KiKUU Success Story

Increasing sales and scaling up WhatsApp usage with WhatsApp Business Platform

60%

increase in sales conversions

70%

higher open rate compared to other channels

35%

increase in unique customers via WhatsApp

Name: KIKUU
Industry: e-Commerce
Function: WhatsApp chatbot
Platform: WhatsApp Business Platform

KiKUU is an online shopping mall that sells everyday essentials, household items, clothing, and more in 16 African countries at affordable prices via their app. Founded in 2015 and based in Hangzhou, China, it has more than 1,000,000 products in its catalog and counts more than 10 million people as customers.

The Goal

Quality communication

The company wanted to find an innovative way to engage customers and increase sales. With the prominence of WhatsApp usage in Africa and variability of WhatsApp messaging features, it became an effective tool for them to boost sales and conversions.

The Solution

Innovative customer experience

With a commitment to affordable prices, quality products, low shipping fees, and topnotch customer service, KiKUU interacted with customers using messaging apps and Facebook. As the company’s ecommerce market presence in Africa is quickly growing, customer inquiries about problems were solved mostly over the phone and by email. As a popular communication channel in the countries KiKUU does business in, WhatsApp intrigued KiKUU as a better way to communicate and engage with its customers.

Partnering with messaging experience experts at Sanuker, KiKUU built a customized workflow and experience on WhatsApp Business Platform. By migrating to Cloud API, hosted by Meta, Sanuker was able to pass on the reduced hosting and maintenance costs and provide a seamless integration experience to KiKUU. Together we created powerful campaigns to announce product sales for customers who had opted in to hear from KiKUU. By embedding a click-to-product-website button into the experience, customers could seamlessly click to the website and purchase.

With a high throughput of messages per second, KiKUU ran the first test campaign by sending WhatsApp push notifications to randomly selected opted-in customers. To compare performance with established channels, they sent the same messages to everyone else. “The result from the first campaign was amazing,” says Rebecca Cheung, Marketing Operation Manager at KiKUU China. “Over one week, we saw that customers opened WhatsApp push notifications 70 percent more often than messages on the other channels, leading to a 60 percent increase in sales.”

Additionally, the KiKUU team observed a 45.4 percent increase in gross merchandise value and a 53.7 percent increase in daily active users.

“We can include rich media with pictures and buttons in WhatsApp push notifications, so it provides a wonderful, immersive customer experience,” says Cynthia Ng, Marketing Manager at Sanuker. “The campaign observed a 35 percent increase in unique customers. Because WhatsApp Business Platform easily and seamlessly integrated with other platforms, we’re confident that the business will continue to give customers an even more innovative experience in the future.”

The Results

Increased sales

With WhatsApp Business Platform, KiKUU boosted sales by 60%, increased the message open rate by more than two thirds, and increased unique customers by a third.

45.4% increase in Gross Merchandise Value
459.6% increase in sales conversions
470% higher open rate compared to other channels
453.7% increase in daily active users with WhatsApp
435% increase in unique customers via WhatsApp

*Results are unique and are provided by the featured business. Success story results will vary, as they depend on a variety of factors.

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KiKUU’s success story was featured one the Facebook for developers.

You can read it in full here.

What customers say

“The result from the first campaign was amazing. Over one week, we saw that customers opened WhatsApp push notifications 70% more often than messages on the other channels, leading to a 60% increase in sales.”

Rebecca Cheung

Marketing Operation Manager, KiKUU