Hello,
BFCM is behind us, there are still a few days left, and we will slowly say goodbye to 2022. Are you already making 25-30% of your revenue from email marketing? Great, then you've more than done your homework, and you're on the right track.
Q4 is the time when email marketing comes to life the most. Investing time in quality content, strategy preparation, and preliminary testing pays off. But if you are not happy with the results in Q4 yet, you are most likely just at the beginning or have yet to reach your full potential.
Below you will find some basic information and beginner's mistakes that we usually see the clients we work with make.
1. "Send to all" 🙈- Sending emails to the entire database.
Unfortunately, emails are often sent to the entire database instead of to the appropriate segments. Such practices are surprisingly also used by companies that have been on the market for a long time and, most of the time, have a concrete list of subscribers (500k+).
Why are there better ways than to send the same email to the entire base?
It doesn't make sense to send your emails to Nicole and John, who subscribed a year and a half ago, maybe even made a purchase, but haven't opened your email even once in the last ten months.
Doing it this way, you strongly influence the open/click rate metrics, and with that, you also influence the deliverability itself (and believe me, you don't want to play with that).
Usually, it goes like this: if your emails have a terrible open/click rate, email providers conclude that your content is irrelevant and "protect" their customers (your base) from your emails 🙈. That means that sooner or later, your email will end up in the spam, or the emails will not be delivered at all.
There is a high probability that you will needlessly pay a much higher cost for the email marketing platform—more about this below.
2. You chose an email marketing platform solely based on price.
When comparing the prices of two platforms, you quickly decide on the cheaper one, especially if you are starting out, and cost optimization is still essential.
I understand, but is it really that much cheaper?
Take a good look at all the platform features, think about what you need, and choose the one that will make your work easier. If you spend 3x more time on the operational part within the platform or need some additional tool because your platform does not provide everything you need, make sure you count that in as well.
Remember to check what kind of report the platform offers! This may not be the most important thing at the beginning. Still, you will quickly realize that it is necessary to build a quality list and "nurture" it from the very beginning if you want email marketing to be successful in the long term.
Of course, this also means that there will be the need for personalized content, which is far from just a *name* in the subject line or the first paragraph of the address.
Also, be careful when comparing prices. Most EM platforms do indeed charge a usage based on the size of the entire database.
Some differences between Klaviyo and Mailchimp:
3. You send emails on Thursday at 11:00, just like Mr. Google said.
Make no mistake; I love Google:) But, for choosing when to send your email campaigns, you should test it on your database instead of general Google advice. Check which day of the week stands out the most regarding the number of purchases made in your online store. For example, if it's Tuesday and Sunday, start with them. The next step is to test the time. Find your winning combination and stay consistent.
P.S.: Q4 is not an ideal time for testing, as this is the time of various promotional campaigns, which can strongly impact customers' buying habits. Most likely, you had an increase in purchases on Friday due to the Black Friday campaign, not because Fridays generally do better than other days of the week.
Best regards,
Klara
WeScale Email Marketing Manager and Certified Klaviyo Expert on Deliverability
For us, having a marketing calendar for every brand we work with comes with the job, but we had many calls recently where we realized that potential clients need one. So we will give you a practical example of how we prepare marketing calendars for our clients. If you don't have one, you can follow our template and if you do, check if you really included all there is to include.
A marketing calendar is, at the most basic level, a plan that covers your marketing activities throughout the year.
Your marketing department must invest time in proactively organizing campaigns in advance, even if it can be time-consuming and requires much thinking.
Sure, you may only know some of your planned activities one year in advance, but you should have a clear idea of some of the biggest campaigns and events suited for your brand.
"We need a marketing calendar; we get it. But why?" Glad you asked. The biggest benefits of having a marketing calendar are:
Having a marketing calendar helps team members coordinate with one another better by making it clear which member of the team is responsible for accomplishing a specific task or project. This makes it easier to find gaps in progress and tweak schedules in case more time is necessary.
It will help you avoid missed deadlines, see how tasks progress daily and weekly, and adjust accordingly to maintain realistic expectations. This holistic view allows for delegating tasks through the team and developing better solutions.
Imagine how much time you could save on meetings and alignments when all the information about the campaigns is laid out and accessible to everyone. A planned structure is easier to follow and gives team members something to fall back to.
A visual representation of deadlines provides another benefit: marketing team members become more motivated to accomplish tasks by a certain point because they can see their target.
It will be much easier for you to coordinate every department according to the plan when you have everything before you.
Now that you know why, here is how.
So many excellent tools on the market will offer you everything and more, but a well-made Excel spreadsheet will do as well. At WeScale, we use Asana, but you can find your winner over time. Make sure that the calendar ticks off all the points below:
Many tools allow you to combine all your marketing activities in one calendar. We recommend you make a calendar for all activities combined and then make a separate calendar depending on activity, where your team can add their subtasks and the small details. These are the types of calendars you can choose:
What we mean by that is to look for all the big holidays on which you want to run a campaign. Think of your brand and its market, and ask yourself if you should plan something on
🗓️ Valentine's Day
🗓️ Mother's Day
🗓️ International Women's Day
🗓️ First Day of Winter/Spring/Summer/Autumn
🗓️ First Day of School
🗓️ Halloween
🗓️ Thanksgiving
🗓️ Christmas
🗓️ New Year
You must think about your market and its culture/traditions. If you're running a campaign in a market that doesn't celebrate Christmas, don't run the campaign. As we said, adapt your marketing calendar to your market and audience.
Once you put all the important general dates in your calendar, it's time to think about what specific dates would be best for your brand.
Let's take one of our clients, for example - a beauty company that we helped to expand from 2 to 4 markets and went from doing 70k/month to 200k/month in revenue.
Firstly, we chose the general dates for each market, and then we thought about the particular days that would be important for the brand.
We looked at the ideal client's profile and selected the important days celebrating beauty, women, and health. You can do that by Googling the international and national days across the globe, special holidays, and dedications to these topics. These were some of the examples we chose:
January 8: Bubble Bath Day
February 13: Galentine's Day
March 22: As Young as you Feel Day
April 16: National Stress Awareness Day
June 8: Best Friend's Day
June 18: Splurge Day
July 3: Compliment Your Mirror Day
September: Liptember
These dates are important for their community, social media posts, and paid ad campaigns. But more about that later. So what's next?
We recommend you make the steps above for the whole year, but then plan each quarter in more detail. Once you set your goals and decide on your KPIs, it's time to make a strategy.
The strategy should include all the campaigns and product launches in that quarter. For our client, we had approximately 2-3 new product launches quarterly and made sure to plan those campaigns with the client. After we decided on the theme and offers for those campaigns, we looked at what else could be done.
Why is that so important?
When we talk to clients about offers, their biggest fear is always looking "desperate," having "sales" all the time, making their products look unwanted, and cheapening their brand. We always explain that testing different offers, whether through an ad or email campaign, is essential, and we put a lot of thought into making sure it comes out as a benefit for their community.
For example, we wanted to test "Buy One, Get One 50%". Two campaigns were already lined up for the new product launches with a promotional offer. We looked at our marketing calendar with the client and decided to test this offer on "As Young As You Feel Day," and the campaign will include only anti-age products, so it fits the story.
Write a brief about the campaign and ensure it includes all the vital information the team needs to know about. After that, assign tasks, subtasks, priorities, and due dates based on the department and a team member.
