In March 2025, Dostyk Plaza faced significant customer churn. The number of unique visitors declined by approximately 35%, while new visitors were down 38%. The obvious response would have been to increase media pressure and attract more new audiences. But Almaty’s premium retail market had a natural limitation. The potential premium audience represented only around 11% of the city’s population, while audience overlap between major shopping malls reached 60–75%. In practice, Dostyk Plaza and its competitors were competing for the attention of largely the same people. Before investing in another acquisition campaign, we decided to understand what had happened to the customers Dostyk Plaza had already lost. Analysis of actual visitor behaviour based on anonymized mobile location data revealed the key insight: They had not stopped visiting shopping malls. They had stopped choosing Dostyk Plaza. Many former visitors continued to visit competing malls. This meant the challenge was not only about how to reconnect with a lost customer. We needed to connect that contact with the next action: give the customer a relevant reason to return, bring them back to Dostyk Plaza, convert the visit into a purchase, and then continue the relationship in a way that encouraged another visit. One media channel alone could not achieve this. We needed a unified ecosystem in which paid media, owned channels, the mobile app, CRM and offline activations worked not in parallel, but sequentially around one customer journey.
Problem
We needed to bring back customers who had not visited Dostyk Plaza for more than six months and turn separate communications into a unified customer reactivation system. The main challenge was not a lack of available channels. On the contrary, we had digital media, CRM, email, push notifications, the Super App and multiple physical activations. The real challenge was different: how could we make all these touchpoints work as one system rather than as a collection of separate campaigns? We set five objectives for the integrated campaign: - identify lost visitors based on their actual behaviour; - reactivate them through paid media; - move the initial paid contact into the Smart Plaza owned ecosystem; - use digital and offline touchpoints to create a continuous sequence of reasons to return; - connect every stage to measurable behaviour — from advertising contact to purchase and repeat visit. We therefore did not define integration as simply having the brand present across multiple channels. True integration had to happen within the customer journey: each channel had to continue the work of the previous one. Results were measured across the entire journey: Ad → Install → Registration → Physical Visit → Purchase → Repeat Visit
Solution
We built SMART PLAZA as a unified customer reactivation system, where each channel had its own role, but all of them worked toward one common outcome. The core principle was simple: do not integrate channels around the media plan — integrate them around the customer. 1. Big Data connected online communication with real offline behaviour The first layer of integration was data. We used anonymized mobile location data to analyze actual visitor behaviour: - visit frequency; - dwell time; - periods of inactivity; - visit history; - migration between Dostyk Plaza and competing malls. This allowed us to identify 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. This fundamentally changed the starting point of the campaign. Digital communication no longer began with an abstract socio-demographic audience, but with the actual offline behaviour of specific segments. The first bridge of integration was therefore built between: Offline Behaviour → Data → Online Audience 2. Paid media brought lost audiences back into communication Meta and TikTok became the first scalable communication layer of the campaign. But they did not operate as standalone performance or reach campaigns. Their role was to reactivate audiences identified through behavioral data and bring them back into interaction with Dostyk Plaza. This was an essential part of the integrated approach: data determined who needed to be brought back, while paid media provided the first scalable contact. We were not trying to explain Dostyk Plaza to people all over again. They already knew the mall. Communication had to give them a new, relevant reason to engage with the brand again. 3. The Super App connected media with the brand’s owned ecosystem A paid contact was not supposed to become the final point of the customer journey. After the first interaction, the task was to move the customer into Smart Plaza’s own digital ecosystem. The Smart Plaza Super App became the center of that ecosystem. Within a single interface, users could: - earn bonuses from purchases; - exchange them for shoppertokens; - receive personalized offers; - pay for parking; - discover events; - buy cinema tickets; - register for activities; - receive personalized push notifications. The Super App therefore performed several functions at once. It was a loyalty tool, a service channel, an information platform and an owned point of communication with the customer. Most importantly, it connected separate advertising contacts into an ongoing relationship. Paid Contact → Super App → Direct Customer Relationship 4. CRM, email and push continued communication between visits Integration did not end after an app install or registration. Once the customer entered the Smart Plaza ecosystem, communication could continue through CRM, email and personalized push notifications. This meant the relationship did not have to restart from zero with every new campaign. Paid media initiated the return to communication. The Super App created an owned point of contact. CRM, email and push maintained personalized communication between visits. As a result, the customer journey became continuous: one channel created the contact, the next developed it, and subsequent touchpoints sustained the relationship. 5. Offline activations turned communication into a real reason to visit Even a perfectly integrated digital ecosystem cannot by itself generate a physical visit to a shopping mall. To return to Dostyk Plaza, people needed a real reason to come. That is why offline activations were not treated as a separate event stream, but as part of the overall communication system. Throughout the year, different activities created different reasons to return: - 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. Online and offline therefore stopped existing as separate communication worlds. Digital communicated a relevant reason → Offline turned that reason into a physical experience → The brand’s owned ecosystem allowed the relationship to continue after the visit. The objective was not to make every person participate in every activation. The objective was to ensure that the ecosystem always contained the next relevant reason to return. 6. Channels worked sequentially, not in parallel The key difference in the campaign was not the number of channels used. It was the way their roles were distributed. We built one integrated architecture: Big Data → identifies who needs to be brought back ↓ Meta + TikTok → reactivate lost audiences ↓ Smart Plaza Super App → moves the contact into the brand’s own digital ecosystem ↓ CRM + Email + Push → continue personalized communication ↓ Offline Activations → create real reasons to visit ↓ AppsFlyer + Firebase + CRM → measure behavioral change Each element continued the work of the previous one. That is why integration was not simply about being present across multiple channels. It was one unified customer journey across different communication channels. 7. One measurement system connected media and business results The final level of integration was measurement. In a traditional digital campaign, the customer journey often ends with a click, a lead, an app install or registration. For Dostyk Plaza, that was not enough. A click does not mean a visit. An 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 campaign not only through media delivery metrics, but through real changes in consumer behaviour and business results. Integration therefore happened not only at the channel level. We integrated data, communication, physical experience and measurement around one customer.
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.
