Jakob Gerzen's (founder of the leading D2C retention marketing agency "More Conversions") statement that "WhatsApp marketing only makes sense for 8-figures and up" is probably more due to the pricing of his investment, hello-charles. Chatarmin's vision of enabling WhatsApp for smaller D2C brands is reflected in the results and outcomes of our clients alone. So for which D2C brands does WhatsApp marketing make sense at all? What do the use cases look like? And how can I make a sensible decision to launch and scale my WhatsApp Shopify game?
WhatsApp Shopify results from our customers: A conclusion
_"At launch, we used the pre-sale of our brand new muesli product category to enrich the pool of our WhatsApp community. Within a few hours we already had 250 new subscribers. For us, this was a complete success. 🚀
This was followed by our first campaign via WhatsApp, which was also a great success. The open rate was around 80% with a CVR of 14%. The best thing, however, was the direct feedback and the exchange with our customers. 💌 🤝"_
Source: LinkedIn koawach
This statement allows deep insights into the operations of a brand for which WhatsApp marketing did not make sense at their current point in time. "koawach" has a mega strong presence in retail in the DACH region, but has no focus on online marketing and eCommerce. This is one of the exclusion criteria for WhatsApp for D2C brands or general Shopify WhatsApp marketing. WhatsApp for D2C Brands only makes sense if there is a minimum of capacity and money available to play on the channel sufficiently and let it grow. Otherwise, the project is doomed to failure from the start.
So if you make your main sales in retail, wholesale or via Amazon, the question is whether you have enough resources for your Shopify WhatsApp marketing. This is less about sales and more about Kappa.
Another exclusion criterion is that you have other homework to do. WhatsApp marketing is another area for your Shopify store to work on professionally. Maybe your social media, your ads game or your email marketing setup still has so much potential that it doesn't yet make sense to open up an additional communication channel.
You can find out more about the symbiosis of E-Mail and WhatsApp in this Video, where Johannes Mansbart, Chatarmin-founder, provides a full walkthrough of a Shopify WhatsApp setup, in 15 minutes: