‍Venus et Fleur is an internationally recognized floral atelier whose precision arrangements maintain their freshness for over a year. Its long-lasting blooms have won over countless celebrities, from Beyoncé to the Kardashians, and have appeared in the likes of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and CNN.

Valentine’s Day is the Black Friday of the floral industry, generating more flower sales across the U.S. than any other holiday. And like many digitally native brands selling their blooms directly to customers, Venus et Fleur relies on this seasonal rush to drive acquisition and revenue with paid ads.

The problem? Despite having high brand awareness, Venus et Fleur wasn’t immune to rising CPAs and competition across the Meta advertising landscape. To ensure their acquisition efforts didn’t threaten profitability, Venus et Fleur’s CMO, Sylvette Sein, needed a more precise targeting strategy to supplement her Broad and automated ASC campaigns. She ultimately chose Proxima audiences as her weapon of choice.

While Sylvette initially planned to target audiences consisting of users in relationships, she also had her eye on an untapped market: people shopping for their friends and families. However, she didn’t want to target just any platonic flower shopper. Instead, she wanted to focus on shoppers who mimicked Venus et Fleur’s most loyal customers — especially as the brand was expanding into premium arrangements. So we examined Venus et Fleur’s customer base to identify high-AOV and high-LTV shoppers. We looked at which SKUs they purchased, at what times, and in what order.

To acquire new shoppers that matched these purchase behaviors (without burning through excess ad spend), Sylvette needed a targeting solution that could feed granular customer information into Meta to boost signal and reach high-value audiences from the get-go.

Fortunately, Venus et Fleur already had a trusted partner who could deliver on that ask: Proxima. Sylvette had found success with Proxima’s predictive intelligence platform during previous major sales dates (like Mother’s Day) and was eager to see what it could do for her Valentine’s Day strategy.

To set the stage for this major sales push, the Proxima team dove into their Shopper Universe (of over 80M shoppers and $20B in transactions across thousands of eCommerce stores) and conducted an updated analysis of Venus et Fleur’s core customers. The team then unpacked their findings in a comprehensive deck that told Sylvette everything she needed to know about the pre-Valentine's Day state of Venus et Fleur’s ICP. In addition to demographic details, the deck included key data points like customer interests, where they shop, the categories of products they buy, and even what influencers they follow.

Using this data, Proxima constructed boosted seed audiences for Venus et Fleur to target on Meta. Sylvette primarily tested two of Proxima’s AI Audiences over Valentine’s Day:

• Audiences modeled from people shopping for friends, family, or partners. We looked over previous Valentine’s periods and narrowed down purchases/customers who were likely purchasing for those groups based on SKU and demographics.
• Audiences modeled from purchasers of specific Venus et Fleur SKUs (whether roses, hydrangeas, or even specific flower colors).

When paired with relevant creative (such as images of the brand’s ice blue hydrangeas for the SKU-based audiences), Venus et Fleur’s ads were served to high-value, high-intent shoppers identified by Proxima’s models. Better yet, Proxima’s audiences consistently beat out their next-best audiences across all head-to-head A/B tests Sylvette ran to verify her success.

Sylvette further supercharged her Valentine’s Day campaigns with ConversionIQ — a Predictive CAPI built in partnership between Proxima and Angler AI. This enriches Venus et Fleur’s first-party Shopify data and filters for high-intent events before being sent back to Meta. Teaching the algorithm to bid in the auctions that target the highest AOV and LTV shoppers.

An example use case:

Venus et Fleur can now differentiate between an Add-To-Cart by a casual window browser or serial returner from an ATC by a high LTV shopper.

But ConversionIQ’s greatest use case is as the partner in crime to AI Audiences.

1. Audiences send high-value shoppers to Venus et Fleur’s website
2. The CAPI relays these predictive signals back to Meta
3. Fueling the algorithm with even more data to optimize campaign performance

This powerful combo exceeded even Sylvette’s ambitious Valentine’s Day goals, driving a 63% lift in ROAS, a 38% boost in AOV, and a 15% reduction in CPA.

Both Proxima’s platform and their team’s deep knowledge of Venus et Fleur’s customers have continued to support the brand’s long-term growth strategy, empowering them to attract valuable shoppers they can retain for years to come.

Sylvette’s decision to lean on her partnership with Proxima during Venus et Fleur’s highest-impact sales season paid dividends. With Proxima, Venus et Fleur scaled prospecting campaigns without efficiency loss, drove new customer acquisition, and crushed its peak season revenue goals.

Even post-Valentine’s Day, their Proxima-powered campaigns are the most profitable in Venus et Fleur’s Meta mix.

Here are the results compared to their next-best campaign:

• 63% lift in ROAS
• 38% increase in AOV
• 15% reduction in CPA
• 228% boost in CTR

Looking ahead, Sylvette is eager to work with Proxima for every major sales event. She knows their CAPI campaigns will be an essential efficiency unlock as Venus et Fleur massively scales spend once again for Mother’s Day.