smartphoto: Turning Memories Into Personalized Products
For decades, smartphoto has helped customers transform memories into personalized photo products — from prints to photo books and gifts.
smartphoto’s DACH division (Switzerland, Germany, Austria) runs a lean, data‑driven business unit out of Basel with P&L responsibility and a pure marketing focus. Despite strong internal reporting (BigQuery + Looker) and constant efforts to track as many online & offline sales as possible in various ways, they faced the same issues as most modern marketers: signal loss from cookies, strict privacy laws, and platform over‑attribution. In addition, they had limited resources and faced practical obstacles to reliable testing and experiments for advertising channels and spend.
When it came time to plan high‑stakes marketing investments, smartphoto needed a trustworthy, causal view of marketing impact — one that could stand up to board‑level scrutiny and guide weekly budget shifts. This is when smartphoto turned to Sellforte's MMM and incrementality platform after a thorough evaluation of several solutions and providers.
"This is like managing an investment fund — we put money where the expected return is highest and risk is lowest. Sellforte helps us to optimize our channel and campaign portfolio exactly like that."
René Baumann
General Manager DACH, smartphoto
Measuring the Impact of Smarter Investments
Since adopting Sellforte, early signals are strong:
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~+10% ROI uplift since go‑live in Switzerland — roughly –5% spend with +5% incremental sales.
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More efficient mix thanks to conservative reallocation and timing optimisations.
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Reduced dependence on Google & PMax by quantifying potential over‑attribution and diversifying spend.
Crucially, these results are now credible enough for board discussions, giving top management confidence to shift budgets.
Initiated by DACH as a pilot project, it was quickly expanded to four additional countries due to overwhelming interest.
Elevating Measurement to the Executive Level
Beyond the performance lift, Sellforte has changed how smartphoto operates:
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Unifying measurement language across DACH and the group, aligning local teams on ROI.
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Elevating marketing’s role by linking above‑the‑line investments to incremental sales.
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Creating a cultural shift to incrementality‑first, driving better risk‑reward decisions.
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Implementing faster planning cycles, with weekly forecasts and optimisations — no more waiting on data science queues.
As René puts it, "This is like managing an investment fund — we put money where the expected return is highest and risk is lowest. Sellforte helps us to optimize our channel and campaign portfolio exactly like that."
