Case Study
Vessi
Who is Vessi?
Vessi’s story starts in 2017, when three Vancouver residents got tired of the wet shoes, socks, and feet that came with rainy weather. They set out to create a waterproof shoe without compromising on style (sorry, rubber rain boots).
More than just waterproof and stylish, they wanted a shoe that was comfortable and good for the earth. After multiple tests, countless kilometers walked, and many puddles jumped in, they found a shoe that checked all their boxes.
Using 100% vegan materials and a simplified production process, Vessi has made shoes that are a big deal with a small carbon footprint. They have expanded to offer four styles of shoe in a variety of colors, all of them fully waterproof and environmentally friendly.
What did they want to achieve with Wallaroo?
Wallaroo and Vessi paired up in March of 2020. Vessi was well-established in their marketing efforts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google, so Wallaroo began creating media to be used as Snapchat ads and helping in the process of generating content for TikTok. Vessi had experimented with Snapchat in the past, but had never seen ideal results there, while TikTok was new for them. The goal on both platforms was to create efficient exposure with a low budget, and find new ways to reach their potential customer base. The budget would be expanded if these efforts were able to consistently stay at the target CPA.
What steps were taken with their business?
All creatives designed by Wallaroo were approved by Vessi, while placement and targeting of the creatives was a collaborative effort. Post-purchase surveys were an important tool in measuring how effective these campaigns were, particularly on TikTok.
Wallaroo started working with Vessi on TikTok in May, and quickly noticed that a post from TikTok user @agajillian praising Vessi shoes was going viral. They reached out to her and worked to create a TikTok thanking Jillian for her support, which generated 2.3M views and 500K likes in the first week. Vessi and Wallaroo also worked together to create content centered around Vessi’s giveaways and other efforts to give back to the community. The October giveaway led to an increase of over 10K followers. Consistent generation of high-quality content has helped build TikTok into a crucial part of Vessi’s brand.
Our work with Vessi on TikTok continued to go so well, that TikTok themselves did a case study on us. CLICK HERE to check it out!
In August, Vessi released a new model of sneaker called the Weekend, and Wallaroo created a custom lens on Snapchat that allowed users to point their phone cameras at their feet and see an AR pair of Weekend Sneakers on their feet. They could interact with the shoes and tap them to see the different available colors.
In addition to open email communication, regularly scheduled calls made sure that representatives at both companies were aligned with current strategies, trends, and goals. This communication allowed any problems that arose to be addressed as quickly as possible, which is important when working with experimental spend on new platforms.
FB/IG Feed by Wallaroo Media
What results did they see?
TikTok and Snapchat quickly became important platforms for Vessi’s customer journey. Since the start of their partnership with Wallaroo, Vessi has seen these platforms reported in post-purchase surveys as the first place a customer heard about them over 6% of the time, a number that is still trending upwards. The campaign with @kallmekris led to 17.8% of all survey responses in May being “TikTok”, making it the second most common response for the month.
Vessi’s TikTok account has even caught the eye of TikTok employees. We don’t want to toot our own horn too much, so we’ll let the TikTok Brand Partnerships Manager Katie DeNero do it for us:
“Our Product & Brand Strategy teams have been touting Vessi’s content with @kallmekris internally as best-in-class examples of ‘making TikToks, not ads.’ To say the least, everybody is hyped — they’re some of the best examples we’ve seen to-date.”
The push on the platform in November led to a tripled response rate on post-purchase surveys when compared to October, and this higher response rate held in December, even with a budget that was 45% smaller than November’s.
The Vessi TikTok account has enjoyed considerable growth in 2020. With only 2K followers and 50K likes in May, the account now has over 90K followers and 1.3M likes. Posts and campaigns with @agajillian and @callmekris as well as the October giveaway helped to create a strong and customer-centric voice for Vessi on TikTok.
Roughly 25% of total revenue for the second half of 2020 was tracked to Wallaroo and Vessi’s organic efforts
Snapchat has seen a total ROAS of 7.8X over the 9 months, directly creating over $1M in sales. Strong results from the outset allowed the budget for Snapchat to increase steadily throughout the year, increasing 519% from Q2 to Q4.
The strong results in all areas of our partnership give us optimism for 2021, as we anticipate seeing many more shoes sold (and many more puddles jumped in!)
Ready to take your brand to the next level with Wallaroo Media?