Krystina Banahasky is something of a retail marketing guru. With more than seven years of experience at luxury and contemporary brands like Sam Edelman, Anne Fontaine, and Temperley London, she is now practicing her trade at UNTUCKit, the disruptive American apparel brand that is quickly becoming a household name.
Throughout her career, she has focused on generating revenue and building brand affinity. As UNTUCKit’s Director of E-commerce and Digital Marketing, Krystina leads digital business and strategy, sales, marketing, and operational projects.
We sat down with Krystina to learn more about her digital marketing experiences, as well as the evolution of UNTUCKit’s marketing strategy.
AdRoll: Tell us a little bit about UNTUCKit’s origins.
Krystina: UNTUCKit started with a seemingly simple problem: shirts just don’t look good when they’re untucked. Our founders saw the lack of casual—yet sophisticated—clothing available for men as an issue that could be easily solved by introducing a shirt that looks good untucked.
When UNTUCKit launched in 2011, the product offering consisted of about 15 button-down shirts; by 2015, we had expanded to knits, polos, sweaters, hoodies, and outerwear, and started a women’s line. We’ve since established a strong retail presence in NYC, Chicago, and Los Angeles, as well as numerous other locations. We currently have 25 stores, up from just three in 2016.
Through market analysis and research, we were able to identify three key factors to differentiate our products from all others:
AdRoll: What are the key elements of your marketing model?
Krystina: The key building blocks include online and offline customer acquisition through radio, television, print, digital display, and social marketing with key platforms, affiliates, and referral programmes. Then, we bring it full circle with retargeting. We really value having a full-funnel performance marketing platform like AdRoll.
Prospecting has also helped us to grow brand awareness and drive increased traffic to our site. Meanwhile, AdRoll has generated incremental revenue for our business by turning window shoppers into brand loyalists.
AdRoll: What are the brand’s long-term goals?
Krystina: UNTUCKit excels in out-of-the-box marketing and business strategy, but we now need to keep momentum going and establish an expansive presence. We want to propel brand affinity and awareness, reach our customers online and offline, and create a seamless experience through both sales channels. Ensuring a positive customer experience is key.
To avoid playing catch-up with brands that have had more time to build an omnichannel business, we’re skipping straight to individual experiences through market segmentation and customisation. Our team is focused on segmenting key target demographics and tailoring each experience, from the ad served to the checkout process.
AdRoll: What are the biggest challenges when it comes to executing a performance marketing plan and strategy?
Krystina: Since we’re launching several marketing channels later than most of our competitors, we have to always think about next steps. Not only do we want to reach uncharted territory for the brand, we also want to build immediately robust campaigns with optimum efficacy.
Business is growing incredibly quickly, so we have to be as competent as possible. This means approaching everything with skepticism, setting expectations, and holding ourselves and our partners to high standards at all times.
AdRoll: What metrics are important when looking at top-of-the-funnel vs. retargeting campaigns?
Krystina: In general, it’s vital to agree internally on a success metric to properly measure the health of your business. As we implement new campaigns and improve current channels, we have to identify expected results and set standards. Each advertising channel solves a different business need throughout the customer journey, and that must be taken into account.
We use industry key performance indicators (KPIs) as a loose benchmark, rather than setting goals based on industry norms. This sets the bar as high as we can reach, but it means targets can be challenging because the lines between expectations begin to blur. That said, our goals are simple: to be less wrong about attribution and give priority to the channels that drive optimum revenue. For instance, a campaign that harvests clicks is not valuable unless it results in financial returns.
Find out how AdRoll can help you develop and enhance your digital marketing strategy by getting in touch with us today.
Last updated on September 20th, 2023.