CASE STUDY | RE-ENGAGEMENT | SHOPPING

Liftoff Re-Engagement Campaign Increases Purchases 221.4% for Coupang

Campaign scales fast resulting in a 221.4% increase in purchases

The ChallengeCoupang contacted Liftoff to help increase purchases within their massively popular e-commerce app. Known as the de facto mobile shopping app in South Korea, Coupang was interested in running a re-engagement campaign on Android to increase purchases amongst users who previously installed the Coupang app, while staying within specific CPC and CPA targets.

The SolutionPrior to launching the campaign, Liftoff analyzed the Coupang app user flow to better understand how users engage with the app to make purchases. Understanding this also informs which events to optimize for. Like similar shopping apps, the user flow for Coupang was straight-forward. Once a user installs the app, they either 1) purchase items, 2) browse products and leave the app, or 3) add items to the shopping cart, then leave the app.

Next, the Liftoff creative team took all approved creative and branding guidelines from Coupang and built out various tests for banners, native ads and interstitials. Elements to be tested included CTA buttons, copy, product categories, gender-specific products, and more.

Once ad creative was completed, we began bidding on all major RTB exchanges within the region. With a goal of increasing purchases amongst users who previously browsed but did not purchase, Liftoff’s machine learning (ML) platform began optimizing bids based on the likelihood that specific segments would convert.

Liftoff is a key partner for Coupang. Their algorithms were able to adapt to Coupang’s rapidly expanding product selection while still maintaining ROAS targets. Kartick Narayan · VP Marketing @ Coupang

ConclusionThe Coupang re-engagement campaign generated positive results within the first month of going live. The Liftoff ML platform was quickly able to identify and target users most likely to return to the app and complete their purchase – increasing purchases within the shopping app. Creative A/B tests played an important role in the campaign, specifically optimizing the call-to-action button color.

Even more impactful was testing various product category images within the ads. In one case a static interstitial product ad lost to a simple animated ad showing a few products, resulting in a 27% increase in purchases. In a different test, a native creative with many product images in a grid format outperformed an ad with just a few product images.

One of the largest performance gains came in our ability to scale ad impressions served to existing users while staying below our target CPC and CPA targets. Other successful results for the Coupang re-engagement campaign include:

  • CPCs remained 60% under target
  • CPAs remained 51% under target
  • Purchases increased 221.4%
  • Impressions increased 270.6%

As Liftoff’s ML platform and effective A/B creative tests helped us achieve Coupang’s one month goals, Liftoff was given the green light to scale the campaign further, increasing daily spend by 893% while continuing to hit Coupang’s CPC and CPA targets.

Based in South Korea Coupang is one of the largest and fastest growing e-commerce platforms on the planet. Powered by world-class technology and operations, Coupang has set out to transform the end-to-end customer experience — from revolutionizing last-mile delivery to rethinking how customers search and discover on a truly mobile-first platform.

  • Founded in 2010
  • Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea