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Helly Hansen enhances global brand through personalised geo-targeting

Helly Hansen, the Scandinavian adventure clothier, is one of few brands taking action to tackle the disconnect across global consumers by creating a personalisation strategy to target geographic segments. Working with personalisation experts Monetate, in just three months alone Helly Hansen has generated revenues in excess of $280,000. 

Best known for sailing and water sport products in southern Europe, yet associated more with skiing and rainwear in the north, Helly Hansen considers it a fundamental requirement to personalise the online experience for different geographies.

Helly Hansen uses Monetate’s geo-targeting capabilities to pair local weather forecasts with specific onsite experiences for website visitors. For example, the geo-targeting capabilities were used in Germany when rain was expected. With rain forecast over a five day period, rather than promoting winter ski-wear, the experience was personalised to present a timely rainwear banner on the homepage.

After implementing Monetate’s technology, Helly Hansen has:

  • Increased revenue in the UK by $17,290 using a raincoat holiday deal banner under navigation.
  • A 170% conversion and 52% new visitor conversion in Germany through a weather-targeted rainwear banner.
  • An extra $22,270 incremental revenue in Norway, taken from 15% off product badging on Black Friday Weekend.

Helly Hansen also localise product descriptions to reflect local language. For instance: ‘trousers’ and ‘jumpers’ in Britain display as ‘pants’ and ‘sweaters’ in America. Another initiative was to add a small banner to highlight that shoe sizes were displayed in US sizes. Although a small change, this reduced the number of returned purchases.

Ragnihild Geissert, European e-commerce manager at Helly Hansen, said: “At first we just wanted to tailor our campaigns for specific audiences as efficiently as possible to maximise how effective we could be as a team. After becoming more familiar with Monetate’s technology the team’s ambitions changed dramatically. Now that we know the power of personalisation, we want more. The only limitation we have is the number of people we have to develop and drive new tests and campaigns. The impact has been a revelation.”

Mike Harris, Monetate’s VP EMEA, said: “Helly Hansen is taking a huge step towards improving its global brand offering for both existing and potential customers. The Monetate platform will ensure the customer journey is not only more personalised, but highly localised no matter the time, type of device being used or conditions in each region. This will position Helly Hansen as being a true example to other retailers of how to personalise efficiently for different globalised segments.”

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