AREA 02 partners with Appier to boost its online sales and build customer loyalty

The successful implementation focused on 3 strategic pillars - Increase conversion by coupon delivery; solidify customer loyalty via personalized experiences; and explore business opportunities through an intuitive sneaker trading platform

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Media OutReach - 30 August 2022 - Appier today announced the successful campaign results of its partnership with AREA 02, the leading sneaker trading platform in Taiwan, to strengthen the brand's digital strategy.

AREA 02 enabled personalized experiences for its users through multiple online channels with the one-stop customer management platform AIQUA. Leveraging Appier AI Personalized Marketing Cloud, AREA 02 can now tailor customer journeys based on their behaviors and preferences; while at the same time increasing the total number of customer repeat visits and repeat purchases, achieving positive business results and a positive sales cycle.

AREA 02's phase one digital achievements were attributed to three tactics.

1. Increase conversion by coupon delivery: AREA 02 accelerated its platform transactions by coupon delivery and free shipping. According to data from AREA 02, the brand has achieved a 400% year-on-year (YoY) increase in coupon redemptions in Q1 2022; reached 170% YoY growth of first-time customers; and delivered a 28.2% YoY increase in transaction amount while reducing customer acquisition costs by 38%.
2. Solidify customer loyalty via a personalized experience: AIQUA helped AREA 02 to understand and segment customers for better engagement, which allowed the brand to provide a personalized experience for its customers and ultimately, solidify customer loyalty. The return visit rate of its customers has grown 30%, while the number of repeat customers has grown 2.5x YoY in Q1 2022.
3. Explore business opportunities through an intuitive sneaker trading platform: AREA 02 optimized the bid matching rate on its sneaker trading platform through precise push notifications, successfully growing matches between buyers and sellers by 2.71x within 3 months. Sneaker bid matching will also become a field of focus for AREA 02 to increase its total revenue going forward.

"AREA 02 was launched in 2019, and since then, our technology and R&D teams have strived towards our goals of developing new features to continue to excite our customers. This partnership with Appier and the adoption of Appier's AI-driven technologies has resulted in significant improvements in terms of our customer retention and member management functions. This has allowed us to focus on what we do best - optimizing our current business models for the sneaker community. Appier was an invaluable partner and consultant to the team at AREA 02, empowering us to review our current strategies effectively and implement a seamless customer experience for our target audience," said Cory Chen, CEO, Area 02.

Increase conversion by coupon delivery to boost online sales

Appier's AIQUA AI personalized marketing cloud helped AREA 02 easily execute cross-channel marketing campaigns and increase its communication channels. AREA 02 delivered coupons and conducted lucky draw activities through its official website, push notifications, e-mail and SMS and combined automated A/B testing for its web push notifications to optimize its app download rate and coupon redemption rate. The campaign resulted in Area 02 achieving a 400% YoY increase in coupon redemptions and a 170% YoY growth of first-time customers, as well as an increase of 28% in total transaction amount and a decrease of 38% in customer acquisition costs.

Solidify customer loyalty via personalized experiences and repeat purchases

AREA 02 believes that offering a personalized experience to customers is the key to success in the e-commerce industry. The brand has proactively incorporated a personalized experience into all its marketing channels. AIQUA can automatically detect user behavior and trigger scenario-based push notifications to help AREA 02 easily implement personalized experiences. AREA 02 partnered with Appier to create a personalized customer journey for new customers, develop an efficient customer acquisition approach; and come up with detailed user profiles and segmentation to increase the number of repeat purchases and products. AREA 02 not only successfully increased the member return visit rate by 30% and the number of repeat customers by 2.5x YoY, but it also increased the lifetime value of every customer.

Strengthen brand presence through a customer-first approach

In addition to personalized experiences and customer relationship management, customers can participate in sneaker bidding and matchmaking, which are characteristic of the sneaker trading platform. AREA 02 worked with Appier in building an intuitive sneaker trading platform that "understands customers". AREA 02 provided precision push notifications to improve matchmaking results. Through this, successful matches grew 2.71x within 3 months, further increasing the overall transaction amount. Appier's mission is to turn AI into ROI by making software intelligent, and this was evident in the partnership with AREA 02, where the brand achieved significant business growth through new customer acquisition and stronger brand loyalty and affinity with its current customers.

Continue to offer richer experiences for customers to strengthen brand loyalty

AREA 02 implemented AIQUA to integrate its official website, owned media and paid media communications for the first phase of the campaign, effectively acquiring new customers while increasing the consumption frequency of existing customers. AREA 02 strives to provide a good, personalized experience and membership system. Its next step is to further enhance personalized experiences through the advanced hybrid algorithm of AIQUA. It also aims to develop a personalized product recommendation engine based on customers' preferences and behavior that automatically finds and recommends products suitable for each customer and discovers products that buyers may potentially be interested in. This increases customers' brand loyalty and further leads to uninterrupted purchase behavior.

According to Cowen Equity Research, the COVID-19 pandemic boosted the global sneaker resale market - from USD 6 billion in 2019, it is now expected to reach nearly USD 30 billion by 2030. Similar to how AREA 02 accelerated the adoption of AI solutions into its platform, the sneaker trading market will rely on big data and AI technology to scale and reach significant growth margins. Through real-time user behavior analysis and multiple algorithm recommendations, sneaker trading platforms can filter the most desirable shoes for sellers and buyers. With its foothold in the Taiwanese market, AREA 02 has plans to expand in Southeast Asia and will partner with Appier to penetrate more overseas markets and expand its business presence globally.

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About AREA 02

Established in 2019, AREA 02 is the leading sneaker trading platform in Taiwan. With its vision of "passion for trends" and "pursuit of an authentic experience", AREA 02 is committed to promoting authenticity with its secure sneaker trading platform. With features such as "seller selection", "free bidding/price matching" and "new patent verification system", along with its foothold in the international fashion market, AREA 02 offers a secure and convenient platform for buyers and sellers, addressing the key pain points of online sneaker trading. AREA 02 now has more than 220,000 members and continues to grow, striving to become the first choice of platform for sneaker purchase, resale and the trend setter for the market. Please visit www.area02.com for more details.

About Appier

Appier (TSE: 4180) is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that uses artificial intelligence to power business decision-making. Founded in 2012 with a vision of democratizing AI, Appier now has 17 offices across APAC, Europe and US, and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Visit www.appier.com for more company information and visit ir.appier.com/en/ for more IR information.