This way, everybody can check the campaign's progress, and project managers can see if everything is going according to plan.
Once you do all that, your calendar should like something like this:
As time passes, you will optimize your content calendar to your needs and always have a chance to go back in time and look at your campaigns. This always comes in handy when analyzing why a campaign was so successful or where your team could do something different.
If you have never had a calendar like that, it can feel overwhelming at first, but we genuinely believe that it's an essential part, and we can't imagine having the success we had without one.
The last month of the year just began, so you have enough time to make a marketing calendar for the following year. If you have any questions or need help, don't hesitate to contact us.
Have you ever wondered how influencer marketing works but couldn't find a reputable source to answer your questions? When the same questions kept coming up in different conversations, we decided to interview our Influencer Marketing Manager, Petja Oplotnik, who generously answered all of them.
Petja: Firstly you need to check if you can incorporate the product into the influencer's lifestyle. It is crucial to recognize which influencers are relevant in a specific market, are "trustworthy," and have meaningful content on their profiles. Most importantly, the influencer needs to have a strong community.
For example, a skincare brand would most likely be searching for a profile of an influencer, who likes to take care of themselves, and is well educated about the products and ingredients they use for their skin.
Secondly, it is essential to check the statistics of the influencers following base. It will be a good fit if they fit with your target group.
Petja: More relevant than the number of followers is the community and content/topics discussed that the influencer provides and is present daily.
The content on the profile needs to be something interesting, different, and educational and bring the followers a sense of belonging. The profile needs to give added value to the follower.
What is also relevant is the influencer's profile statistics because it is crucial to check if their data matches the brand's target group (age range, female/male, location, etc.).
If your target group matches the influencer's profiles, then the chances of great results are higher.
Petja: The results depend on each profile. With macro influencers, we can reach a wider audience and consequently have better sales results if they are a good brand fit.
Regarding results connected to the size of the profile and sales, I recommend setting a target ROI for collaborations in a specific market and checking the results according to ROI. In this case, some profiles can have excellent results compared to their initial investment.
Here we can also mention the growth of individual profiles with long-term collaborations, which build brand trust and can increase sales.
Petja: When writing to an influencer, try personalizing the note as much as possible. With the message, present your brand/story/product and let them know why you selected them to showcase your brand. Building a great relationship from the start can majorly impact further collaborations. Many brands work with influencers, so standing out of the crowd and building relationships are the key. With long-term collaborations, one can build a great brand story with the help of the right influencers.
Petja: Having market insights is a crucial advantage, so knowing which influencers' profiles are currently relevant on the market and well-known is essential. We can achieve this by following the situation on the market, following the popular profiles, or having a local specialist who knows the situation well select the profiles with which the brand can collaborate.
Petja: The fake followers can be spotted through different platforms that analyze the influencer's profiles, including bought/fake followers. The platforms usually require a subscription fee; however, there are some free tools, but the precision of the data can differ: (https://influencermarketinghub.com/fake-follower-checker/)
There are a few red flags you can easily spot when searching for new profiles for collaborations.
The first red flag is the low ratio between the number of followers and the engagement under the posts.
You can always request the influencer to send your their recent profile statistics, where you can check the engagement and story reach, which can also be an indicator if you want to collaborate with the influencer or not.
Petja: The brief for the collaboration should be informative and written clearly. In the beginning, you should present the products and the purpose of the campaign you wish to execute. The more information you provide the influencer with, the better; however, too much information can also lead to the end outcome of the campaign. Therefore I suggest the following:
💡Provide enough information about the product itself and the goal of the Collaboration.
💡Clearly and straight to the point, present the key information about the extent of the collaboration (story set, feed post, date and time of publication, discount code, UTM link usage, etc.).
💡Your examples can also be visually supported with photos and videos, giving them a better insight into the idea of collaboration.
*If you do not have a clear visual of the campaign, leave some room for the ideas from the influencer's side since they know their followers best and have the best view of how to present a product to fit their profiles.
Petja: The collaboration with influencers is a marathon, not a sprint - with their help, you can build a fantastic story with brand building. Therefore it's challenging to focus only on one measurement scale. Depending on the type of campaign and collaboration, we can set the following KPIs:
💡For sales collaborations - discount codes and results regarding ROI or CPO.
💡For branding collaborations - personalized UTM link clicks/number of followers/story reach.
💡For content collaborations - measuring the content performance on paid socials ROAS and CTR.
It would be best if you always chose the measures mentioned above based on the idea of the campaign.
Petja: Barter collaborations or collaborations in exchange for a free product are nowadays sporadic because content creators put a lot of work into their content, and most profiles work professionally as influencers.
The prices differentiate based on the size of the profile. There is no single framework/pricelist for all.
With one collaboration, usually, you can have several "outcomes," for example, a story set collaborations, whitelisting, and content rights. With this, you can receive content to use on other channels. Collaborations only via story are usually cheaper than feed post collaborations.
Petja: The first contact you have with the influencers is through the reach-out message, which needs to stand out. Suppose the influencer does not respond to your email. In that case, I recommend sending a reminder for the reply because the email can sometimes get lost or forgotten about, with the number of other emails they receive. Following this, you can also contact the influencers via Instagram. Make sure to personalize the message and have clear communication.
Petja: For the influencers, you can prepare the contracts. Usually, the influencer has their own company, so they are eligible to issue the invoices. The deal can also be agreed on via email. To avoid sending the product without the influencer delivering their part of the deal, check the previous collaborations of the profile and what kind of content the influencer delivered. If the collaboration is paid, the chances you will receive everything agreed on are higher.
Petja: Yes, of course, communicate this at the beginning of the collaboration. Usually, you can ask the influencer to send you the content 2-3 days before publishing, so there is still time for corrections in case of any changes.
If the content is sent in advance for approval, it gives you more time to prepare the creatives for paid posts if you also receive the content and the usage rights from the collaboration.
Petja: The date must be communicated with the influencer at the beginning of the collaboration to ensure it's reserved just for your post/launch. Clearly communicate what kind of collaboration you expect in advance (Story set, story set + feed post, feed post).
Petja: It depends on the agreement with the influencer for individual collaboration. Usually, the agreement via email is enough, but I recommend getting the official written email confirmation that you can use the content on all brand channels. You can also arrange the agreement via contract if the influencer requests that.
Petja: Influencer marketing is one of the channels that has been around for quite some time and has helped companies with brand building and trust building. The influencer is the person whose followers - your potential customers/ target groups trust and who knows how to present the product interestingly. With the influencers' help, you can receive brand awareness and trust, an instant review, and a user experience. The influencer can become the "face of the brand" and add to the brand's credibility.
Through influencer marketing, you can also support other channels with content creation and whitelisting.*
Some profiles might even surprise you with their content creation skills. Since content is important for all channels, this is a competitive advantage.
Influencer marketing is also a way to build relationships with "your business partners - influencers," who can, in case of a good brand fit, become your brand ambassadors and build the brand together with you. They can show the products several times, show that the product has become an important part of their everyday life and that they believe in it.
What is crucial is to select suitable profiles of influencers because a limited number of profiles provide quality content and are on the rise in popularity. Sometimes timing is essential, and if you grow with the influencer's profile, this can lead to great collaboration results.
I recommend looking at influencer marketing as building relationships with the influencer and the community, which supports the profile and can soon turn into a brand's community.
