Drive Brand Awareness and sales in the Lifestyle & Beauty Sector [Case Study]

Written by: Chloe Rowan


Birchbox is the UK’s number 1 beauty box. Subscribers receive a monthly box containing five samples of beauty products to test without having to buy the full-sized product. The boxes are tailored to suit the subscriber’s needs, for instance, a subscriber with straight hair would not receive a product for curly hair, but subscribers can also choose one of the five products they receive or select their preferred box design, adding a further element of personalisation.

The Campaign

 
Birchbox decided to launch a Whichit campaign. They identified their target audience as females aged 18-35, living in the UK and Ireland. They wanted a fun and innovative way to engage this audience, with the aim to increase brand awareness and drive sales.

The strategy was to create a 6-question Whichit quiz to collect actionable insights about their consumers’ makeup preferences and beauty routines. The quiz was to appear as a native ad, on a branded landing page, on the Birchbox website. The user would be presented with a different outcome based on their preferences, and each Engage Card offered a discount code and a clear Call-to-Action button.

Click on the image to discover your beauty horoscope.

The quiz featured attractive images and a series of fun questions about beauty routines, astrology, and the season’s favourites, allowing Birchbox to grab the audience’s attention and raise brand awareness from the start. The answers also provided Birchbox with valuable information regarding their target audience’s preferences including their influencers, favourite body feature, and preferred colour palettes.

The final question was “Are you a Birchbox Subscriber?”, which enabled the quiz to determine which personalised offer and Call-to-Action it should display on the Engage Card once the quiz was complete.

Success

The campaign ran on a Birchbox branded landing page within their website for 10 days and generated over 24,000 unique views. The campaign was a huge success, achieving an 89% engagement rate, made up of 60% potential new subscribers, and 40% existing clients.

Birchbox achieved 97% Completion rate and 89% Engagement rate in just 10 days thanks to Whichit. Click to read full case study.

Of the 89% who engaged with the ad, a huge 97% completed it, and 31% carried out the Call-to-Action. The ad was also shared on social media 113 times, amplifying the brand awareness.

Everyone who completed the quiz was taken to an Engage Card with a brief description of their beauty horoscope, the latest beauty trends for them to look out for, and influencers they should watch. Existing clients were then offered a free blending sponge with any purchase from the Birchbox online shop, while non-subscribers were given a voucher code to receive a 50% discount off an October box.

The answers collected throughout the campaign gave Birchbox vital product and rutine information. This data can be used to help personalise subscriptions and improve customer satisfaction during and after the campaign.

The audience enjoyed the interactive quiz, and it was such a success that Birchbox have continued to create Whichit campaigns as part of their marketing strategy!

Whichit for Advertiser’s next generation: designing to delight

Galit Gan
Co-founder & Creative Director

Here at Whichit, we believe that our user’s success, is our success. Since the launch of ‘Whichit for Advertisers’ platform in mid 2017, we've been working hard to make sure our customers continue to enjoy using the system. We wanted our user’s feedback to be at the heart of every new version we release, therefore the user-centric design approach means we understand our customer’s need and prioritise it.

User-centred design creates the opportunity for a business to design together with individuals who use the product or service they are offering enabling them to truly understand who their users are and what they need. By that, this design provides a common language for all types of users, no matter their profiles and characteristics.

Understanding our users

 
In our case, the product is a platform that gives marketers the ability to create interactive ad units that leave lasting impressions and generate high traffic volumes, in order to engage better with their audiences. To do so we needed to establish a common language for the diverse individuals that use our platform. These days, creating an ad unit requires expertise (design teams, web developers etc). Whichit for Advertisers’ concept is to make advertising easier and intuitive for everyone, not only for experts, and the platform’s user experience should support and reflect that.

“In the commercial world, it is common to make the mistake of prioritising business goals over those of the user. Our earlier product versions included as many proudly-developed features as we could, just so the users could ‘see everything we have to offer’. Taking out the guess-work and personal opinion was important for the new version. We’ve learned to analyze every touchpoint that our customers have with the product and matched their user-personas with their exact needs and goals. User-centred design should be implemented throughout the customer experience to make your product more efficient and satisfying, which eventually leads to increased sales and customer loyalty”

— Galit Gan, Creative Director & Co-Founder

Whichit for Advertisers’ concept is to make advertising easier and intuitive for everyone, not only for experts, and the platform’s user experience should support and reflect that.

User-Centred Design by Whichit

Today, we are very proud to announce the launch of our new and improved ‘Whichit for Advertisers’ platform, which is based on understanding our users’ needs, tasks and journey. We have also included new features for them to create beautiful interactive commercial ads their audience can't resist.

