How Converse Australia activates 70% of its onsite traffic

About

A global icon, run by a local licensee

Conquest Sports Pty Ltd is the official Australian licensee of Converse, one of the most recognisable footwear brands in the world. From its base in Melbourne, Conquest Sports operates converse.com.au — the Australian e-commerce home for Chuck Taylor All Stars, the wider Converse range, and a steady stream of limited-edition collaborations and signature releases — alongside its retail and wholesale operations across the Australian market.

Like many local licensees of global brands, Conquest sits in a unique position: representing a global brand and executing its campaigns and seasonal collections at a local level. This extends to the management of its local DTC website, ensuring acquisition and conversion targets are constantly achieved.

The Challenge

Maximising every Australian visitor under a global brand

Like all retailers, Converse Australia operates in a highly competitive and cluttered environment: high paid-acquisition costs, a calendar dominated by major sale events, and a customer base that increasingly browses on mobile. Every visitor who arrives without converting is a wasted acquisition dollar.

Layered on top of that, the brand runs a constant stream of limited-edition releases — signature drops, designer collaborations, restocks — each generating a spike of high-intent traffic that needs to be captured fast. The opportunity was clear: a dedicated onsite layer that the local team could operate independently, iterate on quickly, and deploy across both ongoing capture and time-sensitive moments.

The Approach

One onsite layer, three roles

Since going live in early 2022, Converse Australia has built one of the most systematic onsite programs in the Wisepops customer base. Three things define how they operate it.

1. Always-on email and SMS capture

A multi-step welcome popup runs continuously across the site, forming the foundation of the program. The welcome popup has been A/B tested repeatedly since launch, with the compounding effect of those tests reflected in the program's sign-up rate over time.

2. Drop marketing for limited editions

Converse runs a constant stream of limited-edition releases, and each drop brings a spike of high-intent traffic — often arriving at pages where the product is already sold out or not yet live. The team deploys campaigns around these moments to capture both email and SMS, so the retention team can notify subscribers at restock or next launch.

Two recent examples: the Charli XCX collaboration and the Bluey x Converse collection, both of which generated strong demand spikes. Drop campaigns consistently outperform always-on capture by more than 2x on sign-up rate, reflecting the intent of the audience they catch.

3. Seasonal and promotional moments

Beyond always-on and drop marketing, the same onsite layer covers the Australian retail calendar — Black Friday, Boxing Day, EOFY, and other key sale moments each get their own campaign set. The infrastructure also handles operational messages like dispatch delay banners during peak periods, managing the customer relationship at moments that matter without engineering involvement.

Results