As I said already, influencer marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Therefore results can be seen after some time.
If you want us to help you with Influencer Marketing, fill out the form HERE.
If you have more questions for Petja, send her an email to 📩 petja.oplotnik@wescale.agency.
The popularity of UGC and the importance of great ad creatives are not entirely new. Many marketers have experienced their power and their importance to our work. However, in 2022 there has been a new wave of emphasizing the vital role they play in eCommerce business by feeding the algorithm the content that will push it to bigger audiences.
As you know, all the new privacy laws introduced to various social media channels, especially those belonging to Meta, bring a lot of trouble to marketers. You are probably familiar with the changes Apple 🍏 made with IOS14. Another important announcement is from Google, which is planning to phase out the support for third-party cookies for Chrome. This means that social media advertising pixels will be almost absolute in the future; it will be even more challenging for us to measure the effectiveness of advertising and find the right audiences.
So what is in our power to control and improve? 🧠
Brand content is polished, beautiful ✨, and much needed, with a lot of potential to directly sell products to customers.
We shouldn't forget that social media is made to evoke attention based on social proof, and there is no better way to harvest this power for your brand than UGC.
While the primary source of reviews is not family and friends anymore, the customers still want them. Studies show that 9 out of 10 customers 👀read reviews before buying something.
You can show positive reviews for your brand in many ways; we believe using UGC is one of the best ways to do it. ✅
➡️ Promote authenticity and credibility boost
➡️ Increase brand awareness significantly
➡️ Present an undeniable social proof (just as powerful as word-of-mouth)
➡️ Build trust for your brand (consumers trust recommendations from real people)
➡️ Impact purchasing decisions on a higher level
➡️ It gives the consumers a voice
➡️ Attract brand advocates and brand ambassadors
➡️ It makes people feel they are a part of an online community
We were already using a lot of UGC content for our client's ad campaigns in which we discovered that UGC improved the client's ROAS by 50%+ and beat all the other creatives.
There were still a couple of challenges we were experiencing quite regularly.
We would order UGC content through various platforms from content creators with whom we didn't really have a strong relationship. The content they would deliver to us was a lot of time, very underwhelming.
Meta advertising is one of the primary services we excel in. We have tested thousands of creatives for our clients, so we have gained a good perspective on recognizing performance-oriented ad creatives.
Besides that, there was no way to give constructive feedback to receive better content in the future.
When we sign a new client, one of the first things we look at is their ad library and content assembly. We noticed that many brands have very little valuable content for us to use for ad creatives, so we always order the content for them. This whole process significantly delayed the start of advertising.
Customers changed a lot. They are now much more active and distrustful in advertising, so authenticity is at the top of their list of things they value in brands. UGC gives them the trust they want that no other type of ad can.
Glad you asked. Besides the struggles we mentioned, UGC can be very tricky to use if you have little experience with it.
😵💫 Finding content creators that deliver high-quality content can be very difficult and expensive.
😵💫 It's hard to monitor the branding because you have less control over the content that comes from unknown sources.
😵💫 Your community must be engaged to generate new content for you continuously.
😵💫 Knowing how to write the creative brief to get the right content you are looking for can be essential and requires the right person with the right skill.
😵💫 Once you run ads with UGC, you have to know how to analyze results, so you can also find the content that converts in the future.
Since we have already worked with many incredible content creators that have built strong relationships with our team, our team started brainstorming🌪️ how we could take that to the next level and establish the system. It was in this brainstorming session that our CEO Jure asked:
"Why don't we make our digital hub for content creators that deliver high-quality, performance-oriented content?"
It's our answer and solution to the problems we were facing, and a project we believe will bring a lot of value 🪙 to our clients.
Essentially it's our digital place where we connect all the proven content creators we've worked with before, whose content performed well and generally accepted our feedback. They showed interest in being at our disposal to make the on-demand content we need.
You probably wonder how WeScale Creators Hub works, right? Let's jump right in!
Our process of selecting the right content creators is very particular and detailed.
Our team handpicks IG and TikTok content creators and invites them to fill out the form and join LEVEL 2 of WeScale Creators Hub, the group we call The Goal Diggers (more about that later).
This is an open group where content creators learn about The Hub, where they can find the information they need, and how they can sign up for the campaigns.
This is the second stop in The Hub for all our team's content creators deemed appropriate.✅ Here, they find a starting campaign they must sign up for and deliver the content instructed. After that, our team once again checks their application form, social media profiles, and the content they've provided and decides if they are the right fit for the Embassy. If they are picked and decide to join, they sign ✍️ the NDA, and we move them to the next level.
The Embassy is where the magic happens. ✨ We named it The Embassy because we feel like content creators are the ambassadors of our agency and the clients we serve. The excellent work reflects the skills and knowledge they possess, and it's also magnified by the help and training they receive from us.
In the Embassy, our team posts all the latest campaigns from our clients. The campaigns involve a precise brief📋 about the content and all the information about the budget, expectations, and deliverables.
Content creators can apply if they wish, and our team once again chooses🎯 who will be the most suitable for the project.
Once the content creators are picked, our team will contact them privately, then they are sent the products, and they deliver the content that our team checks. ✅
After that, the content is sorted in the WeScale digital library🏆, where it's at the disposal of our Media Buying, Retention, Influencer, and Social Media team members.
When setting up The Hub, we thought a lot about the content creators and how we could help them and make a place to meet each other and exchange 🤝 tips and tricks.
Because our content creators are based worldwide 🌏, they probably wouldn't meet and talk to each other if they were not a part of the Creators Lounge.
The Creators Lounge is intended for everyone in The Hub but is run by and curated by WeScale's Community Manager. What kind of content can you find there?
➡️ We share the creatives that performed best for our clients and let the content creators know what made them successful.
➡️ We keep them up to date with the latest social media and content creation trends.
➡️ We share webinars, events, and educational content with them.
➡️ We let them know about new apps they can use to make and improve the content.
➡️ We chat about techniques that improve the content and advise each other on ways to stick to the creative briefs as much as possible.
➡️ We introduce them to amazing content creators and their content for some inspiration.
➡️ We chat about pop culture moments and everything that goes on with social media channels.
We usually give you the numbers and conversions from our client's campaigns, but we will save those for some other time. Right now, we can tell you about the results that are not as easy to measure but made a huge difference.
➡️ We significantly shortened the time between signing a new client and running their first campaign. We had cases when we did the first campaign with new creatives in just two weeks. For clients, that made the start of working with us more uncomplicated, and they've seen the results much quicker.
➡️ Because of The Hub, we can now deliver 5-10 x creatives a week for our clients, which means more options for testing and finding the right ones that perform best. One of our clients trusted us to invest more into UGC content; in return, those creatives generated more than 70% of their total sales.
➡️ The quality of content we receive is much better than what we used to receive from third-party apps. Because of our relationship with content creators, they welcome the critique and make sure to deliver content that follows our guidelines.
➡️ Not only do the ad creatives perform much better, but we're also able to receive a new batch of creatives based on the winning creatives from different content creators whenever we want. Clients find it much more cost-effective than constantly searching for new creators.
➡️ Content creators became our ambassadors and formed an ambassador-like relationship with the brands they were making content for. That unpredictable outcome only made them create content with more care and thought.
Our creative team built a unique, complex naming structure that shows every ad creative's performance individually. We then analyze all the creatives weekly and draw new conclusions in reports handed to the post-production team.
