ZURU boosts marketing efficiency by 20%, unlocks 6-figure returns

“ZURU thrives on continuous improvement and speed of innovation. We aim for 2% improvement every week, and data tools like Fivetran allow us to move faster and leaner than anyone else in our industry.”
— Alexander Gregory, Global Data and Analytics Manager at ZURU

Founded nearly 20 years ago by siblings Nick and Matt Mowbray, ZURU Toys has evolved from a small startup into a global enterprise operating in over 120 countries. Today, ZURU oversees more than 32 brands, employs over 5,000 team members, and has expanded into diverse divisions, including fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and tech innovations, like automated housing. Consistently ranked among the world’s top toy companies by revenue, ZURU also excels in FMCG through its ZURU Edge division, which leads in five core business lines, including beauty and baby care. 

ZURU’s competitive edge has always been its speed — from turning toy concepts into products in as little as 10 days. As ZURU scaled rapidly over the past 5 years, doubling in size in just the last 2, it became critical to revamp its marketing and sales data infrastructure. This was key to supporting its growth into a global leader and optimising the use of its 9-figure marketing budget.

From Excel to a best-in-class data ecosystem with Fivetran

In 2021, ZURU adopted a lakehouse architecture powered by AWS and Databricks with Fivetran as its cornerstone for data ingestion. 

"Setting up Fivetran was absurdly quick and easy,” Gregory says. “We’ve gone from hundreds of maxed-out Excel spreadsheets to databases with billions of rows of marketing data, allowing us to optimise investments in ways we couldn’t have imagined.” 

Fivetran removes the burden of manually developing and maintaining API connections, allowing Gregory and his team to focus on strategic priorities. This automated solution not only streamlines data integration but also ensures reliable and accurate data, minimizing errors and from the complexities of manual data integration, but also ensures data reliability and accuracy, inconsistencies typically associated with DIY solutions.

This reliability is vital for ZURU’s vast data operations, which manage over 10 core marketing sources, including Google, Meta, TikTok, and Amazon Ads. For Google alone, ZURU processes data from nearly 200 ad accounts, ingesting billions of rows annually. Before using Fivetran, maintaining these operations required a dedicated engineer for each source. 

With Fivetran, ZURU has optimised its resources, now operating with a leaner team of 8 data engineers, 3 data scientists, and 1 BI developer/analyst — achieving an estimated 50% reduction in engineering resources needed. 

Real-time data access drives marketing efficiency and performance 

With Fivetran powering real-time data access, ZURU has unlocked significant optimisation gains for its 9-figure marketing budget — improving time and resource efficiency by up to 20%. This enabled the team to rapidly act on hypotheses and optimise campaigns in real time. 

Before implementing Fivetran, adding a feature to ZURU’s marketing mix models was a time-intensive process that could take weeks. Now the team can complete the task in a single day, retrain the model overnight, and begin optimising campaigns the next day — a shift Gregory describes as a game-changer. 

One example involved a hypothesis about geographic optimisation of ZURU’s media. “We needed geo-level tables from all our marketing sources to test and validate the hypothesis,” Gregory says. “With Fivetran, we had all the data we needed within a day — something that would have taken at least 2-3 weeks previously. Testing the hypothesis allowed us to optimize our media by over 20%. The ability to act sooner on this insight resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in realised returns.”

A significant achievement was the global analysis of ad durations, previously considered impossible. This analysis, made possible by seamlessly integrating data sources using Fivetran with clear ERDs and the ease of adding tables, unlocked an additional two weeks of optimised campaigns. This streamlined data integration process saved valuable time and revealed crucial insights that would have been unattainable otherwise, ultimately contributing to a 10-20% increase in return on investment.

ZURU’s data journey exemplifies its commitment of continuous improvement, focusing on 2% weekly improvement to turn small, consistent wins into significant year-over-year growth. 

“ZURU’s competitive advantage lies in how quickly we move from ideas to execution,” Gregory shares. This agility also defines the company’s approach to data. “Fivetran has been instrumental in helping us build a world-class data system. Today, we’re competing with the biggest global players in how we leverage data.”

Now with a solid data foundation powered by Fivetran’s reliable and high-performance data pipelines, ZURU is positioned to continue driving its rapid global growth. 

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