SAN FRANCISCO — A Stride Rite executive at the ad:tech San Francisco 2014 conference listed several mobile ad formats that the brand is beginning to use as it ramps up its mobile strategy.

Stride Rite and Rakuten MediaForge executives broke down the shoe brand’s mobile strategy during the “Walking the Talk: In Step with Stride Rite’s Mobile Retargeting Strategy” session. Stride Rite is still fairly new to mobile and is just now beginning to try new forms of mobile tactics, including advertising and applications.

“One of the things we’re currently testing is geofencing,” said Misty Bergeron, digital marketing manager at Stride Rite, Lexington, MA.

“What we’re doing now is in-app ads, and we are geofencing our stores and also schools because we know that moms are picking up their kids at the end of the school day, so maybe between the hours of 2 – 4 [p.m.], we’ll geofence school locations,” she said.

“She may be checking the weather on her phone — we’ll have a little banner at the top when she taps that banner and what is shown to her is our ad with the closest store address.”

Falling in step
Besides the geofenced ads, Stride Rite is also running ads within other mobile platforms, including a new campaign with Pandora, which launched last week.

The Pandora ads are targeted towards moms with kids aged seven or younger.

The goal behind the mobile media investments is to connect the brand’s message to a consumer who sees several types of Stride Rite ads.

Other examples of new mobile media campaigns this year include shake-to-reveal ads and formats that resemble a scrolling cube.

Stride Rite is also testing using generic transactional data that applies an identifier to a shopper to better understand how mobile ads impact in-store traffic.

Additionally, the brand is looking to develop applications that solve an issue for moms, such as what size shoe does a child wear. Similarly, the brand is looking at incentivizing app installs with content that reward moms for downloading the app.

Later this year, Stride Rite plans to launch a new Web and mobile site.

To spur smartphone and tablet shopping, Stride Rite runs mobile-specific offers.

Additionally, the brand started ramping up its Instagram strategy in 2013 and also began running retargeting campaigns on Facebook.

In 2013, mobile Web revenue increased 106 percent and mobile traffic was up 61 percent year-over-year.

A little less than a year ago, Stride Rite rolled out a tag management service that breaks down the number of steps involved in a conversion. It pulls in mobile search, affiliate and non-branded and branded campaigns by keyword.

According to Ms. Bergeron, new technology requires that brands test something at least three times before determining if it works or not.

Retarget on mobile
With the help of Rakuten MediaForge, Stride Rite created ads that were consistent to a typical retargeting campaign during back-to-school season last year.

Between noon and 5 p.m., the brand prioritized serving ads on recipe sites, blogs and news since the chunk of time is when millennial moms are most likely to be on their mobile devices.

The addition of a multiscreen campaign led to a five percent lift in conversion. This number excludes the mobile and tablet purchases that were coming from typical retargeting campaigns and only includes the multiscreen component.

There was also a $8.60 return on ad spend for every dollar invested in the campaign.

According to research presented during the session, 81 percent of millennial moms own a smartphone, and these consumers are on their smartphone 14 percent more than other moms.

Millennial moms are also 58 percent more inclined to use mobile devices to research products and 5 percent more likely to use smartphones to access social networks.

Scouring for mobile coupons, showrooming and sharing content are the top activities for millennial moms who use their mobile devices.

“Stride Rite’s core audience is the millennial mom,” said Lisa Tadje, director of marketing and communications at Rakuten MediaForge, Salt Lake City, UT.

“The millennial mom is different from any other generation of moms before,” she said.

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York