I am kicking it off with an interview with Mark Patchett. An Aussie currently living in London with a high-profile digital marketing profile. Mark has been involved in digital marketing for companies such as The BBC, The Economist, Channel 4 and Qantas for over a decade. His most recent gig is Marketing Lead/Director at a London-based VC-backed startup – Trouva; who share investors with Deliveroo, Eve Mattresses, Graze, Swoon Editions, Dropbox, Facebook and Farfetch.
In just 18 months, Trouva has grown from a seed round to be one of Europe’s top 5 fastest growing tech businesses at 1,509% growth.
Trouva is an online marketplace for independent boutique retail shops dotted across the UK and Europe. Trouva carefully curates design-led products in its catalog, markets, accepts payments and fulfils orders on behalf of listed partner stores. Trouva is designed to help customers find products that are more distinctive than those found on the high street. They in a sense make local boutiques and their products discoverable to a global audience.
The platform eliminates the work of maintaining an online store by providing a shop with the software, customer service, and delivery teams needed to keep the experience consistent.
How Mark’s team growth strategy has been heavily focused on buying traffic on a first purchase focus, then hammering brand via email automation and time-based educational retargeting campaigns. (e.g. 14 days post purchase). So almost all of their paid media focus has been run with a CPA focused objective.
A significant chunk of Trouva’s traffic growth has come through tactical inventory growth which pairs perfectly with shopping growth. Paid social acquisition has been a little different as CPA’s run higher but they pick up a higher Customer Life Time Value by pushing branded messaging in their acquisition campaigns.
Here’s a summary…
TROUVA has a content team marketing and email team.
They are conversions driven.