Magalu

Objective

Open a sales channel where Brazilian customers already spend their time, WhatsApp, and have Lu, the brand's virtual influencer, carry the entire purchase journey there, to convert better than the app and the website.

The deployment

WhatsApp da Lu is a sales channel Magalu opened in November 2025, first for a group of 1 million active customers, then for all consumers before the end of 2025. The customer writes to Lu, the brand's virtual character, by text, voice message or by sending a photo. The assistant asks clarifying questions (style, budget, use), proposes a selection from the first-party (1P) catalog and from that of the roughly 300,000 marketplace sellers (3P), then takes payment within the conversation, by Pix or card, with no redirect. Order tracking and after-sales service go through the same thread. According to Bain's case study, the system orchestrates more than 20 AI agents that split product discovery, recommendation, search interpretation, customer service and the transaction, on an architecture that mixes proprietary and third-party models. Development is led by Luizalabs, Magalu's technology division, with Meta, Google Cloud and Bain & Company. On the WhatsApp side, Meta says Magalu relies on card carousels, WhatsApp Flows and payments in WhatsApp, and that marketing messages are the main entry point. In its second quarter 2026 release, Magalu makes the channel the core of its new strategic cycle: more than 18 million conversations since launch, conversion three times higher than standard app search, an NPS of 84, about 20% repurchase among customers who have already bought, and more than 100 million reais in cumulative sales reached in July 2026. The comparison base for the conversion figure varies by source: app search in the release, the app in the Bain study, existing sales channels in the press release relayed by the press. At group scale, the channel remains small: the same release reports 9.3 billion reais in e-commerce sales for the quarter alone, down 11.9% year on year. In 2026, Magalu added a Mother's Day operation (personalized AI-generated video from a voice message and a photo), a first TV campaign dedicated to the channel in June, and the system won a bronze Lion at Cannes 2026.

Results Proof A

The 3x conversion, NPS, repurchase of about 20%, 18 million conversations and 100 million reais in sales appear in the 2Q26 earnings release published by Magalu on its investor relations site; they are consistent with the Bain case study, the WhatsApp Business customer story and the press release relayed by Central do Varejo.

The internal detail is not public. Here is a proven approach that leads to the same result, to adapt to your stack.

1. 1
   Entry into the channel Marketing

   The customer arrives in the conversation, most often through a WhatsApp marketing message or a campaign promoting the channel.

2. 2
   Understanding the request AI

   Lu interprets a text, a voice message or a photo and asks clarifying questions about style, budget and use.

3. 3
   Selection and presentation AI

   The search and recommendation agents draw on the 1P and 3P catalog and display a selection in a carousel, with structured product pages.

4. 4
   Payment in the conversation Customer and payment platform

   The customer pays by Pix or card without leaving WhatsApp.

5. 5
   Tracking and after-sales AI, with the customer experience team

   Lu sends shipping updates and handles after-sales requests in the same thread.

6. 6
   Measurement Customer experience team and senior management

   Magalu tracks conversations, conversion, NPS, repurchase and cumulative sales, and reports them in its financial communication.