WeScale Creators Hub turned out to be a fantastic project for us, and we have huge plans to develop it even further. 🚀
If you want us to help you run ads with performance-oriented UGC creative, fill out the form HERE.
If you are a content creator interested in joining our WeScale Creators Hub, send an email with your portfolio to 📩 kim.marksl@wescale.agency
Our client is specialized in selling kid's home decor products and bedding items. They have a large product portfolio that contains more than 1.000 different products. Before the collaboration, the company was present in two smaller European markets where they have been already well-positioned, but couldn’t find a way to scale their business further.
CLIENT`S CHALLENGE: Scaling the business 👀
The client has reached out to us for help with their business plans and goals. At that time they were present in 2️⃣ countries but they were aware of their potential and capabilities to expand to more markets. We went straight to the business and prepared the strategy on how to scale while opening new markets.
Since the client was already present in the European markets we’ve decided that we will try to expand the business in other European countries. First of all, we did thorough research to determine which markets have the biggest potential. Below are a few parameters that we have examined:
👉 Client's capabilities and restrictions per market
👉 Demographics
👉 In-depth research of the (local) competitors
👉 Best marketing approaches for this industry
👉 Online demand
👉 Specifics of the target population for the specific country
👉 Customer journey
After the research, we defined several countries as our potential markets. The launch of the strategy was also prepared with defined specific tests to see if the client’s products were really a product fit.
In the first month, we expanded the business into five countries and later on in an additional two. 🏆 The goal was to test a bigger number of potential markets in order to find the ones that will enable us to scale the business in the future.
When you are opening new markets use localized assets and have customer support ready that will be able to help in the language that the targeted market is speaking. With a local approach, you can reach a wider audience and impact your target customers more. 🙌
For each market, we have also prepared the opening sale. This was the first advertising campaign used when we were opening a new market. The campaign was a success in every market 🏆, so we suggest you promote the newness of the product/service for its first time on the market. Communicate that loudly. People like new products and also like to hear about new ideas and innovations.
Our client had a big variety of products so we have decided to break them into categories. For each category, we defined our target audiences, and KPIs and started promoting them. The goal was to find a winning category and winning products inside those categories. 🏆
When we have found the winning categories and winning products, we set our sales strategy, which was mainly focused on bestselling products.
Bestselling products became the bait that attract customers to the site, but in the end, they also bought more than a few products.
The goal is to promote the bestsellers on the creatives and through them draw the customer to the landing page where they will be able to find those bestsellers next to the other products. This way you can sell even more and increase your AOV. 📈
After we have identified the main markets and main bestsellers, we started with the scaling phase.
The challenge we had was a big stock with plenty of different products, but at the same time, we were running out of stock for our bestselling products. Those products were driving the majority of the sales.
We rearranged the stock in a way that has enabled us to offer a big quantity of bestselling products but still keep smaller stock of other products to use for cross-selling and up-selling purposes. In this way, we have been able to raise the average order of each purchase. 🤝
Having products in stock also enables fast delivery of products sold. This is a crucial feature since nowadays it’s an important competitive advantage, to offer a superior purchase and post-purchase service. Providing fast delivery is one of the core parts of post-purchase services.
Our advice would be to plan in advance and always have products in stock. Don’t forget about plan B - what other products can you push, if something unpredicted happens and you run out of your best-selling products for some time. ☝️
It is important to analyze and use more marketing channels through which you can reach your customers.
In this case, we have used three channels:
👉 Meta as the main channel;
👉 Google where we have focused the most on Google shopping;
👉 E-mail marketing where we mostly worked on our retention strategy.
We have used Meta for the PUSH approach and we have created a demand by creatively advertising our products and pointing out the benefits of the products and the pains that products can solve. 🧠
On the other side, Google served well as a PULL channel. We were answering the existing demand and offering the right product at the right time when customers were searching for it🔍. Based on that we could also figure out which product is in high demand and in addition, also push it on Meta to find more similar customers that have the same needs, but did not know that yet.
E-mail 📧 was used mostly as the retention channel. After we acquired the new customers we have tried to increase the frequency of purchases by constantly reaching out with e-mails and notifying existing customers about new products, special offers, etc.
E-mail as a marketing channel requires far less financial input in comparison to Meta and Google advertising. Furthermore, e-mail marketing can generate significant revenue, improve overall profitability and enable you more budget that is needed for the acquisition of new customers.
In this case, the Meta platform has been the main channel for scaling and acquiring most of the revenue. Since things on Meta are changing fast and competition is tough, it is necessary to always try new approaches to be able to reach as many new customers 🛍️, as it’s possible. Down below you can find a few practical tips, that helped us to scale this client`s company. They can be also used by you to scale your business.
We have mentioned earlier that we have used best-selling products as the bait, but the same can be done with low-priced products. Take one product that you can offer for a really low price, put it on the creatives, showcase the low price and drive the traffic to the page where more products will be listed. Amongst the listed products there will also be the one with a really low price. Low prices will attract customers 1st, which will then lead to buying more products than just one. 😎
The passion page is a Facebook page made to build a community that shares the same passion.
In our case for kids' home decor products, the passion page could be: “My kid`s dream house 🏠🧸”.
On that kind of Facebook page, the material shared is not connected to the business but is related to the topic. There you can share/post different kinds of material that don’t have a sales approach.
The advantage is, that you can use it for advertising purposes. Ads connected to the passion page, look more native which draws more attention and converts better.
If you have a big variety of products, you have to use dynamic product ads. The Meta algorithm will try to adjust ads and show the right product (from your catalog of products) to the right customer. In our case, we have used a lot of dynamic product ads; and to keep them attractive, we have constantly used different ad copies, frames, and badges. Especially frames and badges can make them visually more appealing.
✨ Dynamic product ads (DPA) also allow you to generate product sets with specific products that you can choose on your own to target specific audiences.
For example, we have created specific product sets which contained all the products needed for the kid's rooms, another one only with products in pink🌸 color, etc. We used DPA within different ad types and in this way ensured, that Meta users would fall into a certain mood that we were aiming for.
We used all of the above-mentioned techniques to scale the business, but the far most important thing was - rapidly opening new markets. In the beginning, we focused on obtaining smaller shares of each market, instead, we should have focused only on one until we would have found the winners - markets with huge potential for the brand. After we realized that, we started to invest more energy in the markets with bigger potential, and at the same time, search for new market opportunities.
If you've seen a massive decrease in your ads in the last year, you are struggling to keep your ROAS stable and your business is not as profitable as it once was, rest assured that you are not alone and we understand you. 😎
Meta Ads (former Facebook Ads), were undoubtedly one of the best - if not the best - tools to put your new brand out there in the world or scale it, even if it was an already well-established brand.
But that was before iOS 14.5. When there were no restrictions whatsoever on cookies and any type of tracking. The ads scenario stopped being so bright for most of the advertisers. Does that mean running ads on Meta stopped being profitable? No, not at all. ☝️ It's just more difficult and challenging. So, to answer the question "Do META ads still work in 2022?", the simple answer is "of course" BUT you will have to look at it holistically.
We know it has been a hard year so far and adding to the tracking issue, consumer behavior is also changing due to external factors like inflation and fear of the recession.
If your main thinking is how to improve ads instead of thinking about how to improve your e-commerce game as a whole, you will probably have a hard time.
