In Hong Kong, almost everyone has a smartphone which they heavily use to browse online everyday. But when it comes to buying beauty and personal care products, there has got to be a drugstore at every corner. Most people would rather do their shopping physically. So when Watson’s launched their mobile commerce app iWatson’s, we had no idea who would download and purchase on the app! We needed to help Watson’s identify their quality, high net-worth shoppers, and quickly drive as many downloads as possible, with a limited budget!

To achieve our target of 50,000 downloads, we needed a solution to minimize the wastage of media dollars and generate the greatest halo effect for organic downloads. Fundamentally we needed to ensure we motivated the right shoppers with the right message at the right time. However, as we set out to identify quality shoppers, we had a bigger problem. User behavior tracking on mobile just isn’t available! We had to create a technological solution of our own. A new solution that would combine app interaction tracking, app ranking tracking and programmatic buying technology to maximize the effect of every media dollar.

By accurately identifying the profiles of high net worth users, controlling our media spend against App Rankings and uncovering non-actives who had not yet made a purchase, we engaged users with the right call-for-action across their purchase funnel. On average, our paid media investment achieved a click-through-rate of 6%!

In just 4 days, iWatson’s was No. 1 on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store for 5 weeks in a row! With only US$30,000, we generated 85,000 high quality downloads, 70% over our target! With a phenomenal return on investment of 3:1, cost per acquisition was pushed down to (HKD) $5, $6 lower than the targeted $11!

Best of all, we successfully encouraged Hong Kongers to shop on their mobile phones! Since its launch, Watson’s has grown its mobile commerce by 50% on a monthly basis. iWatson’s proved to retailers that e-commerce can be exploited in Hong Kong!

For the first time, we embedded LTV (Life Time Value) technology into the iWatson’s app. Using the unique identities of each smartphone, we tracked every single interaction in real-time. Mapping out the different mobile journeys, broken down by language, location, interests, operating systems …we studied hundreds of variables and how their combinations drove business.

Determining audiences of highest net worth based on their transactions, we created audience clusters to develop a three-tier buying strategy where we programmatically targeted and optimized our advertising against each tier.

All at the same time, we used multiple SDKs such as App Annie to keep track of daily rankings for iWatson’s and competitors. Pushing and pulling media spends daily to minimize wastage, we stopped investing whenever we made it to Rank 1-5. Fluctuating the programmatic activity and effectively controlling our media spending, iWatson's stayed at the top of the app ranking charts everyday. Since most people learnt about new apps from ranking charts, this successfully created a strong halo effect for organic downloads.

Having driven an initial pool of quality downloads, using LTV data, we re-targeted non-active users who had downloaded but not yet purchased on the app. Re-directing them to open the iWatson’s app, more than downloads, our precision successfully drove heavier browsing and more sales transactions!

The introduction of LTV technology was critical to acquiring quality downloads at a low budget.

Since mobile commerce in Hong Kong is still at its infancy stage, we simply had no data to define our media audience. Yet, anyone in Hong Kong potentially buys beauty and personal care products for themselves or their family. Had we not used LTV to track all interactions on iWatson’s, we would’ve never been able to extract behavioural insights and identify who to target for acquiring quality downloads. For instance, through LTV, we uncovered that our quality shoppers tended to be iOS users living on the HK Island using Chinese language devices with a sports interest. Combining our audience cluster definitions to our programmatic buying then ensured Watson’s captured the right audiences of high net worth to minimize wastage.

To maximize our organic downloads, App Annie’s SDKs enabled us to continuously benchmark competitive rankings with our own. Considering that most mobile users learn about new apps on the Top App charts, we were able to manipulate our spending against daily performance.

More than acquisition, LTV further uncovered who our non-active users were, activating and accelerating their purchase with ads that encouraged them to browse on iWatson’s.