Case study: Driving international growth using your retail app

An increasing number of shoppers like to make purchases overseas when shopping online. A global study recently found that mobile innovations have fuelled this phenomenon, which is often referred to as cross-border ecommerce. In fact, most international retail traffic comes from mobile devices, as reported by the BRC-Google online retail monitor.

To give some examples from around the world, the number of international shoppers using smartphones to browse for British brands increased by 41% during Q4 2015 compared to last year. In North America, 62% of Canadians purchased from an overseas retailer in the past six months. When it comes to targeting foreign countries, especially Asia represents an attractive market, as 46% of Asian ecommerce transactions come from mobile, as found by Criteo.

How can retailers seize this opportunity and strengthen their strategy for international expansion?

A great example of how app commerce can be used to drive international success is Meli Melo. The luxury brand grew its app audience in Taiwan and Hong Kong by a remarkable 500%, while making back the cost per app install over ten times. We spoke to Doug Ker, Meli Melo’s CEO, to find out how this was achieved.

“With the app outperforming the mobile web in all KPIs and excelling desktop for average order value and browsing time, it quickly became clear that driving more traffic to our app commerce channel would be a sure-fire way for Meli Melo to increase online performance in new markets,” explains Doug.

Facebook represents one of the most successful social media acquisition channels for Meli Melo, so various app download campaigns targetting individuals in Taiwan and Hong Kong were started. Just 15% of the brand’s monthly Facebook budget was allocated to these campaigns, and the cost per click was set between 9-20% of the app’s revenue per user. In total, Meli Melo ran 11 campaigns. The cost per install was made back over ten times.

“These social media promotions successfully increased app adoption by our Asian customers,” said Doug, summarising that, “through spending just one percent of our usual digital cost per acquisition, we increased Meli Melo’s app audience by 500%.”