But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! 🤝
At WeScale we are being challenged every day and that’s why we’ve got our departments adapting our eCommerce approach frequently, to make sure we test concepts fast and we scale them even faster when they prove to be working.
So, sit back and get your notepad 🗒️ because we think it will be worth it!
Ad accounts can be a mess and confusing if you are not structuring them well.
Imagine dedicating 10-15 minutes of your day just to find a specific campaign, ad set, or ad. To avoid this, be sure you have a naming convention that helps you to be more efficient and quick to find the information you want in a matter of seconds.
Having a good funnel structure inside your ad account is halfway to a successful eCommerce business.
There are a lot of ways you can structure your funnel but the two most known and used structures are the 3 Stage Funnel and the 5 Stage Funnel.
If you have a low budget you could benefit from structuring your account based on the 3 main stages of a sales funnel.
💡Awareness - Top of the Funnel (TOFU)
💡Consideration - Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)
💡Conversion/Decision - Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)
Make sure you reach all stages of your funnel. From engagers and video viewers to all-time buyers, you shouldn’t be missing anyone.
If you have a higher spend, you can optimize your funnel for 5 stages.
➡️ Awareness - For a cold audience (people who don’t know you at all)
➡️ Interest/Education - For all the social media channel engagers or visitors that already know your product or service (e.g. people who’ve interacted with your Instagram profile)
➡️ Desire - For people that deeper into your website and visited specific webpages or products (e.g. Viewed a specific product or category)
➡️ Action - For people that had any action closer to the purchase (e.g. adding a specific product to the cart)
➡️ Repeated Buyers - For people that already purchased any product or service from you
Since iOS 14.5, tracking lost its accuracy but, any action taken inside Facebook or Instagram is still 100% trackable. That being said, you can take advantage of the lookalike audiences at an early stage of your funnel. Video views, Facebook and Instagram engagement.
Don’t push too many ads inside your set. Depending on your budget you can use between 3 to 5 ads inside an ad set.
Sometimes Facebook will use a big portion of your budget at an early stage, just on a single ad. And this is only because it showed promising results at the beginning. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the other ads you have on that same ad set are not suitable. If you believe they will also work, try to isolate and test them. Sometimes this can surprise you.
Make sure that you are doing the right exclusions. If you don’t do proper exclusions you will not be able to tell what stages of your funnel are working better or worse.
Don’t worry about your frequency as long as you are getting conversions out of it. But plan ahead! You may need to change the creatives quite frequently and if you do not have the assets prepared, the moment your performance starts to die, you may not be ready and will probably lose traction on your ad spend.
👉 Placements - Do not take a placement or an ad format as a permanent winner. If a collection ad has been working for you, this doesn’t mean other ad formats won’t work in the future. On the contrary, different people reacted differently to creatives and ad formats. That said, keep testing these formats through your funnel and combine them with different types of creatives.
👉 Use Automated Rules - Use rules to scale and do early cuts if needed. This will save you time and of course, money. Some automation tools we recommend are Revealbot, Madgicx, and ROI Hunter.
You may have noticed that some audiences have disappeared from your ads manager and that your lookalike audiences are not performing as well as they were in the past.
We advise you to always dedicate a portion of your budget to test new audiences and combine new angles with those audiences to find your perfect combo.
💡 Broad audience - A broad audience with no interest or age limitation will most probably not disappoint you at all. But don’t forget, your pixel must have collected data! A well-seasoned pixel will drastically decrease the chance of a broad audience not working for you.
💡 Test “stupid” interests - Yes, that’s right, you can find interests that apparently have nothing to do with your target audience but they simply work. And sometimes they outperform some of your most common audiences as well!
💡 Audience Size - Try to use audiences bigger than 2M people.
If you are targetting small interests you will saturate your audience pretty fast. So, be cautious when targeting smaller audiences.
💡 Lookalike audiences - Although some lookalike audiences are not performing as well as they once were, the combination of the timeframes and events you can make is insanely high. Taking video views as an example, you can make lookalike audiences out of a 3-second video view and explore them between the last 7 up to 180 days.
The number of tests you can do between ad creatives, copies, landing pages, placements, formats, and other elements is amazingly high! So, your best friend should be testing! Set up a testing system and try to find new combinations between those elements and draw conclusions from them.
🎯 Creative testing - As soon as you find a new winner in creative approaches it will be “happy times”....until it stops working. That’s why one of our main mottos is “act rather than react”. You can read articles and do a deep analysis of your competitor, or even do a perfect scripted video, but there's a huge chance that a simple creative, recorded with a phone, will convert better than a high-end production. But hey, don’t take our word for it! Go on and test it.
🎯Copy and hook testing - Test new hooks and copies with a clear offer and a message that resonates with your audience. Sometimes using those hooks on an image or in a video can grab that extra attention you needed to increase your CTR.
🎯 Format testing - A collection ad may be working for you but there are so many formats that you can try that could help you bump a few more sales. As we previously mentioned, different people react differently to other format types.
🎯Types of content - Go bananas with the types of content you try. We’ve got a few types of content for you to try.
We hope this article was helpful. We are a team passionate about our job and we breathe eCommerce every single day.
Don't be shy and hit us up to see if we are a good fit for your company.
And if you want to be a successful e-commerce brand, WeScale it! 🙂
It's been over a year since Apple rolled out their mobile software upgrade iOS 14.5, which was a massive downgrade for all marketers. Also, Meta followed data privacy updates and a lot went south for a bit. Dig right into the article and find out how we adjusted and even managed to grow clients' revenue. And we’re not talking about the necessities like verifying the domain, prioritizing events, and so on... You will get some real advanced badass tips that are our bread and butter .💸
First, let's get some background and circle back to what happened in the last year and what were the reasons the performance started to drop.
Since most of the iOS users opted out (+90%), the efficiency of retargeting significantly dropped, and the performance of the Lookalike audience based on data sources that weren't being tracked correctly, began to decline. Also, you are not able anymore to target some of the interests that relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive (health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation).
The limitations are seen in breakdowns, where you can't breakdown and see performance for specific placement, gender, age, and region. Then there’s delayed attribution, which is not making it any easier, and overall all metrics are overreporting or underreporting since pixel can’t track all the data properly.
Apple limited Meta advertisers to only 8 conversion events per website, which provided a significantly lower amount of data points for an algorithm to learn from and properly optimize.
Now let’s get to the juicy stuff.
Strategically, of course!😎 We stuck our heads together, brainstormed for quite a while, and then started learning, testing, and optimizing our tactics.
Inefficient retargeting? Try re-engaging audiences ✅
Retargeting audiences are getting smaller and they don't include all people - wrong! That happens only with audiences where the customer leaves the Meta platform and visits your website. We are using re-engagement audiences, for example video viewers and engagers, which are based on the first-party data from Meta.
Poor performance of Lookalike audiences? Try Lookalikes based on customers list & engaged audiences on Influencers’ pages ✅
It's a fact that Lookalike audiences based on events outside Meta platform dropped in performance. We found that lookalikes based on re-engagement and re-engagement of our whitelist influencers outperform lookalikes based on events like add to cart, view content, or website visits, because of better data and bigger audiences. Also, try importing customers lists and make lookalikes from them.
