7 Winning WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Examples By The D2C Brands

WhatsApp marketing is all about building relationships with customers and inspiring them with brand value. But just because most people are using and are more likely to open a WhatsApp message, you shouldn’t be sending boring, generic & sales messages to them.

There is definitely room for some creativity with these WhatsApp marketing messages. Let’s give a make-over to these WhatsApp campaigns for your D2C eCommerce businesses and get a dose of inspiration for your own brand promotions.

Dharmesh Shah, CTO & Co-Founder of HubSpot had rightly said, “Instead of interrupting, work on attracting.” 

That’s why brands need to think of new ideas to reach customers on WhatsApp maintaining their message frequency with quality content.

7 WhatsApp Marketing Campaigns from Different D2C Brands 

If you find yourself looking for inspiration for your next WhatsApp campaign that can be executed with a limited budget but can potentially give higher returns, and is simpler to carry out – we’ve listed a few examples of successful eCommerce WhatsApp marketing campaigns. Let’s go!

1. “Beat the Crave” WhatsApp Campaign 

Organizer – Saffola

The Saffola brand is the market leader in edible oils in India for over 30 years, it has stood for purity and trust among consumers with its advanced antioxidant system that helps improve immunity. The brand is using the LOSORBTMTechnology in its products resulting in up to less oil absorption in food making your food healthier.

Goal:

To engage more people with their healthcare brand Saffola decided to build its campaign around fighting the craving for unhealthy food, ultimately reaching for a snack. As a part of a larger campaign for a new active slimming product, they were launching. 

Campaign:

Saffola crafted a WhatsApp chatbot to encourage healthier eating habits. A user could message this bot whenever they crave some comfort food, in turn, the chatbot tried to distract the user with pre-recorded positive reinforcements, puzzles, and even a rap song that promoted Suffola’s new active slimming drink.

The campaign was named “Beat the Crave”, users actively signed up by entering their WhatsApp number on Saffola’s website, giving them access to the brand’s “digital audio buddy.” And like any true friend or a professional trainer, this buddy kept users away from unhealthy food.

Every time users texted the bot craving for snacks, they would receive a response with a motivational text or an audio message to help them “beat the crave.”

Result:

Saffola’s WhatsApp campaign was a resounding success receiving 82,49,757 Facebook Reach & 1,60,000+ Microsite visits.

The brand helped to beat nearly a million cravings, received over 6,000 WhatsApp subscribers, and, more importantly, saw a 500%+ increase in sales of which 12%+ was the Return Visits.

2. “Rent a Pred” WhatsApp campaign

Organizer – Adidas

One of the largest sportswear manufacturers Addidas designs and creates shoes, clothing, and accessories – is more than simply an athletic product producer, it possesses a distinctive brand personality – “positive, brave, undefeated and confident” and through which it has owned huge brand equity.

Goal:

In February 2020, Sportswear brand Adidas, as a part of its shoe promotion campaign, decided to focus on a narrow audience – amateur football players and help them tackle their specific issues. 

Campaign:

Adidas used WhatsApp to create a hotline to help amateur football teams replace missing players last minute, as a part of its new campaign. 

Football teams fairly often experience trouble with some players dropping out at the last minute before a match, and there might be no replacement. Adidas through its campaign offered to find a substitute through WhatsApp. 

All the team needs to do was send a message to this WhatsApp hotline and share essential information about the match. In return, Adidas will send a top-notch football player to their game.

Result:

The campaign lasted for only six days and targeted a specific audience, but to amazement, it generated impressive results. In particular, Adidas got a lot of buzz in football media, retail websites, blogs, and so on.

• Rent-a-Pred players had a 92% win rate across all the games
• The players contributed 29 goals in the series

3. “I’ll bring you back your beloved clothes” WhatsApp campaign

Organizer – Unilever

Unilever Plc (Unilever) is a renowned global manufacturer and supplier of fast-moving consumer goods. The product portfolio comprises all the significant sections food, beauty, personal care, beverages, home care, and a lot more. This multinational consumer goods company has created about 400 brands to date including Knorr, Dove, Axe, and Lipton are few to be named.

Goal:

Unilever decided to use the WhatsApp channel to connect with consumers in a familiar way as a part of the launch of its new brand called Comfort in Brazil at a low cost. So they were looking for a new and unique marketing approach.  

Campaigns:‍

Unilever initiated a conversation portal with their audience and used the opportunity to raise awareness about their new products. Through the campaign, people were able to message on the number displayed, and a chatbot called “MadameBot” gave tips in reply on ‘how to care for the clothes’. While giving tips, they also introduced people to new products using videos & images. And at the end of the chat, people received a 50% discount on the new product with free shipping. 

The brand put up 10,000+ billboards around São Paulo with the message “I’ll bring you back your beloved clothes,”  and a WhatsApp number.

Results:

• Sales increased by 14x.  
• Received 290K messages from 12 thousand unique customers.

