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How do brands get started on WhatsApp? Kapten & Son used flash sales and Black Friday deals to grow audience numbers by the thousand. In a personal way.
Challenge: less flashy sales
Kapten & Son is an innovative and data-driven company that's always looking for new ways to improve the customer experience.
Special discounts are very popular amongst its customer base, but it was looking for a way to communicate these in a more personal and effective manner.
It wanted to test WhatsApp as a potential long-term revenue driver in good time for Black Friday. If successful, it would use WhatsApp for its Black Friday campaigns and use this as a chance to keep growing its audience.
Goal: see if WhatsApp works
Kapten & Son wanted to prove the value of WhatsApp for its business: through higher open rates and click-through-rates, and a positive ROI.
Once this was proven, it wanted to use Black Friday to grow its WhatsApp audience – with the aim of collecting 20k opt-ins using Black Friday deals.
Results: increased revenue and reach
The brand proved that WhatsApp is a powerful sales channel.
In its first WhatsApp flash sale, it achieved 92x ROI and revenue per recipient (RPR) of €14.85. This proved to be an effective way of gaining future customers, gaining 2,000 WhatsApp opt-ins in the first 48 hours.
Impressed with the performance of WhatsApp and charles, the stage was set for Black Friday. Kapten & Son sent WhatsApp deals through charles' Campaigns feature and advertised the deals on its website.
This event was used as an opportunity to grow its WhatsApp audience for the future. As Jana Fries, CRM Manager explains: “For us, Black Friday was about collecting opt-ins, not just making sales. This is because once we have more WhatsApp subscribers, they're there for the long-term and we're in a stronger position to grow revenue in the future."
And it successfully met its goal of 20k WhatsApp subscribers by Black Friday.
"We've been really happy with the charles platform," says Jana, "It's easy to use, offers useful tracking and analytics, and I can see WhatsApp growing to become our favorite channel – for both sales and marketing."
Kapten & Son can now
1. Easily build an audience
Kapten & Son implemented a dedicated sign-up flow on its website to collect opt-ins.
It gave a sense of exclusivity, saying: “Sign up to WhatsApp to be the first to know when our flash sale starts.”
2. Create quality opt-ins
Thanks to charles, Kapten & Son has set up an automated "double opt-in" WhatsApp flow.
This asks customers a second time (after clicking on the website) to consent to its communications on WhatsApp. This helps with compliance with the General Data Protection Policy (GDPR), which is the law for EU companies. Read more about WhatsApp and GDPR.
3. Manage opt-ins from many sources
Opt-ins can come from Instagram, email, website, even in-store QR codes.
With charles, Kapten & Son can manage all opt-ins in one place and analyze how many are coming from each channel. This helps the brand analyze and optimize opt-in collections.
What's next?
1. Trying product launches on WhatsApp
2. Boost RPR with audience segmentation
3. Add PDP "Chat-ins" to bring more website visitors into WhatsApp
Kapten & Son has built a thriving WhatsApp channel and is working closely with Ilke Baysal, charles Success Manager, to keep growing its audience and revenue.
It sees WhatsApp as a revenue driving channel thats works together with email and is particularly good for big sales promotions.
The company now plans to add customized chat bubbles to its product description pages (PDPs) to grow opt-in numbers even faster, and test product on this more direct channel.
