CHALLENGE

A customer database full of existing buyers and no way to reach new ones

With over 60 premium brands across 270 stores in six Gulf countries, Alyasra has spent more than 30 years building one of MENA’s largest fashion retail operations. Its WhatsApp marketing database was built almost entirely on existing customers. While SMS was generating returns, it wasn’t efficient, and building another app or website would still require customers to come to Alyasra rather than the other way around.

They needed to solve three problems.

• Reaching new audiences, not just existing customers. WhatsApp requires contacts to opt in before a brand can message them. Alyasra collected numbers at the point of sale, so its database mapped almost exactly to its existing customer base. Growing that list meant getting people into WhatsApp who had not shopped with the brand yet, and there was no obvious mechanism to do that.
• Getting customers into a shopping experience without leaving WhatsApp. Every redirect to a website or app added friction, and Alyasra wanted to explore whether the full purchase journey could happen inside WhatsApp itself.
• Maintaining delivery rates in a frequency-capped environment. Reaching customers consistently in Kuwait and the UAE was a challenge. WhatsApp’s frequency capping limits how many marketing messages a user can receive in a given window. Campaigns were losing reach they couldn’t recover, making ROI unpredictable and outreach planning harder to execute with confidence.

Alyasra came to Infobip with a question: could they extend what was already working into something no one in the region had built yet? The answer was yes, but it would take both teams figuring it out together.

WhatsApp as a retail channel, built in stages starting with the service foundation

The starting point was customer service. Alyasra needed one place to manage communication across multiple brands and channels, and AgentOS, Infobip’s agentic CX platform, gave the customer service team one workspace for real-time customer queries on WhatsApp and structured ticket management over Email, for more than 60 brands.

As that foundation matured, Alyasra moved into WhatsApp marketing.

WhatsApp marketing opening a way towards higher ROI

Alyasra tracks WhatsApp’s contribution to revenue by monitoring whether a customer who received a message made a purchase (online or in-store) within seven days. Phone numbers collected at point of sale are matched against send lists, capturing what Alyasra calls “WhatsApp-influenced sales” across both channels.

WhatsApp tracked ROI came in at approximately 30x. That’s why Alyasra transitioned all outbound marketing from SMS to WhatsApp. As the database grew and send frequency increased, customer purchase frequency followed and went up year over year for two consecutive years.

A product catalogue and checkout in WhatsApp

Redirecting customers to a website meant asking them to leave the channel they were already in. Every additional step was a chance to lose them. Alyasra wanted to solve that by bringing the shopping experience into WhatsApp, not the other way around.

That’s why they built a chatbot-guided experience on the WhatsApp Business Platform and AgentOS’s AI chatbot builder. Customers arrive at a menu where they can browse the catalogue, contact customer service, or find a store. For those who want to shop, the chatbot walks them through a 30-product catalogue. Selecting a product opens a checkout inside WhatsApp’s native browser.

Because the checkout connects directly to Shopify, orders land in Alyasra’s back-end systems the same as any other eCommerce purchase. Operationally, nothing changed.

Click-to-WhatsApp ads for customer acquisition

To solve the opt-in problem, Alyasra turned to click-to-WhatsApp ads on Facebook and Instagram. These ads send users directly into a WhatsApp conversation rather than a landing page. Under Meta’s terms of service, a user who clicks the ad and starts a conversation gives the brand permission to retain their number. They browse the catalogue, or they don’t. Either way, they’re in the database.

Alyasra piloted the approach on DKNY. One campaign generated 3,700 bot sessions and added 1,500 new contacts.

Improving delivery rates with destination scoring

At Alyasra’s send volumes, delivery rates have a direct impact on campaign revenue. In Kuwait and the UAE, rates on key campaigns were not where they needed to be.

Infobip’s destination scoring prioritizes sends to numbers with higher delivery probability, reducing wasted sends to users unlikely to receive the message. In Kuwait, delivery rates improved by 8 to 10 percentage points. In KSA, rates that had been running at 65 to 70% moved to 84%.

30x tracked ROI, stronger delivery rates, and a commerce channel ready for what comes next

The results came back across all three areas Alyasra had set out to improve.

• WhatsApp marketing ROI: 30x tracked, against 13x on SMS. That justified moving all outbound marketing across all brands.
• Delivery rate improvement: Destination scoring lifted rates by 8 to 10 percentage points in Kuwait and from 65-70% to 84% in KSA.
• Purchase frequency: Customer purchase frequency has increased year over year for two years running. Alyasra tracks this alongside per-campaign ROI as a measure of what consistent WhatsApp engagement does to buying behavior over time.
• DKNY commerce pilot: One campaign, two traffic sources (click-to-WhatsApp ads and WhatsApp messages to the existing database): 3,700 bot sessions, 1,500 new contacts, 1,700 bot users, 652 catalogue views. Tracked sales ROI across stores and eCommerce within seven days came in at 18x. Direct WhatsApp checkout sales added a further 3.7x.

What started as a customer service channel now handles service, marketing, acquisition, and commerce for Alyasra.

What comes next

The next phase is already in planning. Alyasra is working on a loyalty program built around WhatsApp as its centerpiece. Not a points-based system, but one where members can sign up, view benefits, and claim rewards in-store, all without leaving the app.