Client: Tanmaya Silks, a premium handloom Kanjivaram saree brand
The challenge
Tanmaya Silks sells one-of-a-kind silk sarees, and most of its sales close in conversation. Buyers ask about a weave, a border, or a delivery date, and the order is then confirmed over WhatsApp. Standard Meta reporting missed most of this. The Pixel only sees website purchases, so a sale that starts as a WhatsApp chat looks like it never happened.
The brand’s early paid spend was also spread across broad awareness with no funnel behind it. The largest campaign on the account, a broad sales campaign with about ₹69,000 in spend, returned a 0.64x ROAS on Meta’s own purchase data.
What we built
We split the account into a structured funnel:
- Top of funnel: interest-based prospecting for Kanjivaram buyers, in India and the US diaspora, built around festival moments and collection launches.
- Middle of funnel: warm retargeting for people who had already engaged with the brand’s posts and videos.
- Bottom of funnel: cart-abandoner and WhatsApp retargeting, aimed at people ready to ask a question or place an order.
Every campaign pointed to a conversation, not just a click. Festival-specific creative, including the Navratri and Varalakshmi Vratham edits, ran against the same interest audiences.
The results
| Campaign | Spend (₹) | Result | Cost per result (₹) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Varalakshmi Vratham, prospecting (WhatsApp) | 7,074 | 752 conversations | 9.41 |
| Navratri edit, prospecting (WhatsApp) | 9,411 | 514 conversations | 18.31 |
| Ganga Jamuna, prospecting (WhatsApp) | 9,500 | 541 conversations | 17.56 |
| Malligai Collection, TOFU (July) | 4,417 | 424 conversations | 10.42 |
| WhatsApp retargeting | 17,617 | 644 conversations | 27.36 |
| Kanjivaram India, TOFU (July) | 720 | 1 purchase (Meta-tracked ROAS 37x) | 719.97 |
Across the strongest prospecting campaigns, a conversation cost between ₹9 and ₹18. The Varalakshmi Vratham prospecting ad reported a ROAS of 7.5x, and the Navratri edit reported 8.2x. Both figures count only tracked purchases, so WhatsApp orders are not included.
What we learned
- Measure the conversation, not just the click. A link click costs about ₹0.18 but has little buying intent. A WhatsApp conversation costs more, and it is the step where buyers ask questions and close.
- Festival creative works when it’s specific. The Navratri and Vratham edits outperformed generic brand content with the same audiences.
- Retargeting needs a frequency limit. The WhatsApp retargeting campaign reached an average frequency of 6.6, so it gets expensive once people have seen the ads too often. Rotating creative and limiting frequency is the next step.
- Reconcile ads data with orders. Pixel data alone understates sales for a WhatsApp-led business. Ads Manager has to be checked against Shopify order data.
Next steps
Keep the WhatsApp prospecting structure running into Diwali, refresh retargeting creative to reduce frequency, and extend the funnel to US buyers, who take 15–20 days for delivery.
