Case Study
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AliExpress Russia is a local joint venture in Russia and the CIS owned by Alibaba Group, VK, USM International and the Russian Direct Investment Fund. AliExpress is the go-to online shopping app to find everything you need with great value. Operating in over 200 countries and regions, AliExpress sells more than 170 million quality items. 

Read on to learn how Alexey Sobolev, UA Lead at AliExpress Russia and the team reached their goals and drove over 400K installs in the CIS region with ironSource Aura. 

Looking for channels to drive incremental growth

The main challenge for our team at AliExpress Russia is acquiring quality users who hadn’t used our platform to make a purchase before. AliExpress is a big brand and one of the largest marketplaces in the world, so driving incremental growth from new users is difficult, especially when running on limited channels. 

That’s why we were looking for new ways to grow our user base and scale our marketing activities past the traditional platforms. We looked into Aura and found that it could help us reach a new set of quality users. Specifically, we were also excited about the opportunity to reach these users before our competitors. 

Happy to test new paid UA channels, we started running with Aura in June 2021 and launched a campaign on Samsung devices across Russia and several CIS countries.

Running on all of Aura’s placements 

With a goal to drive as many active users as possible while maintaining our Cost Per New Buyer KPI, we decided to run on all of Aura’s placements. Specifically, we found value in the setup experience, which recommends apps to users when they open their device for the first time, and the device update experience, which occurs around triggers and recommends new apps to users throughout their lifetime with the smartphone. 

In comparison to traditional channels, users acquired through Aura have a unique engagement experience, which means we started looking at KPIs differently. For example, the team at Aura suggested we evaluate our users acquired through Aura with a longer cohort than on standard channels, allowing us to scale activity accurately. Aura also doesn’t require banners or creatives, which means the scaling and optimization process was significantly easier and quicker for us. 

With the team at Aura running most of the operations, while keeping us informed throughout the process, we were able to hit our goals quickly and efficiently.  

Driving over 400K installs and reaching our goals with Aura

After launching in June 2021, we quickly hit our main KPI for Cost Per New Buyer and have driven more than 400K installs in Russia and CIS region. 

"Running on Aura, we’ve already seen a significant performance boost and have acquired new, engaged users for our app who made purchases."

- Alexey Sobolev, UA Lead at AliExpress Russia

We appreciate how our Aura account managers add a personal touch to their conversations with us and make decisions that are catered specifically to our account. The team is responsive and on top of our activity, and we look forward to continuing scaling our activity on the platform. 

+400K

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