Here are some examples of how we’ve implemented the user-centred design in our new version:

1. A Creation Guide:

We believe that anybody can create interactive ads and run campaigns without depending on a designer, so we've included a step by step guide, with a checklist of tasks, that need to be completed before moving to the next stage.

With 'Whichit for Advertisers' our users can create interactive commercial content in minutes.

2.  New Features:

Polls and Surveys can be created in minutes with Whichit. We've made that process even easier by eliminated a number of steps in the creative process, by implementing new layout and tool bar when designing a post.

For example, users are now able to drag and drop an image from the library to the creative unit and apply a ‘drop shadow’ on the text overlaid on the image for each answer.

3. A commercial offer to support each user persona:

We identified four personas which all have different needs and goals when engaging with their audience.  Those who:

1. Want to attract audiences to a website/landing page

2. Want to reward audiences with a coupon/offer

3. Want to collect emails and other 1st party data to keep in touch with audiences

4. Want to create memorable experiences for audiences and for them to share their post to social but are not interested in offering something in return.

By implementing a unified language all users can relate to, rather than overly technical marketing and advertising terms, they can easily select the best option to achieve their campaign goals.

'Whichit for Advertisers' offers our users four Engage Cards with different Call to Actions based on their goals.

4. Touchpoints with target audiences:

Whichit’s ad unit can be distributed across multiple online channels. Instead of listing all the options, we ask our users what their marketing campaign’s objectives are: Do they want to engage with audiences on social media channels? or would the like to attract audiences from a new target market? This ensures they only see the relevant types of campaign that match their objectives.

Our users can choose different campaign objectives that best suit their marketing goals.

5.  A new and simplified user-flow:

Learning to use a new system is always challenging and time consuming. In the new version of ‘Whichit for Advertisers’ we’ve simplified the on-boarding process by only presenting features that are relevant to the user’s progress, keeping them informed about their progress at every stage. For example, a user will only be able to navigate through to advanced functions after completing the basics, as getting their too early may cause confusion.

Elliott Saray, Senior Developer at Whichit says that alongside a series of technical improvements, the new version of the SaaS platform also boasts a myriad of user experience enhancements.’. He adds that having completely redesigned the ad creation process based on user feedback and analysis, our users will now find an easy-to-use, unified design language carefully crafted by the Whichit Team.

“The simply and intuitively designed system takes matters of user experience into utmost consideration, allowing our users to create and distribute interactive commercial content at an even quicker pace than before by following a simpler journey.”

— Elliott Saray, Senior Developer

Thank you for reading! We hope you enjoy the new and improved ‘Whichit for Advertisers’!

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About the company:

This web-based tool makes it easy for brands and publishers to create image-based polls and surveys that help them gain user-related insights, their preferences, desires, what makes them tick, and more. With the interactive content platform - 'Whichit for Advertisers', marketers and advertisers can easily create Interactive Commercial Content in minutes and launch it across multi-channels: on the brand's web pages and blogs; social channels like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat; native mobile and in-app; ad-networks; and publishers web pages. Once they attract their audience, Whichit’s users can reel them in with unique “Engage Cards” that deliver crisp and significant call-to-action messages based on their audiences’ answers and their goals.

Whichit's in the Fast Lane! We're featured in the The Fresh Business Thinking Shift 100 - MAdtech Edition!

Galit Gan
Creative Director & Co-Founder

We are delighted to announce that Whichit has been included within The Fresh Business Thinking Shift 100 - the MAdtech edition - in association with KPMG Small Business Accounting. We're in the Fast Lane! 

The Shift 100 has been put together to identify Madtech (Marketing and Advertising) entrepreneurs who are using technology to bring new ideas to marketing and advertising, which is fundamentally reshaping the advertising and media industry and altering how consumers “consume” content.

The Founding team: Jonathan, Yarden and Galit

Fresh Business Thinking is recognising and celebrating the entrepreneurs who are building cutting-edge solutions and bringing tech innovation to the UK’s marketing and advertising scene.

We are very happy to announce that Whichit is one of those chosen!
You can check out Whichit’s profile page here.

About Whichit:
Whichit is a platform to create and publish Interactive Commercial Content. Within minutes advertisers can create a beautiful bespoke interactive display ads. These can be embedded practically anywhere... including our network of publishers. These highly engaging ads not only drive traffic, they also provide highly useful insights about your target audience.

Whichit Was Shortlisted To The UKBAA Angel Investment Awards

Hi Everyone,

Having been nominated for best international growth start-up, our entire founding team attended the UK Angel Investment Awards Gala Awards Dinner at The Dorchester last week.

