How Koala Eco Grew Customer LTV with a Social Club

Context

Koala Eco is on a mission to create safe, powerful, plant-based products using natural, sustainable ingredients. The brand has built its objectives around aiding people’s wellbeing by connecting them to nature. As a result, its purpose-led mission drives its eagerness to engage and grow a passionate community.

To create the best and most organic community, Koala Eco believes that its most passionate audiences deserve rewards. As such, it pursued building a social rewards program that inspires its community to share Koala Eco on Instagram and TikTok. As a byproduct of those efforts, the brand aimed to grow its existing social community 10x.

Fostering the best brand communities in the world is not an easy endeavor. Koala Eco sought out a way to facilitate an organic-feeling community, but with limited time resources. How do you maintain and grow a community of thousands of brand advocates? Does fostering a community lead to more brand loyalty and increased customer LTV?

Solution

Koala Eco partnered with LoudCrowd to build and manage a Social Club of hundreds of members that was focused on:

• Incentivizing members to post on Instagram and TikTok by offering free product
• Growing its social community through its existing brand champions
• Cultivating a community member lifecycle journey that results in higher CLTV

The goal was to accomplish all of these focuses with Social Club automations that still felt organic and personal from the brand.

Program structure: an all-customer social rewards club

Koala Eco launched an all-customer Social Rewards Club, which targets its existing brand advocates and any new customers in the US and Australia. The program offered a clear call to action for community members: share Koala Eco with your friends and audiences on social media. The Social Rewards Club offers participants discounts, site credits, and even surprise free new products, all automatically delivered upon completion of social posts.

Recruiting and program growth

Koala Eco promotes its Social Rewards Club at every new or existing customer touchpoint. For example, on the website, customers can find the Social Rewards sign-up page in the navigation bar, and on marketing email blasts, consumers can find the Social Rewards Club in every email footer.

Koala Eco also saw a huge opportunity among Airbnb hosts for its Social Club. Koala Eco leveraged LoudCrowd’s discovery capabilities to identify potential Airbnb hosts to invite to the program via a DM engagement strategy. In total, the brand was able to reach ~950 community members after the first year.

Special activations to increase LTV

Koala Eco also leverages its community for special brand campaigns. For example, after Koala Eco joined 2022’s #NaturePact campaign, it encouraged and rewarded its community members for doing the same. To gather more needed video content, it encouraged Social Club members to post Reels during the month of October and saw an immediate 15% increase in video content.

Results

Koala Eco received more content without the cost of influencers

In the first year, the program generated enormous social life, resulting in 2.9K posts, 6.73M impressions, and over $202K in earned media value — a 9x increase in posts and an 11x increase in EMV compared to the program start. On top of that, the costs to generate those posts were far lower than influencer costs. Using the all-in costs of rewards and the LoudCrowd platform, community member content was generated at a CPM of $5.64 — roughly a 10x improvement on influencer efficiency, where the average CPM is around $50.

Social Club members became their most valuable customers

Program members redeemed their Social Club rewards at a rate of ~30%, which is double the national average for coupon redemptions. This also translated to Social Club members spending dramatically more with the brand. After joining the Koala Eco Social Club, members on average gained 385 AUD (Australian dollars) in CLTV. Similarly, compared to non-program members, members are 578 AUD more valuable in CLTV. Clearly, best-in-class communities result in greater brand loyalty and lifetime value.

With all of these milestones achieved, Koala Eco rounded out the year with an 8x return on its Social Club. Investing in community for your brand champions pays off rapidly.