Leaders from Amorepacific and ADA share their insights on how eCommerce partnership with ADA has exceeded initial goals and led to more than double increase in Amorepacific’s performance across Southeast Asia.

In this joint MartechAsia Interview with Amorepacific and ADA, Joanne Hyojung Joo, Senior Vice President, Amorepacific and Anurag Gupta, Chief Operating Officer, ADA, share how eCommerce partnership with ADA has exceeded initial goals and led to more than double increase in Amorepacific’s performance across Southeast Asia.

What Is Amorepacific?

1. ADA eCommerce Partnership

Hyojung Joo explained, “In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic severely impacted the Amorepacific, including brands such as Laneige, Sulwhasoo, Etude House, and Innisfree. The pandemic led to store closures and changes in consumer shopping behaviour. Revenue from offline channels fell due to a sharp drop in foot traffic. It was essential for survival to transform our business structure into digital as fast as possible. This prompted us to revisit our growth strategy to increase digital presence and sales for business continuity and growth.”

She added, “Through our eCommerce partnership with ADA, the performance of Amorepacific’s brands, such as Laneige, far exceeded initial goals within just eight months. Their solutions and campaigns led to a more than double increase in Amorepacific’s performance across Southeast Asia, in comparison to the period before ADA was officially engaged.”

Some of the key successes of the campaign include the following:

• Increase marketplace performance – 70% increase in page views and 60% increase in unique visitors.
• Increase in sales – With a redesigned Shopify storefront optimised for organic search, Laneige saw a more than 120% increase in sales, more than 110% increase in-store visits, and a more than 120% increase in the total number of orders from just that platform.
• Achieving record high Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) – This was especially critical for us as Amorepacific budgets were tight economically. H
• Making strategic investments with the advice of ADA saw us leverage monthly double sale periods (11.11 and 12.12) and achieve more than 600% ROAS for Laneige and even higher ROAS for Sulwhasoo across Southeast Asia.

2. ADA Data-Informed Strategy

Anurag Gupta of ADA also shared, “When we first began this campaign, we understood that Amorepacific had a lot of experience launching campaigns around global markets. Still, it had relatively little experience in launching campaigns specialised in e-Commerce channels in Southeast Asia. The company wanted to build a strong digital presence, including persuasive creative assets and successful promotional messages to bring new, quality traffic to their official stores on Lazada.”

Lessons APAC Marketers Can Learn from Amorepacific

Hyojung Joo said that before the global pandemic, consumers recognized their products globally. However, as businesses moved online due to the restrictions and lockdowns, marketplaces became increasingly crowded and severely competitive, which led to a steadily decreasing ROI of digital marketing.

Some of the key lessons that we learnt from the success of this campaign include:

1. Adaptability and Flexibility Are Key

As consumer preferences constantly evolve, brands must be open to change and adapt quickly to reach consumer expectations, or risk falling behind. The pandemic impacted all industries globally, but through our partnership with ADA, we could pivot, identify, and focus on our key business objectives despite the ongoing challenges.

2. Data Is Key

Leveraging 1 st party data was key in deriving shopper insights, personalizing content, and cross and upsell via eCommerce channels. Using data, we were also able to drive the right audience segmentations and customise our approach to the different audience segmentations.

3. Constant Trial and Error Is Key

By pursuing a rigorous trial and error regime, we could make tactical decisions quickly and significantly improve key metrics such as organic search traffic, click-through rate, conversions, etc.

According to Gupta, the campaign with Amorepacific was a great reminder for their team to continuously test their marketing strategy to improve the campaign’s chances of better results. He said, “Throughout this campaign, we never assumed which strategy would work best and left it to data to inform our decisions. For example, we conducted several tests with different creative variations to track their impact and success rate. We then made necessary tweaks to improve the campaign performance.”

“A strong and consistent brand identity across multiple touchpoints can also do wonders to increase the perceived value of a brand. This helps improve a customer’s online journey and could lead to better sales and increased loyalty. Last but not least, marketers need to prioritize content development in an age where consumers are consistently overwhelmed with ads and information. Distributing quality content that caters to the customer helps to build trust, generate new leads, and even helps to sustain revenue in the long run.”, he added.

Marketing Technology Strategies Implemented

One of the Martech strategies Amorepacific has been implementing is securing 1 st party data and strengthening direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales to enable it.  Hyojung Joo explained, “As we know, marketing competition in the digital environment is intensifying, and at the same time, regulations on the use of personal information are being strengthened, which can lead to a decline in ROI.”

1. Focus On First-Party Data

Hyojung Joo said that restrictions on the use of 3rd party cookies also reflect that context. Therefore, they think 1st party is critical as a personalised marketing channel to reach target customers without 3rd party data and cookies. To this end,  the company is committed to building its relationship with its brand and customers by strengthening our D2C channels.

This data is expected to enable business development that reflects the tastes and needs of highly personalised customers. The accuracy and reliability of these collected data are high, and it will help the comapny to understand our customers more accurately, so they will continue to strive to build an environment and introduce marketing solutions to secure 1st party data.

2. Collaboration With Global Media Companies

Amorepacific has been strengthening collaboration with Global Media companies.  Hyojung Joo explained, “Customers’ tastes and needs have become more and more personalised. Therefore, we must understand and approach customers more delicately.”

She added, “In that context, we strive to accurately capture and reach customers’ needs and situations through each marketing funnel during their purchase journey. And we have been making the entire marketing funnel from the Upper Funnel, the customer’s awareness stage, to the Low Funnel, the purchasing stage, seamless to increase the conversion rate, ultimately running a strategy that raises ROI as well as sales growth.”

3. The Use of AI and Other Digital Technologies

The various success stories that Meta has accumulated, customer data, and the help of Meta data scientists suggested a meaningful strategy. The introduction of rapidly advanced AI technology is also being considered by Amorepacific in many ways..

Amorepacific organised Digital CoE (Center of Excellence) task force to ensure these strategies can be successfully utilised in real-world e-commerce sales and marketing. The Digital CoE taskforce team, which consisted of digital experts in APAC RHQ and Amorepacific HQ, drove digital transformation of local subsidiaries and helped the organisation to leverage technologies and processes effectively. “With close communications with the team in ADA, our team analysed data and used metrics to track the performance of every detailed initiative to identify areas for improvement.”,  Hyojung Joo explained.

4. Data-Informed Strategies

Gupta of ADA, explained, “Many of the strategies used were data-informed. For example, the team analysed data to drive the right nuanced audience segmentation and accurately target the messaging to its respective age groups, behaviours, and preferences.”

Remarkable Sales and Marketing Metrics and Achievements

The campaign helped increase marketplace performance. Our shopfronts saw a 70% increase in page views and a 60% increase in unique visitors. Laneige also saw a more than 120% increase in sales, a more than 110% increase in-store visits, and a more than 120% increase in the total number of orders from Shopify alone.

The campaign also achieved record-high Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) for Laneige and Sulwhasoo. Laneige achieved more than 600% ROAS during the 11.11 sale, while Sulwhasoo saw even higher ROAS than Laneige across Southeast Asia during 12.12.

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