ZALORA is one of Southeast Asia’s largest fashion e-commerce platforms, offering a wide range of international and regional fashion brands across apparel, footwear, beauty, and accessories. Operating across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, ZALORA serves millions of fashion shoppers through its marketplace platform.

As one of the region’s leading online fashion retailers, ZALORA operates in a highly competitive environment where growth depends on efficient customer acquisition, high-performing digital channels, and strong retention and repeat purchase behaviour.

Industry: Fashion E-commerce / Retail Marketplace
Channels: Performance Marketing, SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Influencer Marketing, CRM & Martech
Engagement Period: 36 months

While ZALORA already had strong brand recognition in Southeast Asia, continued growth required scaling digital acquisition across six different markets while maintaining profitability.

The core challenges included:

• Coordinating marketing activity across 6 SEA countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

• Managing a large regional operation across multiple channels and teams

• Rising competition in fashion e-commerce, increasing acquisition costs

• A fragmented marketing ecosystem across paid, CRM, affiliate, SEO, and influencer activity

• Limited cross-channel optimisation, reducing the ability to improve lifecycle marketing and efficiency

In short, the challenge was to scale customer growth across multiple markets while improving overall marketing efficiency.

Scaling a regional fashion e-commerce platform required more than simply increasing spend. The opportunity was to build a coordinated digital growth ecosystem across acquisition, retention, and customer lifecycle marketing.

Three strategic principles guided the approach:

1. Build a diversified acquisition engine Customer acquisition needed to extend beyond paid media into SEO, affiliate, and influencer channels.

2. Strengthen lifecycle marketing Retention, repurchase, referrals, and reactivation needed to become stronger contributors to growth.

3. Align marketing technology with growth strategy Better data infrastructure and communication between teams would unlock more efficient and personalised growth.

What We Did

Regional Growth Leadership Managed growth across 6 Southeast Asian markets — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan — while leading a team of 28 digital marketers across performance marketing, SEO, affiliate marketing, and influencer marketing.

Performance Marketing Strategy Performance marketing remained a primary driver of customer acquisition. Campaigns were structured by market and optimised across key digital platforms to reflect local consumer behaviour and seasonal demand.

Growth Channel Strategy Developed and implemented marketing-led growth strategies that drove approximately 50% of all new customers to ZALORA through growth channels, while also increasing repurchase frequency, customer referrals, and overall retention.

Budget Ownership & Efficiency Managed an annual digital marketing budget of approximately €15 million, while delivering a 25% reduction in CAC and a 31% reduction in CIR YoY, contributing to meaningful improvements in overall EBITDA.

SEO, Affiliate & Influencer Expansion Expanded the acquisition mix beyond paid media by strengthening SEO, affiliate partnerships, and influencer marketing across the region, improving reach and supporting more efficient new customer acquisition.

Martech Transformation As a senior member of the MarTech squad, helped revamp the marketing technology stack by introducing Segment as the CDP and Braze for cross-platform communication. This improved CRM and paid media team coordination, reduced cannibalisation and over-communication, and enabled more effective audience management.

Cross-Functional Planning Worked closely with CRM, creative, social media, partnerships, BI, and analytics teams to develop fully integrated 360-degree digital marketing plans, ensuring stronger alignment between acquisition, retention, and lifecycle activity.

Revenue Growth

Led regional digital growth across six markets, delivering 97% year-on-year revenue growth.

Customer Acquisition

Growth channels became a major engine of acquisition, contributing around 50% of all new customers, while overall new customer growth increased by 82% YoY.

Customer Reactivation

Improved lifecycle marketing and CRM strategy helped drive 114% growth in customer reactivation, increasing repeat purchases and long-term engagement.

Marketing Efficiency

By improving channel strategy, cross-functional coordination, and MarTech infrastructure:

• CAC reduced by 25% YoY

• CIR reduced by 31% YoY

• overall marketing efficiency improved significantly

• EBITDA performance strengthened as a result

The Outcome

By aligning performance marketing, SEO, affiliate partnerships, influencer marketing, CRM, and MarTech, ZALORA built a highly scalable regional growth engine across Southeast Asia.

This work helped the business:

• achieve 97% YoY revenue growth

• deliver 82% YoY new customer growth

• generate 114% YoY reactivation growth

• drive approximately 50% of new customers through growth channels

• improve profitability through stronger acquisition efficiency and better lifecycle marketing

• create tighter alignment between CRM, paid media, and analytics teams through a more advanced MarTech stack

For large e-commerce businesses operating across multiple countries, sustainable growth depends on building a coordinated digital ecosystem that balances acquisition, retention, and efficiency.