Silver Award Winner 'International' Category
191% increase in total online revenue
176.69% increase in average basket value
Email marketing revenue increased by 227.41%
Dilmah is a globally recognized tea company, founded in Sri Lanka by master teamaker Merrill J. Fernando. Dilmah pioneered the concept of single origin tea back in 1988, committing to supplying authentic, unblended Ceylon Tea which is packed at the source.
Australia was one of the first international markets Dilmah was introduced to in the 1980s, and it is currently the company’s best performing international market.
Since its introduction to the Australian market, Dilmah has built a strong presence in the retail sector. The brand faced competition from other tea makers such as Twinings and Lipton, but held on to a bulk of the market share in the modern trade space. However, the same could not be said of its online performance.
Australia’s eCommerce space is competitive and mature. Brands that sell successfully online do so because they have adopted eCommerce best practices and processes. When it came to tea, the online marketplace was dominated by multinational brands who were investing heavily in digital marketing. A notable challenge for Dilmah was its price point. Because the brand was committed to only supplying single origin pure Ceylon Tea at its highest quality, it was priced relatively higher than its competitors.
Antyra Solutions began working with the brand in mid-2018. The following key objectives were outlined at the start of the engagement:
In order to meet our objectives, we considered an omni-channel strategy, using social media advertising, Google search ads, Google display ads, Bing advertising, email marketing and content marketing. By focusing on the buyer journey and targeting customers at each touch point, we were able to capture new audiences and retain existing audiences successfully in order to achieve a higher ROI.
Here’s how we targeted customers at each stage of the buying journey:
Awareness
This is the first touch point – where consumers discover the brand. We used multiple tactics, such as Google display ads, social media advertising, SEO optimizations and content marketing to ensure visibility for the Dilmah brand at the customer inspiration stage. For example, we published blogs relating to top performing searches such as ‘Health Benefits of Green Tea’ which was the second-best performing landing page (after the home page) for a considerable period of time.
Acquisition
At this point, consumers have discovered the brand and are considering making a purchase. Therefore, at this stage we focused on acquiring customers using search advertising, social media remarketing and SEO optimizations. For example, we optimized Google search ads to capture and acquire those who were already aware of the brand.
Conversions
This is the final stage of the journey, and our focus was on converting users who were ready to make a purchase. We pushed a remarketing advertising strategy to convert customers who were aware of the brand and willing to take the next step. For example, email marketing was utilized to send weekly newsletters to communicate offers to incentivize the purchase decision. Interestingly, email became one of the top three performing channels. Bringing in almost 30% of the online revenue, it was the largest contributor, at the lowest cost.
Retaining the audience captured using our digital advertising efforts was an equally important part of the process. For Dilmah, we put in place a continuous retention strategy which included, rewards and loyalty programs and purchase behaviour based newsletters using advanced targeting.
This 360-degree digital approach resulted in significant growth for the brand and outlined below are details of the achievements.