Disabled interest targeting? Try dedicated creatives. ✅
The algorithm will work its way around disabled interest and still find your targeting audience. Based on your previous performance and activity, the algorithm can assume pretty well who you want to target. You can do that with dedicated copy, dedicated creatives, and dedicated captions or text in creatives. For example, if you target pregnant women, you need to craft a copy where you address them. The creative needs to be straightforward and show a pregnant woman in the ad and the algorithm will keep pushing the ad to the right audiences.
Facing delayed attribution? Use 3rd party tracking tools. ✅
Testing a killer batch of creatives can be a pain in the ass when you get decent traction on metrics like ATCs, clicks, CPMs, but there are no purchases. You turn it off and in a few hours the sale comes in. With 3rd party tracking tools like Hyors, Triple Whale, Wicked reports, or Anytrack this doesn't happen. We gave them a try, and our golden combination is using Triple Whale and Hyros which turned out to give the most value. These tools also come in very handy when you are running time-sensitive offers and you need real-time data fast if you want to skyrocket your campaigns. You can also make rules that apply to 3rd party data, which can save you a lot of money.
Lost data from iOS opt-outs? Set up Offline conversions ✅
Since Meta pixel isn't collecting as much data as it did prior to privacy updates, sending offline conversion back to pixel is a must. This way pixel optimizes better for your desired events and also performs better. We found Integromat to be the easiest way to push these valuable pieces of data back to the Meta platform. It's completely automated and stress-free once you have connected the Meta platform and your website or CRM. You can also try to do this with Madgicx, Zapier automation, or other 3rd party apps.
These are some of the most popular tricks our team is using to deliver such awesome results. Do we think that everyone should implement them? Hell yeah!🤘
If you want to get more of these tricks let's jump on a call and let's see if we have the potential to work together and put them into action!
Fill in our "Scale" form with some basic information of your business and we'll get right back to you if we're a good fit!
Ever heard of the term a boutique agency before? Many people get thrown by that term. So, let us clear up for you exactly what that term means.
🔍 A boutique agency is a smaller advertising agency that provides more customized services and focuses on the client's industry and niche. Boutique agencies center their work on higher quality branding, strategic and creative projects.
We like to say it is a hybrid between a typical performance marketing agency and an in-house marketing department. The full focus is on the limited number of clients with dedicated teams which provide personalised approaches per each brand.
First of all, boutique agencies work with a smaller number of clients and that enables a very detailed and personal approach to every one of them.
At WeScale, we see our clients as partners and together we discuss the vision, strategy, expectations, goals, and timelines needed to reach milestones towards the big goals. It's necessary to be on the same page and share the same values and goals for the future. Both parties must have a big vision and also realistic expectations. Another component that is needed is chemistry between both parties. Mindset, trust, work ethic, and strong wish for growth are a few of the components that enable successful cooperation. A good way to see if you are a perfect fit is to start with a testing period. In approximately 2 months you should be able to see if the specific boutique agency is a perfect fit for your brand and yourself. If successful, there's where the fun begins. Teams are aligned and know exactly what is needed for the improvement and can start working on all the extra details for future growth.
Within a boutique agency, each client gets its project team working as an external marketing department. Inside this team, you will find experienced specialists who are always in touch with the latest trends and continually work on their knowledge within and outside the company. The client does not need to stress about monitoring the latest trends and tricks but they must have a person or an internal team of people who communicate with the agency and understand the ever-changing environment. At WeScale, each person can dedicate themselves to each project individually or focus on those things that interest them the most - so they become a specialist in a certain field.
Let's see if we can scale your business in Europe together! Apply to work with us, and let's talk about the possibilities of your brand.
When we start with cooperation, we usually take over certain existing channels and prepare everything for the expansion to new channels and markets. Based on the needs we suggest what can be done to help with the results and growth. Since we are a full-stack agency, we provide eCommerce strategy, media buying (Meta, Google, TikTok…), post-production of the materials, email & SMS marketing, content creation (production and UGC), and influencers. Just as it is important to choose the right clients, so is choosing your employees who are the engine of the company. We hire primarily for the mindset and values, not just experience. We hire people who share our main values: growth, teamwork, quality, honesty, and respect.
For big agencies, the one-size-fits-all proposal is most efficient. Boutique agencies are making their proposals 100% customized to the client’s needs. We always make a very thorough audit of our clients' accounts and metrics before the collaboration to get a better picture so we can determine the strategy and eventually be prepared for every situation that could come our way (iOS14 updates, for example).
A boutique agency will take the extra time and focus on learning your situation and world, designing a plan customized for your business, and then executing it and providing answers on ongoing improvements. If you search for a reliable partner that can provide quality and personal attention so you can work on other business areas next to marketing then the boutique agency is your ideal option.
Because your overall experience will be much more personal. Considering its limited partnership, a boutique agency has the time and dedication to get to know clients as people, not just companies. That being said, they will provide a much more personalized and detailed approach to your marketing. You will be in direct contact with eCommerce strategists and client solution managers who are dedicated to working on your project, so the questions you have will be answered much faster and with additional suggestions to help you perform. Being boutique doesn’t mean the team is small, it just means the team puts all of its focus on a hand-picked batch of clients with the same mindset.
Boutique agencies usually try to provide the personalised approach to each client, which includes the whole team of specialists for certain areas needed for client’s brand. They usually don't outsource because they don’t have to. They have all of the specialists that they need right there in their organization. Unlike large agencies, there are no rigid rules and procedures, boutique agencies are flexible and will adapt to your changing needs and requirements continually and offer you dynamic solutions.
In Q1 2022, many eCommerce businesses struggle with hitting KPIs, being profitable, and understanding the data on their paid social platforms.
Although it is now much more complex than during 2020 and 2021, you can still achieve excellent results if you implement the 5 tactics we use to scale our partners in Europe.
We want to guide you through what we did to achieve an incredible 1.1M € in 72 hours, hitting an MER of 4.5.
Important note: That was not in Q4; during the BFCM period, we did it at the beginning of March 2022.
Let's jump right into it.
We're mentioning this quite a lot, and our CEO Jure has been practising it for over 7 years. However, many people still don't understand the opportunity to go global with a localised approach in European markets. All gems and detailed explanation of our glocal approach are available here: Localising and scaling up eCommerce in Europe.
We strived to work closely with our client to represent the brand on the local market as local as possible to expand the potential customer base, achieve higher conversion rates, and improve the returning customer rate.
Main markets we were targeting: Germany, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.
By analysing all the creatives from the past campaigns, we achieved a better success rate on the advertising side that empowered our scaling ability to move fast.
How?
We use a consistent naming structure on all our channels, so we always have a visually clear report.
By doing that and diving deep into the analysis, we can see which creatives worked best, what type of content it is, and understanding the common data points of the best-selling creatives, elements, CTAs, and advertising angles are the real winners.
Apart from our raw-data reports, we use tools to identify the best-performing creatives for each format: Scripted videos, user-generated testimonials, photos and videos, GIFs, and high-end product photos.
First, our creative team combined their lessons learned from the best performers and creativity and produced all assets for the new offer we launched with the advertising team. Second, we had clear directions about which creatives we would use on specific personas and stages of the funnel to achieve the ultimate experience for our customers.
After having these pieces in place, we went all-in into reproducing them to fit marketing strategy across all channels.
Main metrics we were analysing on paid social side:
The real power of marketing is unleashed only when you combine different channels and move away from being dependent on one channel only.
Like many others, our go-to push channel is still Facebook (still working surprisingly well & enables scaling), but the real party starts when you add email, organic channels, Influencers, TikTok, and Google to the mix.
