Boden, impact.com and Redbrain, Reviving Zombie Products with CSS
Discover how the British high-quality clothing brand, Boden partnered with Redbrain to strategically re-energise performance, expand reach and drive incremental sales.
Key Takeaways
The Highlights
The Challenge
Boden had a growing collection of underperforming SKUs. High-potential products that weren’t receiving visibility or sales through existing Google activity. Traditional campaigns were either too restricted or too inefficient to scale, leaving valuable inventory dormant. To unlock this opportunity they turned to Rebrain CSS as a strategic route to re-energise performance, expand reach and drive incremental revenue without disrupting core activity.
Ultimately, the objective was not simply to generate more attributed sales, but to strategically unlock incremental growth by activating underutilised inventory through a controlled, acquisition-focused CSS partnership.
The Approach
Identifying dormant potential
We uncovered underperforming SKUs and built a strategy to bring them back into high-intent Shopping demand.
Feed built for growth
A dedicated, dynamic feed kept products fresh, prioritised and ready to scale performance.
Optimised for visibility
Data-led bidding and generic search targeting expanded reach beyond existing activity.
AI driving performance
Continuous testing and AI optimisation improved relevance, coverage and traffic quality.
Transparent, collaborative strategy
Open data sharing and weekly optimisation enabled faster decisions and sustained growth.
Smart Execution
Boden identified 3,000 dormant products using a custom script, feeding them into a dedicated Redbrain feed within impact. This created a live, continuously refreshed pool of underperforming SKUs, managed in a fully controlled environment.
Redbrain’s proprietary CSS technology then activated these products at scale. Bids were dynamically adjusted, broader generic search opportunities explored, and high-potential SKUs prioritised. 95.68% of converting keywords were generic, helping Boden reach new, high-intent shoppers beyond its existing audience.
Alongside this, Redbrain applied AI-driven optimisation across the feed. Over 8,000 product titles were enhanced to improve relevance and visibility in Shopping auctions, while Google trend data was layered into bidding strategies to capture demand as it increased.
Continuous testing pushed performance further. Redbrain introduced an AI-driven CSS variant, A/B testing changes across titles, descriptions and product attributes to unlock additional search coverage. Even at an early stage, this contributed to a 5.11% increase in traffic.
Transparency was a key differentiator. While many CSS providers operate as a black box, Redbrain delivers full keyword and product-level visibility through its performance reporting suite. This allowed both teams to make faster, more cost-effective decisions, from monitoring brand bidding and dynamically adjusting feed inclusion, to integrating insights directly into internal PPC reporting.
Close collaboration kept performance on track. Weekly check-ins and shared insights enabled real-time optimisation, from managing product rejections to refining SKU-level strategy. Returns were kept below 20%, significantly outperforming the 40% fashion benchmark.
The Results
The Results
+133%
Click-to-Sale Growth
14.2%
ROI
22.5M
Impressions
The partnership delivered exceptional, validated results across key objectives.
Redbrain CSS activity headline growth (July-Oct 2025):
- 22.5M Impressions
- +133.08% Click-to-Sale growth
- ROI 14.2%
Increased visibility and traffic success: Redbrain drove 22.5M new impressions across previously dormant SKUs, unlocking meaningful exposure at scale. This visibility translated into a 133% uplift in Click-to-Sale, proving the traffic was both relevant and incremental, achieved without inflating internal CPCs or impacting existing activity.
New customer acquisition: Redbrain activity drove between 40%-50% new customers on average. This was pivotal to the overall increase seen through the channel in the UK which was up around 20% over this time frame.
ROAS efficiency: Redbrain activity outperformed Boden’s owned Google Shopping efficiency, with a ROAS of 625% against Boden’s 400%.
The partnership and campaign successfully revived dormant SKUs, delivered incremental sales and demonstrated the value of CSS expansion as a sustainable lever for customer and revenue growth.
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About the Author
Senior Key Account Manager with a focus on building strategic partnerships with leading retail clients. Specialises in Google Shopping and Microsoft Shopping Ads, with a strong focus in driving performance through data-led insights and tailored strategies. Dedicated to enhancing the customer experience and committed to nurturing long-term, impactful relationships that deliver mutual growth.
