Groupe SEB: Influencer Marketing Case Study

The Opportunity

Groupe SEB is a world reference in small domestic equipment that has expanded through many acquisitions and mergers over 165 years, becoming a multi-brand company present in over 150 countries. 

The brand’s influencer marketing programs have been successfully managed at the market level, with each country’s team driving their own strategies and budget. But as the organization ramped up investment, it needed greater transparency, organization, and standardization across teams to optimize performance, reach best-in-class activations, and share best practices. Here’s how they did it with the support of Traackr.

The Goals

To pilot their worldwide strategy, Groupe SEB first needed a global view of its influencer marketing program. This meant consolidating all influencer marketing activities into one system of record that would facilitate a standardized approach to measurement. Its goal was to find and implement an influencer marketing platform so teams could access unified data, benchmark performance, and identify new areas for growth.

“We have a talented team of marketers that drive our influencer programs across the world. While investments were increasing and performance was strong, we felt that our teams did not have the adapted resources to trial their investments efficiently and identify new areas for growth. We knew our teams would feel more empowered if we could give them a “one stop shop” influencer marketing platform.” — Rachel Matos, Social Media & Influencer Marketing Manager at Groupe SEB

Here’s how Groupe SEB evaluated influencer marketing technologies, piloted Traackr in several markets, demonstrated value and then implemented Traackr at scale across 28 markets. 

The Strategy

The process of purchasing enterprise software is no easy feat. This is why Groupe SEB started by conducting a survey with all markets to identify what each team wanted from an influencer marketing software. 

The survey revealed that multiple teams wanted an influencer marketing software that:

• Enables influencer discovery and vetting
• Provides a consolidated view on campaigns and spend
• Analyzes performance and efficiency 

“After asking our teams what they needed from an influencer marketing software, we set out to find a solution that could help us identify new influencers, consolidate views of campaigns and programs, and provide actionable insights. This is what eventually led us to Traackr.” — Héléna de Foucault Social Listening, Activation & Influence IT Project Manager at Groupe SEB

Traackr proof-of-concept and analysis

After an initial evaluation, Rachel and Héléna identified Traackr as the best match for their needs because the platform serves as a system of record, enabling global influencer discovery and vetting, campaign management, budget optimization, and standardized reporting. 

As a first step, Groupe SEB and Traackr partnered to complete proof of concepts and budget optimization analysis. 

• Conducted two proof of concepts. Teams in Australia and Germany tested out Traackr and found that it helped them find the right influencers and provided the right insights for a data-driven strategy. This resulted in higher engagements and content quality across their influencer collaborations.  
• Conducted a budget optimization analysis. Traackr’s Professional Services team ran an evaluation to understand Groupe SEB’s influencer marketing spend efficiency and identify levers for driving significant performance improvements. The analysis helped establish cost per engagement (CPE) baselines and targets to drive strategy. 

After Rachel and Héléna conducted the proof of concepts and budget optimization analysis, they wrote up their findings and developed a roll out plan. This proposal was so compelling that Groupe SEB’s leadership team encouraged them to accelerate their roll out plan to 28 markets in one year.

“Groupe SEB has a very deliberate approach for adopting new processes and technologies, which is why it can often take us some time to scale. However, the proof of concept and budget optimization analysis that we did with Traackr made us feel confident that we could be deliberate while moving fast.” — Rachel Matos, Social Media & Influencer Marketing Manager at Groupe SEB

Software rollout and team upskilling

Rachel and Héléna decided to tackle the roll out of Traackr in three waves:

1. 1:1 onboarding and training. With the help of Traackr’s Customer Success team, Rachel onboarded 28 market teams. Each team received individual onboardings and 1:1 trainings so that they had the time to dive deep and ask questions.
2. Post-onboarding survey. As soon as each market was onboarded to Traackr, Rachel and Héléna sent out a survey to get a sense of what was/wasn’t working and identify knowledge gaps. 
3. Upskilling. Once knowledge gaps were identified, Rachel, along with Traackr’s Customer Success team, developed trainings and resources to help upskill the team. These resources included written user guides, live Q&A sessions, and webinars on specific topics such as reporting and measurement. Rachel and the Traackr team also hosted internal events demonstrating how to pull key learnings out of campaign analyses.

During this time, Groupe SEB also created global guidelines for influencer marketing best practices. These guidelines laid out specific methodologies for defining campaign objectives, and presented a large panel of use cases and benchmarks for markets’ inspiration. 

The Results

Groupe SEB’s deliberate and data-driven approach to software evaluation and implementation enabled them to achieve an amazing feat in a short period of time! Within one year they:

• Implemented Traackr in 28 markets 
• Established best practices for global and market KPIs 
• Strengthened collaboration between markets 
• Reinforced culture of data-driven influencer marketing

Next, Groupe SEB plans to utilize this foundation to dive deeper into performance-driven influencer marketing. In fact, multiple markets have already integrated cost per engagement (CPE) targets when briefing their agencies and negotiating with influencers. 

For example, Groupe SEB Spain has developed an effective method of setting cost per engagement targets for its specific goals. Much like other Groupe SEB teams, Spain is hyper-focused on reaching consumers in its own market. So, the team uses Traackr’s Vetting Tool to determine the actual size of each influencer’s Spanish audience (total follower count x percentage in Spain). Next they multiply that audience number by the number of target engagements to get an estimated cost per engagement (Spanish follower count x number of engagements). This approach has helped the team set a reasonable CPE average that they can work towards with its agency. 

“With Traackr in place, we now have the foundation we need to properly track and optimize our increasing investments in influencer marketing across the globe. We've been able to standardize our approach to measurement, set benchmarks and make improvements over time. We have a lot of exciting work ahead of us and we're equipped with a data-driven technology to help us succeed.” — Rachel Matos, Social Media & Influencer Marketing Manager at Groupe SEB

Scaling influencer marketing across a global organization requires a coordinated and data-driven approach that enables insightful measurement, while also providing brand and regional teams the autonomy to run their own strategies and work with their own partners at the local level. 

Groupe SEB’s experience with Traackr demonstrates that large scale coordination, global visibility, and the dissemination of best practices is the key to driving performance and optimizing influencer marketing investments at scale.