers and how they could target new potential buyers with similar shopping habits.

“Data mining and drawing insights is extremely important to move a business forward, but time-consuming,” says Drina Maneze, ecommerce retail marketing manager at the LEGO Group. “Partnering with Slalom allowed us to focus on multiple strategic priorities while giving the required attention to each.”  

Once we had a clear picture of the high-value customers, we used AMC to build look-alike audiences—groups of potential new customers with similar behaviors—which allowed LEGO marketers to target people more likely to purchase their preschool-range products and increase new customer acquisitions. 

“Amazon Marketing Cloud is quite different from other AdTech tools,” explains Abby Placido, a customer data consultant at Slalom. “You can measure the impact of your campaign, identify the audiences who have engaged in these campaigns, and retarget them with the right message that’s going to help you boost your conversion. This is like the holy grail for marketers.” 

By focusing digital ads on this high-value segment, LEGO marketers made their campaigns more effective and efficient.

With our audience segmentation strategy in place, we analyzed ad performance across various touchpoints, determining which ads were driving conversions and which weren’t. One of the most significant findings? Most conversions happened within just seven days of ad exposure, showing an immediate impact.

“Helping a brand like the LEGO Group gain fresh insights and rethink its paid media strategy was really exciting,” says Drew Myers, a customer strategy consultant at Slalom. “We delivered real, actionable takeaways that LEGO marketers could use immediately to make bolder and more effective decisions.”

With new data-driven strategies, the LEGO Group doubled its budget allocation for high-value customer segments, significantly improving RoAS by 120%. Instead of casting a wide net, the company’s ads now target the right audience—parents, gift buyers, and others interested in the preschool-range portfolio—leading to a 60% increase in click-through rates (CTR).

“While I had known AMC as a ‘magic tool’ for marketers to get a holistic view of media performance, I was unfamiliar with its full potential,” says Miho Brown, senior performance marketing manager, APAC B2B eCommerce at the LEGO Group. “Having professional consultancy from Slalom has been invaluable in helping us better understand AMC’s capabilities and how to leverage it more effectively.”

Customers also enjoyed a better experience. Ads were no longer wasted on irrelevant audiences. Instead, they connected with people who were more likely to buy, increasing the likelihood of conversions.

The LEGO Group is now set to continue expanding its presence on Amazon and offering personalized experiences to customers. Together, we are developing more effective marketing strategies that deepen the connection between this beloved brand and people of all ages, from toddlers just discovering the joy of building to lifelong fans who continue to create and play.