Their first record since leaving a major label, Stereophonics were keen to reaffirm their indie credentials, take back creative control under their own label, Stylus Records, reactivate their core fans and reverse the trend of declining album sales since 2005.

Website

• The website was a focus for all marketing activity. We launched the campaign with a video splash page and deployed a pre-order splash page to support all the major retailers, which we used as the landing page for the majority of our online advertising. We were able to capture valuable email data and retargeting cookie data on the site as well as integrate direct e-commerce opportunities.

Email

• We were able take over direct control of the email database at the beginning of the campaign. The data was quite old and, as a result, the open rates were initially low at under 10%. Through a solid content-focused eCRM strategy, we were able to improve the open rates to more than 20% as well as growing the total addresses by more than 25%.
• Email was the most important digital tool at our fingertips in terms of generating direct sales of records, merchandise and tickets.

Social media

• Working closely with the artist was key for growth and engagement on social platforms. Alongside management and the artist, we developed a solid social strategy including great content creation and curation, best practice and a cohesive tone in all communications.
• The band now have more than 1m social connections – a growth of more than 30% over the campaign.

Mobile

• The mobile experience was considered in every element of the digital campaign. All assets were mobile-optimised where possible.
• A Mobile Roadie app was commissioned to enable a presence on the main app stores and to give core fans a native mobile destination in which to interact with the artist’s content and with other fans.
• Mobile and tablet devices now account for 54% of all traffic to the official website.

D2C e-commerce

• Sandbag were the D2C partner and more than 25% of pre-orders came via the D2C platform, of which 90%+ were of the highest price-point format.
• All fans ordering via the D2C received a handwritten note from the band thanking them for their order and their support.
• We ran a series of ticket pre-sales for all the tours throughout the campaign. This included a 20% D2C ticket allocation for the November arena tour, which featured an album upsell mechanic at the point-of-sale.

Album stream

• We ran a stream of the album four days upfront of release date with the telegraph. co.uk. This was featured on the homepage well as their mailer and social media channels. Instead of the usual embedded SoundCloud player, we built a page to house the SoundCloud player, which we delivered to the media partner for them to embed into their page via an iframe.

Amazon Artist Lounge

• Following HMV going into administration, Amazon was the most important physical retailer. We partnered with them on an Amazon Artist Lounge. We gave them three exclusive live-in-the-studio videos and the corresponding audio to offer their customers as a free download live EP. • Amazon delivered a 24% share of all album sales and a 45% share of pre-orders.

Vevo

• Vevo were a key partner. We ran four consecutive video premiers with Vevo. They delivered more than 12m impressions of Stereophonics content over the campaign, including on the vevo. com homepage coverage, mobile app push notifications and YouTube network referrals. The campaign content on Vevo has had more than 6.3m views.