Go Mobile

The offering

A mobile-only marketing agency: user acquisition, programmatic buying through its own demand-side platform, app store optimisation, creative, and predictive scoring that grades users by the revenue they are likely to bring.

The task

Get in front of the marketing teams behind the region's shopping apps, and the agencies that spend their budgets.

Meetings booked

Confirmed held

77%

Hold rate

Companies introduced

UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt

Markets

3 months from 2023

Engagement

Industries we sold into

E-commerceRetail and groceryMarketing agencies

In 2023 we were hired for a three-month sprint at Gulf e-commerce.

Short engagements are unforgiving. There is no quarter to learn the market in, no second list, and no time for a pivot. Everything depends on the target list being right on the first attempt.

We had one advantage: this sector is legible. Every serious shopping app in the region is visible in the app stores, its marketing team is on LinkedIn, and its agency relationships are a matter of public record. There was nothing to discover, only work to do quickly.

What we did

Three months across the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. 30 meetings booked, 23 confirmed held, 30 companies introduced. Ten meetings a month, every month, held at better than three in four.

Marketplaces and retailers: noon and its NowNow business, Ounass, Sharaf DG, Eros Group, Danube Home, Jashanmal, Lals, Al Futtaim, Al Khayyat, Raneen, OurShopee, Tamanna, Vperfumes, CairoCart and Cairo Sales in Egypt. Samsung. And the agencies who hold the budgets: Merkle, BPG, ITCAN, BBN, Digital Marketing Services.

Two audiences, one campaign, two different sentences

Running brands and their agencies in the same campaign is a trap, and it is the main thing this engagement taught us.

The brand's marketing manager wants to know what it does for his numbers. The agency wants to know whether this makes them look good to their client or replaces something they currently bill for. Send the agency the brand pitch and you have announced yourself as a competitor. Send the brand the agency pitch and you sound like a subcontractor.

Splitting the sequences was the single change that made the short engagement work. The same product, the same evidence, two different opening sentences, and the agency version led with what the agency gains rather than what the technology does.

What it shows

In a sprint you cannot afford to discover your audience. Segment before the first send, and when the same market contains both buyers and their advisors, write two campaigns. The advisor is not a smaller version of the buyer. He is a different person with a different fear.

Every figure counted from the activity tracker.

book_a_call