It was a great honor to be shortlisted and a wonderful experience to be up close with the movers and shakers of our industry. There were serial entrepreneurs, angels, VCs, start-ups as well as accelerators, advisors and the rest of the support networks that make the UK such a vibrant start-up ecosystem.

We had a chance to mingle with some fellow start-ups and some investors. Most importantly, we were impressed with the calibre of the award winners and nominees. It was great to see companies that were once small start-ups, and are now massive, global companies.

We were especially happy to see that our investors, Galvanise Capital and even one of our clients, Family Traveller among the shortlisted companies.

About the awards:

“Now in its 11th year, the annual UKBAA Angel Investment Awards celebrate high growth and success in the angel and early stage investment market - recognising the fastest growing brands and acknowledging the founders, angels, crowdfund and early stage venture capital investors behind them.”

— UKBAA

That’s it for now. If you have any questions, feedback or just want to say congratulations on being shortlisted please email me at gan@getwhichit.com.

Yours,

Jonathan and the Whichit team

British Technology Entrepreneurs Reception at 10 Downing Street

Whichit was cordially invited to 10 Downing Street by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, to join like-minded technology entrepreneurs at the British Technology Entrepreneurs Reception.

Heading the VIP guest list was Jack Ma, founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group. Other distinguished guests included Rohan Silva, former Senior Policy Advisor to David Cameron turned entrepreneur and Eileen Burbidge, one of London’s most influential venture capitalists. Other successful entrepreneurs who created some of the UK’s most successful technology companies such as Moshi Monsters, Graze, CityMapper and CarThrottle attended the reception too.

Jack Ma, the business magnate and philanthropist, announced that he joined a panel of business figures advising Mr David Cameron on business matters. The announcement of his new position, came the day before a four-day state visit to Britain by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Our founder and CEO, Jonathan Gan had the honour of meeting Mr Ma and speaking to him briefly, showcasing Whichit to the founder of China’s own Google, Amazon and eBay rolled into one, getting some sound business advice in the process.

This is not the first time Whichit has been invited to Downing Street, in fact is the third time that we´ve had the honor and hopefully we will be returning there again soon.

Business Leaders Reception At 10 Downing Street

Whichit’s CEO, Jonathan Gan, was invited as a representative of the technology and startup sector for a Business Leaders Reception at 10 Downing Street, with the honour of being hosted by the UK Prime Minister Mr. David Cameron. There were representatives from different aspects of the UK private sector – from entrepreneurs to investors and CEOs as well as from the media and government.

The PM spoke about the importance of business development and the government’s support for this, and expressed his gratitude for the role those in attendance had played in this initiative.

During the event, Jonathan spoke to business leaders such as Brent Hoberman and Steven Cohen as well as the Prime Minister himself. They discussed Whichit’s move from Israel to Great Britain and Jonathan took the opportunity to personally thank the Prime Minister for the Sirius Program and all the support Whichit has received from UK Trade & Investment.

Overall it was a great evening that once again demonstrated the impact high growth companies such as Whichit, have on the UK economy. We’ve demonstrated our significant contribution to the business sector while thriving in a great ecosystem provided by the Innovation Warehouse and Accelerator Academy. It was heartwarming to view the level of attention and support the government places on strengthening the technology sector and an honour to Whichit to be part of it.

Whichit named EMEA app of the year by Facebook’s FbStart

This week has brought us the captivating F8 conference which is held by Facebook. Intended for developers and entrepreneurs, Facebook’s event – which takes place in San Francisco – is designed to help those who build products and services centred around Facebook’s website and groups.

Facebook recently launched FbStart, a program designed to help early stage mobile start-ups build and grow their apps. FbStart provides start-ups with an exclusive community, worldwide events, and mentorship from Facebook, and up to $60,000 in free tools and services. This year Facebook began selecting the most successful start-ups from its program, in order to host the annual App of the Year Award.

This year Facebook selected five Apps to be awarded the FbStart’s App of the Year, broken down in regions around the world. Whichit was honoured to be awarded FbStart’s App of the year for the regions of Europe, Middle east and Africa. The awards were selected from over 400 entries, narrowed down to the top five apps within the FbStart program in which entries were judged on four key properties: growth and engagement; expertise and design; efficiency at scale; and leveraging the Facebook platform. The panel of judges consisting of six experts; three senior level executives from Facebook and three industry experts such as a Partner from leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz made their final decisions just over week ago ready to be bestowed on the final day of the F8 Annual Developer Conference. They recognised the best and most innovative mobile apps to emerge from the FbStart program which has helped showcase Whichit’s potential as an emerging platform.