How we separated them based on the goal:
Stoked to see results of this scale?
We'd love to hear about you and your business and see if we can grow together.
Before planning all the marketing activities, we analysed the data in Shopify first to understand the purchase behavior during the day.
Breakdown per hour in a day helped us understand which time is best to send our emails, post organic content, and Influencers to shoutout to catch the customers’ attention when they are most active.
By planning and executing these, we sent many positive signals to all the paid advertising platforms, so we scaled the budgets faster during those hours on Facebook, Google and TikTok.
When scaling the budgets 2-5x every couple of hours, you need to have a strong tool stack to understand the real-time results and not burn money during the scaling phase.
Using tracking tools enables us to follow the real KPIs in real-time, so we combined them with platform metrics to optimize and scale the right ads.
The north star metric we were following was profitability, with the combination of the MER on the market and tool stack helping us understand where the sales were coming from to help us optimize and scale smarter.
Automated rules come in handy in a flood of ads and campaigns if you want them to trigger fast and adjust the budget rapidly.
Without them, we wouldn't be able to scale the budgets confidently and reach this kind of scale across all markets.
Exclusive, time-limited, and easy-to-understand offer enabled us to scale on the new customer's acquisition side (65%+ of the revenue coming from the new customers).
We tested multiple offers with a smaller budget on cold audiences to understand the most appealing offer to scale on the top of the funnel because we know that will be the key to achieving massive growth on our daily revenue.
We combined push advertising channels using evergreen ads (higher conversion rates because of the offer) and offer-oriented ads.
The end result was 10x the daily sales in 3 days, and we did it profitably. Which we believe is the most crucial part.
And… We are done 🙂
Here there are the 5 key tactics we used to scale:
Super proud of us for delivering such amazing results!
Let us know if you have any questions about it on our social media so we can share some extra tips with you or dig deeper into a particular topic.
Till then, SCALE. 🚀
Let's see if we can scale together! Apply to work with us, and let's talk about the possibilities of your brand.
If you are curious about localization and scaling your business in multiple countries at the same time, you’ve come to the right place.
Lately we have received a lot of questions about how to localize businesses in Europe; why companies should do it; what localization brings to the revenue and work side, and other really important queries around this topic.
With these questions in mind, we developed this guide to help companies through the process of localizing their marketing, and to share some important information we’ve learned from our journey.
This article took a lot of blood, sweat and tears – not only in writing it but as a reflection of our experience generating over 130M€ in revenue across Europe with our bespoke approach to localization. We will keep this guide as up to date as possible as we continue to grow and learn new ways to help our customers succeed.
We’re going to walk you through a lot of information, so get a snack and let’s get started. 🚀
The first question we always get is “what is localization?” and it’s a fairly simple idea. We love to call it the GLOCAL approach – going global with a localized approach. This means we treat every country as a unique market (because it is) while also keeping the bigger – more global – picture in mind.
We use this approach because localization has been proven to:
Open new market opportunities;
Expand audience size at the country level; and
Build a more substantial local presence around community and branding
The next question that usually pops up is: “Every country in Europe is different! How could we possibly provide services to every country based on their local culture and language??”
Truthfully, it’s a fair question. Targeting all of Europe, in English, means one language for customer support, websites, ads, influencer and email marketing, etc. It’s certainly an “easier” approach to your marketing strategy but we challenge you to ask yourself some tough questions: Do you think a one-size-fits-all solution is the optimal way to increase your revenue and build your brand? Do you really believe this approach will build a strong presence in your local market or will inspire meaningful experiences and word-of-mouth recommendations from your existing local customers?
At WeScale, we believe that for a business to successfully scale up, it is essential to understand your local market while also maintaining an international presence.
And you don’t even have to believe us – the numbers speak for themselves:
According to CSA Research, 75% of people want to purchase products in their native language and 92.2% want to make purchases in their local currency.
To support this, we recently co-created two eCommerce stores that reached eight-figure returns with the power of going GLOCAL:
The first increased their revenue from 0 to 50M€ in four years by expanding their localized presence within 10 markets.
The second one increased revenue from 0 to 40M€ in just two years within six markets.
Additionally, with our other selected partners, we have expanded their reach across Europe by localizing their approach, reaching seven and eight-figure revenue with their stores.
When we use the GLOCAL approach, we test each new market with English-language websites and ads to build a trusted, international brand and create a global tribe around your business. Once we see momentum, we capitalize quickly by jumping straight into localization to position you as a stronger player in the local market.
To do this, we increase brand presence through localized stores, logistics, customer support, and marketing to become a solid local brand. With increased visibility comes increased revenue, profitability, omnichannel presence, social proof, community, and branding.
On the flip side, we also work with a lot of small businesses with a significant local presence trying to expand to new markets to broaden their potential audience size, increase their revenue and profitability and create a global community around their products and brand. We approach their expansion into new markets the same way.
Are you with us so far? If so, let’s continue with some actionable steps to take your business GLOCAL.
Choosing where to expand can be a challenge. We recommend the following steps to help streamline the process:
If you have an international store, analyze where people come to the website and buy products from, whether they’re direct purchase, influencers, PR, or organic traffic.
One of our favorite ways to choose a market is to use Similarweb to analyze and understand the strengths of competitors and bigger players. With Similarweb, we can easily understand the breakdown of traffic within a country including its sources and much more.
The great thing about Europe is that there are multiple options for the size and types of markets to expand into:
There are big markets, such as France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Poland with populations of over 20M that enable you to tap into 10-30M€+ yearly in a single market.
The mid-sized markets, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, the Czech Republic, and Belgium have 10-20M people and provide an interesting opportunity to expand your localized efforts.
There are also smaller countries with populations of less than 10M that allow savvy businesses to capitalize where competing companies may not consider.
(For reference, here is a list of European countries by population)
WeScale Tip: If you are a small business from a smaller country (less than 5M people), and you make between 200K€ and 300K€ per month, our advice would be to first try and tackle 2-3 mid-size markets to create a more substantial presence before expanding into larger markets. We’ve also seen considerable similarities in purchasing behavior based on market size and purchasing power (GDP per capita), so that might be a good tip for you, based on where you start.
WeScale Disclaimer: while these are our general predictions, there is always room for exceptions. For example, we experienced 20M€ revenue in one country with a population of 10M and abysmal performance in a different, larger market – so the moral of the story is there are no hard and fast rules, you can create them and we can help!
This step is optional based on your experience and budget but we wanted to share it anyway.
We recommend creating Facebook ads (if this is your preferred channel), in English, with regional targeting (Europe, European Economic Area, etc.) and using your international website to understand the purchase intent of a particular country.
The metrics to look at are:
WeScale Tip: We usually go two rounds with this kind of assessment:
When this is ready, it’s time for translation. Let’s scale!
Oh no, wait, we’ve forgotten to tell you something REALLY important.
In the past, we’ve tried many ways to quickly expand to new markets, and we always come back to this first, crucial step:
“Do your research first!”
We’re not sure why, but this step sometimes gets left out, and it can cost you down the road.
We’ll share a practical example with you; maybe it resonates:
Five years ago, when I was two years into eCommerce and marketing, I had just started discovering the opportunity to expand to other markets. Before that, I was only advertising in Slovenia and saw that sales were flattening out over time. I wanted to expand into Germany because it’s a big market with a lot of potential customers. The tactic was to localize the language on the website and in ads, then watch the sales skyrocket in the analytics. Surprisingly, the sales were high, mostly coming through the COD (cash-on-delivery) payment option. I believe we sold like 5.000 units in only 5 days!
