In March 2025, Dostyk Plaza faced significant customer churn. The number of unique visitors had declined by approximately 35%, while new visitors were down 38%. The conventional media response to declining traffic would have been to increase reach: attract more new audiences, increase frequency and intensify media pressure. But market analysis showed the limitations of this approach. The potential premium audience represented only around 11% of Almaty’s population, while audience overlap between major shopping malls reached 60–75%. In practice, Dostyk Plaza and its competitors were constantly competing for the attention of largely the same people. This meant that additional reach did not necessarily translate into incremental business. By increasing media pressure, the mall risked paying again and again to reach the same limited audience. So we decided to look at the problem not from the perspective of media channels, but from the perspective of customer behaviour. Analysis of anonymized mobile location data revealed the key insight: Lost customers had not stopped visiting shopping malls. They had stopped choosing Dostyk Plaza. Many former visitors continued to visit competing malls. This meant we were not dealing with a traditional awareness problem. These people already knew Dostyk Plaza. We did not need to find a new audience. We needed to understand which existing customers were worth winning back, how to reconnect with them, and which channel should perform which role at every stage of their return. This insight became the foundation of our new media strategy.
Problem
We faced a specific business challenge: bring back customers who had not visited Dostyk Plaza for more than six months without reducing the solution to simply buying more reach. To achieve this, we needed to change the logic of media planning itself. Instead of asking: “How can we reach more people?” we asked: “Which people can create the greatest business value — and which channel do we need at each stage of their return?” The media strategy had to solve five tasks: - identify lost visitors based on their actual behaviour rather than socio-demographic characteristics alone; - define the most valuable behavioral segments and use them as the basis for media planning; - reactivate inactive audiences through paid media; - after the initial contact, move customers from paid communication into the Smart Plaza owned ecosystem; - connect media contact with a physical visit, purchase and repeat visit. Our media KPIs therefore extended beyond digital. We needed to prove the full journey: Ad → Install → Registration → Visit → Purchase → Repeat Visit Success was not maximum impressions, reach or clicks. Success meant bringing a lost customer back to Dostyk Plaza and generating measurable behaviour after their return.
Solution
We built the media strategy around customer behaviour, not around a set of channels. Every element of the ecosystem had a specific role: some channels had to identify and bring back lost audiences, others had to continue the relationship, offline touchpoints had to create a physical reason to visit, while a unified data layer connected all of this to business results. 1. Big Data instead of broad targeting The first step was not buying media, but identifying the right audience. Using anonymized mobile location data, we analyzed: - visit frequency; - dwell time; - periods of inactivity; - visit history; - migration between Dostyk Plaza and competing malls. As a result, we identified 238,756 visitors who had not visited Dostyk Plaza for more than six months. We also segmented the audience into core and super-core groups based on the nature of their relationship with the mall. Instead of a broad socio-demographic target audience, we now had behavioral segments based on actual offline behaviour. Media planning no longer started with the question “Who can we reach?”, but with “Who do we actually need to bring back?” 2. Paid media received a specific role — reactivation Meta and TikTok were used not as standalone reach channels, but as the first stage of the customer journey. Their role was to bring the identified behavioral segments back into communication with Dostyk Plaza. This was fundamentally different from traditional acquisition logic. We were not trying to rebuild awareness among the broadest possible audience. We were addressing people who already had a history with Dostyk Plaza but had stopped visiting. Paid media therefore had a clear function: not to find just any potential visitor, but to reactivate a specific lost customer. 3. From paid contact to the brand’s owned ecosystem If every subsequent interaction with a returning customer still has to be purchased, the media model remains dependent on paid channels. That is why the role of paid media was not only to generate a response, but also to bring the customer into Smart Plaza’s own digital ecosystem. The Smart Plaza Super App became the center of this ecosystem. Users could: - earn bonuses; - exchange them for shoppertokens; - access personalized offers; - pay for parking; - discover events; - buy cinema tickets; - register for activities; - receive personalized push notifications. Once users entered the ecosystem, communication could continue through the Super App, CRM, email and push notifications. This changed the economics of the customer relationship: Paid media brought customers back into communication → Owned channels allowed the relationship to continue directly. Paid media did not have to do all the work on its own. Its role was to initiate the return, while other touchpoints continued the customer journey. 4. Offline experience became part of the media strategy For a shopping mall, communication itself is not the end product. You can persuade someone to open an app or notice an offer, but to actually bring them back, they need a reason to physically visit Dostyk Plaza. Offline activations therefore played a distinct strategic role — providing content for communication and creating real reasons to return. Throughout the year, these reasons included: - Family Day — a reason to visit with the whole family; - the ice rink and ice show — a seasonal experience; - concerts — emotional and entertainment-driven reasons to visit; - the Safe activation — a contest mechanic offering the chance to win a trip to Malaysia or KZT 500,000 for shopping; - New Year and seasonal activations — additional reasons to return throughout the year. Media and offline therefore did not exist separately. Digital identified the right person and delivered a relevant reason to return. Offline events gave that person a reason to actually visit. The owned ecosystem allowed the relationship to continue after the visit. 5. Every channel received a specific function Instead of giving every channel the same objective — “generate reach” — we assigned distinct roles: Big Data → identifies who to bring back Meta + TikTok → reactivate lost audiences Super App → turns the contact into a first-party relationship CRM + Email + Push → continue personalized communication Offline activations → create a physical reason to return AppsFlyer + Firebase + CRM → measure behavioral change This meant the channels no longer competed with each other for the last click. Each performed a specific function within one unified customer reactivation strategy. The core principle was: Paid finds and reactivates → Owned continues the relationship → Experience creates a reason to return → Data measures the result. 6. Optimize for real behaviour, not just clicks A key difference in the strategy was where measurement ended. For a shopping mall, a digital conversion alone does not prove marketing effectiveness. A click does not mean a visit. An app install does not mean a purchase. A registration does not mean loyalty. That is why AppsFlyer, Firebase and CRM were used to connect digital activation with subsequent customer behaviour. We tracked the journey: Ad → Install → Registration → Physical Visit → Purchase → Repeat Visit This allowed us to evaluate the media strategy not only through media delivery metrics, but through real changes in consumer behaviour and business results. Media did not simply have to bring people into digital. It had to bring them back to Dostyk Plaza.
Results
98,335 returning visitors → 49.4% reactivation → 72% repeat visits → 69% core retention → 3.9 visits per customer per month → 90% purchase conversion → KZT 23,000 average basket → +15–18% tenant sales growth → KZT 2.03B incremental turnover → ROMI 1:10 → ROI 1000%. Overall: 1.21M visits → 326,000 unique visitors → 51% above target → 40% above Shopping Index benchmarks. We stopped measuring media by how many people saw the advertising. We measured it by how many lost customers returned, purchased and came back again.
