Eight years of digital growth partnership with De’Longhi

Vertical

FMCG

Client

De’Longhi Group

Capabilities

Project Dates

2017-2026

Since early 2017, Rika has worked with De’Longhi Group as a long-term digital strategy, media, creative and analytics partner in the UK.

The partnership began in early 2017, when De’Longhi wanted an honest, technically capable partner to challenge its existing agency roster, audit media performance and give the marketing team a clearer view of what was working.

Rika was asked to bring more transparency, rigour and commercial accountability to digital media, while helping De’Longhi strengthen its UK audience strategy and grow awareness of key categories, starting with coffee.

Over time, our remit expanded across audience insight, analytics, channel strategy, campaign delivery, social advertising, PPC, creative asset production, digital products, retailer support and direct-to-consumer growth.

The Business challenge

De’Longhi Group needed a partner that could look objectively at its marketing activity, challenge assumptions and improve performance.

The business had strong brands, ambitious portfolio managers and an established agency roster. What it needed was a more independent view of media effectiveness, audience targeting, technical implementation and commercial return.

In Coffee, there was also a clear brand and audience challenge. De’Longhi was already recognised across Europe as a leader in coffee machines, but in the UK the brand was still more strongly associated with its iconic oil-filled radiators. De’Longhi wanted to grow awareness of its coffee portfolio, particularly its Bean to Cup machines, and build stronger associations with Italian coffee culture, design, quality and the home coffee experience.

Across Breakfast, Comfort, Kenwood and Braun, the challenge was to grow mature or stagnant categories, create stronger digital assets and support portfolio managers with performance strategy and new marketing channel opportunities.

As our relationship developed, Rika helped build the UK D2C channel from the ground up. It later became one of the clearest examples of how better media decisions and optimisation could drive measurable growth.

What Rika did

Over the years, Rika supported De’Longhi Group across three connected areas:

1. Audience insight and targeting

Helping the marketing team better understand the UK audiences and how they move through the purchase journey.

This included annual customer surveys, brand awareness and lift studies, purchase journey research, analytics and targeting recommendations across key categories.

2. Media audit and channel strategy

We analysed media spend and performance, on an ongoing basis, against KPIs, category context and industry benchmarks.

This gave De'Longhi an independent view of media effectiveness, with clear recommendations on channel mix, budget allocation and opportunities to improve ROAS.

3. Campaign assets and digital products

Rika helped ideate, design and build multiple campaigns and digital experiences across the De’Longhi Group portfolio.

This included ad assets, landing pages, events, retailer activations and in-store experiences, campaign concepts and innovative marketing solutions.

The D2C growth story

When Rika first started working with De’Longhi Group, the UK direct-to-consumer channel didn't exist.

As the channel launched and matured, Rika supported its growth from the ground up through performance strategy, organic optimisation, paid media and measurement.

Rika provided strategic advice and acted as a fractional performance team to the eCommerce arm. We managed Google Ads activity, including Shopping, Responsive Search Ads, Display, remarketing, campaign testing, budget management and continuous optimisation to scale revenue while protecting return on ad spend.

Under our management the PPC channel achieved multi-year growth and profitable ROAS, with stronger proof points including 8 to 10x ROAS, around 10% contribution to total sales on last-click attribution, and up to 50% contribution.

The impact

Rika helped De’Longhi Group create a more transparent, accountable and effective digital marketing ecosystem in the UK.

We helped the business improve ROAS, understand its audiences and make better decisions about media investment, targeting, creative and channel mix.

We supported brand and category growth across De’Longhi, Kenwood and Braun, helping the group activate campaigns across coffee, breakfast, comfort and household products.

We helped grow the UK direct-to-consumer channel from launch into a measurable and commercially meaningful sales channel. We also supported retailer growth through branded shop fronts and partner activity across major retailers, helping De’Longhi Group show up more consistently across the consumer journey.

This partnership shows the value of an agency relationship built on trust, technical capability and honest challenge.

The Outcome

Improvements in audience segmentation and targeting.

Introduction of multi-variate testing activity across marketing channels. Behavioural insights of De'Longhi's audience, allowing the brand to better focus its activities and for budgets to work harder.

Implementation of improved KPI dashboarding and tracking across customer touchpoints.

Consolidated and integrated marketing and customer analytics. Comprehensive campaign reporting.

A renewed focus on the importance of Customer Experience

User Experience improvements as a competitive differentiator.