This is where the story takes a turn: the result was that 70% of the products sold were returned to the warehouse because people didn’t know about/weren’t used to the cash-on-delivery option (which is popular in Slovenia, but not in Germany). Customers in the German market wanted to pay with the methods they were used to (such as Kauf auf Rechnung, Sofort, etc. which are must-haves in Germany). When we got feedback from the customers that returned their items, it was abundantly clear that we missed the mark – these customers were expecting to receive the product and pay for it later with Klarna like they were used to.
This really made it clear to us that every country has unique characteristics, and success rides on understanding these particularities. Since then, we have learned that there are many other small things to successfully implementing a local campaign and that doing the research first was the most important step to make sure nothing was missing in the customer journey.
We definitely learned from our mistakes, so in the next section we’ll go through our lessons learned so you don’t make them too.
This one might seem obvious, but we can tell you from experience that in many cases, people just don’t do it (we don’t understand it either).
What to look for:
WeScale Tip: We create a folder on our Drive called “Research” to gather all the information in one place so the whole team can view it and update it at any time.
It’s always smart to see what marketing tactics the local players are using. Our advice here would be to analyze:
Ok. You’ve made it this far. Good work! We’ve covered a lot of ground – we’ve looked at the what and why of localization, how to choose new markets, and we’ve reminded you to do the research (ALWAYS). Now we want to show you how to prepare your business for localization. You may want to stretch for this.
We want to share with you the main areas of localization to look for when going GLOCAL with your eCommerce store and marketing assets.
We’re going to start at the top with language, then move through checkout, and end with marketing because as we’ve learned, the biggest problems usually appear in the lower parts of the purchasing funnel.
We find that the true voice of a brand is best captured by those who have first-hand experience with the target market. When localizing, we always recommend working with local copywriters to maintain the authenticity of the marketing and to make sure nothing is (literally) lost in translation.
WeScale tip: Make sure to check multiple websites, email marketing, social media, and ads from different sources to catch the authentic voice of your target market.
Payment methods are super important because if you want to play as a local player, you obviously want to offer the same purchasing experience expected from all the local stores.
Here are some examples:
This information is easily obtained from the biggest local stores in the market as well as in local industry reports regarding the popularity of payment methods.
The second crucial option after payment is to look at shipping methods.
Some countries prefer a particular logistic partner, especially if you offer COD or have a high return rate. Check bigger local stores to see what they use, and keep in mind that your target audience might love it if they have multiple delivery options to choose from. For some countries (like Germany) it’s a huge upside to have fast shipping because it’s a common option in the other stores and is expected within the market. This ties back to doing your research – understanding expectations around delivery times in each local market gives you an advantage to onboard new customers seamlessly.
Installment Payment Systems might also help your conversion rate if this is a standard in the market and the AOV is high enough.
Here is a comparison of different services that offer installments:
Confirm the usual standard for money-back guarantees within the target market and how/where it is communicated to the customer. (It might be on the home page, in the sticky bar, product page, during checkout, etc.)
Keep in mind that in some countries and/or niches the timelines for money-back guarantees vary in length. Moreover, depending on your product, also consider including the option for customers to upgrade their purchase to an extended guarantee.
There’s not much to say here: every market is different so we strongly advise you to learn about the local taxes from a professional.
Understanding how locals view companies in their markets helps businesses build credibility when they are looking to expand. For some markets (like Germany) that are more “safety-first buyers,” they expect to know a lot about the company e.g. the story, when it was founded, the team, the culture, the vision, etc.
When your potential customer is scrolling on their mobile through your website, two of their main concerns are usually:
To tackle safety, make sure you have your trust badges and payment options icons, and try to include some local certificate badges and/or famous media badges (local + international) where you were featured. You can find ideas from the local stores, magazines, online articles, etc.
Concerning social proof: one of the crucial things you need to do is to add local reviews from Influencers, customers, publishing companies etc.
WeScale Tip: Combine the product-based reviews with general store reviews, posts on social media (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Influencers, etc.), online articles, and third-party review sites (Trustpilot is popular in many countries) because this enables a 360-degree overview of the business.
The trick to this is a good understanding of what the key communication channels for customer support are. Do they expect to message on the messenger or email directly? Maybe there is a standard for mobile phones or WhatsApp?
WeScale tip: Start with one (preferably email) and then try to test additional communication channels.
We have a lot to say about our tactics for localizing marketing efforts – so much, in fact, that it might need its own article.
That said, we would still love to share some of the main areas to focus on and our tips on how to get started.
The idea is to localize the content as much as possible using as many avenues as you can. You can find our tips for this in these two articles:
For emails, make sure you use a local copywriter for the communication and to start the local automation flows as soon as you launch the first round of ads.
To start, we recommend these four automation flows using Klaviyo:
For paid social ads (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, etc.), our first strategy is usually to start with the best-selling creatives and copies from the existing markets, reviewed and adjusted by the local copywriter.
The next move is to test the concepts you researched from local competitors r to find some local winners in the market.
WeScale tip: Make sure to cover the whole sales funnel with re-engagement, retargeting and retention ads from the start to target people at the different levels.
You can learn more about our advertising funnel here.
Make sure that you have your branded search, dynamic search ads, and generic ads running on Google (at least) because any push on the paid social side will create a demand that boosts search volume around your products and brand name.
We always recommend starting with your best-selling products from the existing markets because you already know the creativity and the communication that works.
If you have a huge range of products, we highly recommend creating a shortlist to test the new market (maybe start testing with a dedicated landing page) so you can move fast and then consider adding additional products as your brand gains recognition.
WeScale tip: Analyze the best-selling product categories and products at the local level on a weekly/monthly basis.
We have seen that in many cases, it might turn out that some products/categories popped up from others, and there is a huge opportunity to scale.
We know this was a long article but we really wanted to share some of the main lessons we’ve learned on our journey with our amazing clients. We’re still learning every day about what works for a specific businesses – yet our results speak for themselves and we’re pretty confident that the tips and tricks we’ve given you here are a great place to start.
If there are two things you should take away from this guide it’s this:
So now that you know, what’s the next step for you?
Our goal is to create the ultimate guide to localization so we promise to add more content around webshops and marketing in every round of updates. If there is something you think we should add to our list, feel free to email us at: info@wescale.agency.
If you want to learn more about our current work and the lessons we’re learning, follow us on social media or join our email list to be a part of our journey:
To wrap up this article, we want to share with you a couple tips that have enabled us to scale even higher in local markets.
Later in your journey, we recommend hiring a local CRO agency or local eCommerce specialist to review your website and marketing so you can upgrade your localization efforts and boost sales.
As just one example, we hired a local agency to consult for us and the recommendations they made for a local market helped us scale one client’s monthly revenue from 120K€ to 180K€ and increase their CR from 1.7% to 2.4% in less than two months.
It’s also really important to ask customers, site visitors, and/or the local community for their feedback – whether it’s about introducing new products or improving the website or understanding the personas, or really anything else you are struggling to understand or want to upgrade.
Here are our top three tools for gathering feedback:
Enquire – Post-purchase survey
Typeform – for creating your own surveys for your email list(s) or social media community