4. “Give Your Expert Advice” WhatsApp Campaign

Organizer – Persil Kufua

Persil is a leading laundry detergent brand manufactured by Henkel company, designed to give outstanding whiteness and brightness in all water temperatures.

Goal:

Henkel’s with its brand launch of Persil wanted to encourage consumer familiarity with the brand, increase interaction between the brand and the consumers through customer retention apps and build a loyal brand following.

Campaign:

In the campaign, the brand asked people to send in 15-second videos of their best washing tips via WhatsApp. The best of those tips were then rewarded & given Persil hampers. The idea and approach were simple – to make consumers feel that they were a part of the brand.

Result:

The campaign was an ultimate success, with the brilliant WhatsApp campaign is was interactive and collaborative.

5. “Chef In Your Kitchen” WhatsApp Campaign

Organizer – Maggi 

Maggi is an international brand of seasonings, instant soups, stocks, and noodles that’s popular all around the world and is one of Nestlé’s billion-dollar brands. With its same distinctive red and gold packaging has never failed to impress its customers.

Goal:

Maggi wanted to increase brand awareness – not by shouting its own name from the top of buildings, but by being part of people’s daily lives so they would remember the brand in their dreams as well. 

Campaign: 

Maggi created a free, virtual cooking curriculum entirely on WhatsApp. They wanted to personally connect with customers of all ages, support them throughout their culinary journeys and motivate them to prepare great dishes in just a few steps. 

The curriculum was delivered via the WhatsApp-powered virtual assistant – Kim, who guided customers with step-by-step instructions, answer their questions, and share videos for specific cooking techniques.

Results:

Just 3 months after the WhatsApp Campaign it had achieved:

• 200,000 messages sent in the first 8 weeks
• 4.2-point lift in standard ad recall 
• 3-point lift in campaign awareness

6. “WhatsCook” WhatsApp Campaign

Organizer – Hellmann

Hellmann’s is an American brand known for its best quality line of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, sauce, salad dressing, condiments, and other food products. Hellmann’s is also recognized as the perfect gateway of mayonnaise. The perfection is largely derived from the product’s consistency, texture, and sweetness.

Goal:

Hellmann realized that people from their target audience often didn’t know what to cook with ingredients in their fridge. So the brand wanted to engage with customers at that moment and be a part of the solution to drive positive brand association. 

Campaign: 

Hellmann used messaging platform WhatsApp to engage with its consumers and give them a customized experience through their “WhatsCook campaign”. To join the campaign, people just had to register on the brand’s website with their phone number to connect to the chefs. People could send pictures of ingredients available & chefs would recommend recipes using Hellmann mayonnaise. If something was not clear via text, chefs would also send images & videos.

The campaign was launched in Brazil where the maximum population uses WhatsApp. The spend on this was only $900! Let’s see what ROI they got from a mere $900 spend.

Results:

Hellmann’s observed tremendous numbers after running this campaign for 10-days:

• 50% of all website visitors signed up for the service
• 5 million people got in touch with the brand directly 
• People found new ways to use Hellmann’s mayonnaise 
• 500 new recipes were created using Hellmann’s mayonnaise

7. “A Personal Shopper” WhatsApp Campaign

Organizer – Flipkart 

Flipkart Private Limited an Indian e-commerce company has an expanded business to sell lifestyle products, electronics, home essentials, and groceries. Today, Flipkart is one of the biggest online Indian marketplaces competing with the world leader Amazon.

Goal:

Flipkart wanted to create excitement for its upcoming online sales “Big Billion Days” for which they wanted to reach people with maximum captured attention. And what better channel to break through the marketing clutter than WhatsApp to drive meaningful engagement and conversions.

Campaign:

To make the campaign more interesting, Flipkart used an attractive way to instantly connect with its consumers. It created an interactive conversational flow based on India’s iconic television quiz show, Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), starring the Bollywood legend, Amitabh Bachchan as the host (personifying as a chatbot).

They created rich-media interactions by using all the different formats of communication that WhatsApp offers such as images, audio, videos, and emojis. 

Customers could also discover more about the sale via puzzles and emoji-enabled games on WhatsApp.

Results:

Here is improved data after 2 weeks of WhatsApp marketing:

• 3.5X more conversions 
• 7X more high-quality visitors (based on visitor’s time spent on the platform) 
• $2.5 million USD in revenue

Gather Fast Customer Acquisition via WhatsApp Marketing 

No deny WhatsApp has a huge number of active users – 2 Billion +, making it one of the perfect platforms to capture new customers. 

Above mentioned all the examples show well how the eCommerce brands are attracting and engaging their customers globally –

• creating extraordinary brand awareness 
• sharing the best experience their customer could imagine
• gaining multiplied customer loyalty through engagement

Open your D2C arms for trendy social media, and speed up your business growth with conversational marketing by 3X. Take the leverage of the highest 99% opening rate of messages, and engage your customers on WhatsApp. 

You can begin your D2C conversation game with TheConvertWay for your WhatsApp Marketing with assured range of pre-approved message templates that will help you convert hassle-free. Click here to know more benefits with TheConvertWay.

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