eBay
Connecting customer experiences for a world leading marketplace
( Services )
- Brand & Media
- Commerce
- Customer experience
For 17 years, DEPT® has been transforming how eBay connects with customers worldwide. Our partnership has revolutionised digital engagement, combining innovative strategies with cutting-edge AI to create a global impact.
We’ve executed over 4,000 campaigns annually, crafting personalised content that resonates with millions of eBay users. By leveraging the latest technology and deep customer insights, we’ve elevated eBay’s brand and set new standards for digital marketing. This collaboration has driven significant growth, fostered global connections, and showcased the power of meaningful customer engagement on a worldwide scale.
Engaging audiences worldwide
With more than 170 million daily global customers, eBay needed an agency that could keep the conversation going 24/7 in seven different languages.
Through our work managing owned channel marketing and merchandising for eBay, we helped the company refine processes and implement proprietary technology to efficiently produce more than 4,000 campaigns and 100,000+ assets per year across markets.
To take eBay’s comprehensive conversation to the next level, it needed to connect on an emotional level across multiple channels. With a deep understanding of the different customer journey paths, we were able to develop communications that spoke directly to specific customer types, and enable eBay to forge intimate connections. We generated personalised content and relevant experiences with their customer segments in mind, approaching them with seamless, responsive communication to drive revenue, retention, and brand loyalty.
The success of this initial work in the UK led us to take responsibility for onsite creative, CRM strategy and merchandising across other key markets including Germany, France, Australia, USA, and Canada.
Hyper-personalised content
Leveraging our proprietary creative automation tools has allowed us to create multiple cross-channel communications for various eBay audiences. At the click of a button, we can generate thousands of creative variations from just a few inputs.
Automated asset production allows us to tailor messaging to each individual customer segment, and iterate on the messaging quickly based on performance data. Our tools make it easy to adjust copy and design, so that we are always producing hyper-personalised content that truly resonates with eBay customers around the world and at every stage of the user journey.
We create over 200 monthly campaigns in multiple languages that convey their unique brand voice and articulate their values consistently to millions of people around the world. Our approach ensures that eBay remains a household name that informs, inspires, and moves at the speed of retail.
Establishing an in-house marketing solution
We have also supported eBay’s efforts to create a new, more agile model for delivering its marketing campaigns, including implementing onsite, CRM, and push notfiication campaigns.
Within two months, we had scoped the team requirements, recruited, interviewed and hired the new in-house marketing team.
To facilitate the agency-style speed and agility that eBay needed to keep pace with the sheer volume of campaigns it delivers, we defined a robust team structure that allows for multiple levels of seniority to drive both key decision making and tactical implementation.
The in-house marketing team is fully embedded within eBay, but is fully managed by DEPT®. What started as a UK-specific implementation has since been rolled out in both Germany and the US.
Elevating the eBay brand
In 2022, we expanded our collaboration with the brand team to deliver through-the-line (TTL) campaigns focused on key verticals in the UK and Germany.
The partnership was focused on social strategy, which saw us identify core mindsets that related back to eBay customers to drive resonance across verticals, campaigns and themes, build out roles for each channel and supporting content franchises, and make influencers a more consistent and structured part of the offering.
This provided community-focused, people-driven content across eBay’s socials and drove a 256% increase in reach, as well as a 254% increase in engagements. What’s more, this content could also be used across wider owned properties, creating usage efficiency and ensuring a tighter end-to-end customer experience.
256%
Increase in reach
254%
Increase in engagements
Coupling up with pre-loved
A hero example of this approach was our collaboration on eBay’s sponsorship of Love Island. This campaign sparked a movement toward more conscious shopping and generated 217 million impressions – an 85% increase on the previous series, and 76,000 organic engagements – a huge 230% increase versus season 8, despite the season 9 winter series drawing in a smaller viewership than the season 8 summer show.
All of this supported a 1,400% increase in ‘pre-loved fashion’ searches on eBay’s site compared to season 8, as well as a 24% rise in new circular businesses joining the online marketplace; mirroring the move away from fast fashion that people were seeing on the big screen.
The campaign was also recognised by industry, securing one gold, three bronze, and three ‘people’s choice’ awards at the 2023 Lovie Awards.
76K
Organic engagements
217M
Impressions
1400%
Increase on ‘pre-loved fashion’ searches on eBay’s site
Inspiring audiences through real stories
Across the car parts and accessories (P&A) vertical, a priority for eBay, we developed a campaign to not only defend market share, but drive growth.
Despite its extensive P&A inventory, eBay wasn’t top of mind among its community. Customers eventually came to eBay after failing to find what they were looking for with competitors.
Our TTL campaign aimed to hero eBay’s unrivaled inventory and the value it offers, convincing audiences to choose eBay first.
We developed one central idea, ‘You’re Built Different’, celebrating the range of eBayers from amateur DIYers to passionate tinkerers who all use the platform to build, repair, and upcycle the vehicles they love; inspiring motor enthusiasts to do more for themselves by showing the results of the moment it all just… clicks.
In total, we created more than 600 assets from one campaign concept and surpassed all our objectives, including a 4ppt increase in category awareness, a 3ppt increase in perception scores across range, trust and sustainability, and a 2ppt increase in market share across the category.
+4ppt
Category awareness
+3ppt
Perception scores
+2ppt
Market share
Trusted partners
Our specialist teams have become true, integrated partners across the eBay business, providing expertise and influence across marketing initiatives at every stage of the funnel.
eBay brings DEPT® some of their biggest challenges to solve, which has seen us work with the Customer Science team to reimagine their data science capabilities with AI, collaborate with the Product team to improve efficiency of content production, as well as deliver regional and global workshops to bring the future vision for the eBay brand to life.
The results we have collectively achieved have resulted in a more unified global strategy across its key markets, and a consistent customer experience across every digital touchpoint.
Awards & recognition
Award
Year
Category
Lovie Awards
2023
Gold: Best Digital Campaign
Lovie Awards
2023
Bronze: Fashion, Beauty & Lifestyle
Lovie Awards
2023
Bronze: Best Partnership or Collaboration
Lovie Awards
2023
Bronze: Culture & Entertainment