Profitable Market Penetration for Zielinski & Rozen

The brand

Zielinski & Rozen is a niche perfume brand whose roots date back to 1905. The brand strives for an authentic connection with consumers through both physical experiences and a strong online presence, centered around unique fragrance compositions.

Objective

In an ambitious international growth strategy, the temptation to serve all markets simultaneously is high. It feels counter-intuitive to turn off countries, but for Zielinski & Rozen, spreading resources across 14+ countries actually hindered incremental growth. By distributing investments across too wide a geographical area, the brand’s impact remained fragmented, which stood in the way of building true market authority in any single region.

The original goal was straightforward: achieve significant revenue growth for the European webstore within the existing budget. CroudX immediately recognized that simply increasing spend on the current path wouldn’t scale. Our vision? Revenue goals aren’t met by being present in more countries, but by growing faster in the markets that truly matter. We replaced a broad footprint with deep market penetration as the strategic foundation for growth.

Replacing a broad international presence with a high-impact strategy in core European markets.

What we did

Before pivoting, we analyzed exactly where the budget was leaking. We mapped the true impact of campaigns that had been diluted across too many different territories. To stop the inefficiency and force revenue growth, we took the following strategic steps:

• From Broad to Deep
  We moved away from a “spray and pray” approach in 14+ countries, shifting to a penetration strategy focused on three core markets: the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.
• Plugging the Budget Leak 
  By withdrawing budget from fragmented, underperforming markets, we created the room to build real impact in core territories.
• Channel Synergy
  100% of the budget was reallocated, with Google (74%) acting as the driver for direct sales and Meta (26%) providing the necessary visibility in focus regions.
• Weekly Performance Cycle
  We established a rigorous process to adjust weekly based on the balance between revenue growth and marketing efficiency.

Impact

The decision to serve fewer markets better led directly to much stronger market penetration. By segmenting our efforts, we reached more new customers than ever before. In the first peak month, new customer growth rose by 18% (YoY), while the focus on core markets also strengthened loyalty, resulting in 72% growth in returning customers.

Throughout the quarter, 60% of the database consisted of new customers. This proves that segmentation doesn’t limit reach; it creates a more powerful presence with the right audience. By shifting the focus to market penetration, traffic, purchases, and ROAS all rose consistently. We are now simply getting more out of every euro by working with greater precision.