CardTrader: the journey from 5M$ to 12M$

growthletter #07

CardTrader:
from 5M$ a 12M$

The entire strategy behind a 240% increase in turnover for the No. 1 playing card marketplace in Italy.

Facebook
Marketing Partner

Facebook
Partner

Google
Business Partner

Google
Partner

Shopify
Business Partner

Shopify
Partner

Hi,

In today’s Growthletter, I’ll be talking about the incredible transformation of CardTrader, a marketplace for collectible cards that has reached new heights in its industry.

You will be introduced to the core strategies that took CardTrader from an average of €5M/year to an impressive €12M/year in just one year of collaboration with Horizons.

So, in today’s Growthletter, we’ll cover:

The strategic approaches we used for such exponential growth.
How to make the right decision at the right time through a 4-phase method.
How we hacked Facebook’s algorithm to quickly capture new market shares.

Happy reading

Objectives

Before starting, we analyzed the market and CardTrader’s initial situation.

CardTrader is a marketplace for collectible cards, operating in both the European and US markets.

Its standout feature is CardTrader Zero, a revolutionary service that allows users to save significantly on shipping costs, a major expense in card trading.

Using our 4-phase methodology, we identified the most critical strategic decisions to make.

We realized that CardTrader was still in Phase 2, the profitability phase.

Therefore, we set two main objectives from the outset:

1) Complete the Profitability Phase by optimizing the site’s user experience.

This would make using CardTrader Zero much more intuitive and its benefits more apparent. It would also allow us to set up the infrastructure for scaling.

2) Transition to the Scaling phase, open new market segments, and massively acquire new customers by focusing on CardTrader Zero.

Let’s now take a look at the practical activities we carried out:

CRO Strategy

The first task we tackled was revamping the site’s UX/UI.

We started by completely redefining the UI guidelines, as there had been little focus on branding aspects before our involvement.

Then we restructured the main pages based on the new UI Guidelines and optimization strategies.

We also entirely redesigned the product page, shopping cart, and checkout process, and initiated an A/B test with the old purchase path.

This initial test resulted in a 37.5% increase in Conversion Rate (the new site had a CR of 44% compared to the old site’s 32%).

After optimizing the pre-purchase user experience, we moved on to optimizing the post-purchase experience with the Orders page.

In a market where people place many orders, sometimes dozens each month, the experience within their account is crucial.

A good experience leads to more satisfied customers who purchase more frequently.

Acquisition Strategies

Hacking Facebook’s Algorithm

Given the very unique nature of this market, mainly composed of customers who make dozens of purchases each month, we had to “hack” Facebook’s algorithm to get what we wanted: new customers.

From the very first weeks, it was evident that Facebook’s algorithm was inefficiently allocating the budget for our goal: acquiring new customers and increasing market share.

We applied several strategies, including the creation of the “New Purchase” metric. This is a metric that doesn’t normally exist on Facebook but was crucial for our success.

By “New Purchase”, we mean all purchases made by new customers, i.e., people who had never made a purchase on CardTrader before.

Without this metric, we would have seen campaigns with hundreds of tracked purchases, but they would have been from returning customers.

While repeat purchases are important, our goal was to increase market share, and we wanted to dedicate 90% of the budget solely to acquiring new customers.

Thanks to the “New Purchase” event and another hack, we managed to bypass Facebook’s algorithm and achieve our desired results.

f you want to dive deeper into how we “hacked” Facebook’s algorithm, we have written a more technical case study on this topic.

Influencer Marketing + Advertising

Using influencers for advertising has several advantages:

You can drive new traffic to your ecommerce site, also improving brand reputation.
You can use influencer videos as material for your advertising strategy (if you have made the right agreements ). Combining advertising and influencer marketing means putting steroids into your customer acquisition strategy.

Through our Influencer Program system, we were able not only to boost new customer acquisition for CardTrader but also to obtain new material for advertising.

Collaboration with CiccioGamer

Another activity that brought us significant satisfaction was the collaboration with influencer CiccioGamer.

Using his content for advertising was a powerful driver for acquiring new customers.

With over 3.5 million subscribers on YouTube and 1.6 million followers on Instagram, he is one of the most famous personal brands in Italy in sectors related to CardTrader’s market, such as collectible Pokémon cards.

Here are some of the top-performing ads that generated a lot of interaction, given his “polarizing” personality.

Results

In almost a year and a half, here are the results achieved:

We went from a revenue of €5M/year to €12M/year, with a growth of 240%, increasing the number of active customers from about 8,000 to over 18,000.

Thanks to the customer acquisition strategies, we went from 950 to 2,500 new customers per month.

Additionally, thanks to the LTV optimization strategies, we increased from about 400 returning new customers per month to over 1,300/month, achieving a 325% increase.

You can see in the graph below the exponential growth in new market segments:

Final Considerations

Let’s summarize the lessons you can take away to maximize the growth of your ecommerce:

There are hundreds of strategies you can apply to your ecommerce, but to understand which one you should apply, you need to understand which phase of your journey you are in. We created the 4-phase methodology for this very reason.
Optimizing the purchase path is crucial before any scaling; otherwise, you risk wasting a lot of advertising budget.
If you want to increase your market share, don’t “waste” too much budget on remarketing but focus on metrics for new customers.
Combine advertising with influencer marketing to create much more effective acquisition strategies.

That’s all for today!

2024 Update: we are on the road for 24M$, so the business is keep growing.

Wishing you great growth,
The Horizons Team

we wave, you grow

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