When Flipkart wanted to find out if its customers would pay a premium price to have the courier delivered in one working day, instead of in two to three days, using the help of a marketer’s tool, it developed a quick survey and posted it as a pop-up, to get customer feedback about the idea. The result? One in every 100 visitors responded on the survey, that is, it received a 40 per cent response rate and even implemented the service soon enough.
While this is just one example, there are several such companies that are working on some really innovative strategies to help brands build the right tools to reach the right customer, understand what they want, and get the best return on investments. In this story, we share the business model and case studies of three such companies.
REDUCE DATA
Reduce Data was founded as a platform to deliver efficiency in advertising. It developed a programmatic advertising platform (also known as a Demand Side Platform), which uses Real-Time Bidding (RTB), to buy each ad impression and uses algorithmic optimisation, to deliver insights that help advertisers cut down on ad spends and improve ROI.
FOUNDERS
Asif Ali, Vagmi Mudumbai and Darryl Jose
Elements disrupting this space
Advertising automation, a self service interface to help advertisers automate campaign performance monitoring workflow
Algorithmic optimisation, or in other words, programmatic advertising.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Reduce Data is a real-time, data optimised advertising platform that drives results and improves advertising efficiency using algorithmic buying, advertising automation and big data technologies.
The company offers five services; One, behavioural targeting, which is the ability to target users (online) based on specific audience behaviour. Two, retargeting, which is, the ability to follow the user and display a targeted ad, based on a user’s specific action. Three, real-time analytics, which acts as a real-time key performance indicator for a campaign. Four, agency white label, which helps advertisers launch a custom ad platform, to manage their branches, campaigns and accounts, under a single account, in real-time. And lastly, advertising automation, a tool to help advertisers automate manual campaign management workflows.
REVENUE MODEL
It generates revenues by selling media space to advertisers, using a metric called Cost per Mille i.e. a thousand impressions.
CASE STUDY
OBJECTIVE
Between mid-November and December 2013, Rackspace, the hybrid cloud and IT hosting company wanted to promote its cloud services in India and other key markets. The objective of Reduce Data was to drive clicks and enquiries from the right target audience, which is, the technologists and startup entrepreneurs.
IMPLEMENTATION BY REDUCE DATA
Placed ads on relevant websites
Adopted multiple machine-learning algorithms to drive higher click-though rates (CRT)
RESULTS
Generated 10 million impressions, 12, 000 clicks and three times greater return businesses in the first quarter.
WEBENGAGE
WebEngage collects customer insights in real-time, through feedback, survey and notifications, and helps online businesses design push messages, targeted at specific customer segments.
FOUNDERS
Avlesh Singh, Ankit Utreja
Elements disrupting this space
Zero development/IT team involvement in running on-site marketing campaigns: Earlier, since marketing teams couldn’t run experiments on the website, on-site communication was seen as a development team’s prerogative. But now, companies are giving the product and marketing teams the ability to enable on-site communication with their customers, from a remote dashboard, without having to go to their development team.
Creation of a new space called on-site marketing: Online marketing has largely been about getting people on to the site and marketing teams have had very little control on what a customer does once he/she lands on the site. To tackle this, companies are adopting a new set of rules, components and analytics which will define what we think of as, the “customer engagement score”.
Earlier, large companies that have taken care of on-site engagement have had the luxury of either spending tonnes of money on a turnkey solution or have had a big in-house development team to work it. In a move to democratise this (for the good!), we have developed a real-time toolkit and our customer support has a human face to it.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Unlike most marketing and advertising startups, WebEngage enables a company to drive better results, than being involved in the process. Here’s how.
As a first step, the company has to add WebEngage to its website, by signing up, specifying website details, and adding the integration code to the website (which will be given once the site details are specified). Following this, the company offers three products that can be used in as a DIY;
WebEngage Survey: Choose from a range of survey templates, questions and styling themes and create your own survey form. Collect responses from your website visitors or via a URL embedded in an email or tweet. Generate real-time statistics for each survey.
WebEngage Feedback: Create a customised feedback form with required fields and templates. Receive feedback on the company’s mailbox and WebEngage feedback inbox. Gather automatically captured data like city, browser and URL (this saves resolution time). Respond via mail or dashboard.
WebEngage Notification: Use WebEngage’s editor to create a notification. Use WebEngage’s targeting tools to choose visitor segments to drive SEO traffic towards conversion goal, monetise SEM traffic by offering discounts, guide new visitors and push system alerts in real-time, on your website. Secure an in-depth report of clicks, statistics on city, country, browser and platform.
REVENUE MODEL
It operates on a subscription based model, where, companies pay under each plan they choose. It charges US $29 for a basic, US $99 for a standard and US $249 for a premium subscription. The price for an enterprise model is undisclosed.
CASE STUDY
OBJECTIVE
Yatra.com, the online travel company, wanted to identify a compelling way to convey its hottest deals to its customers, and cross-sell its inventory to fliers who didn’t opt for the flight+hotel option.
IMPLEMENTATION THROUGH WEBENGAGE
Using its Notification tool, Yatra added pre-defined placeholders while creating a push message in the dashboard, and replaced it with real values while submitting it on the site.
RESULTS
It delivered a click-through-rate (CTR) of 6 per cent, which means, of every 100 users who tried to book a flight on Yatra, six visitors ended up clicking the notifications, and 5 per cent chose to upgrade to the flight +hotel combo deal.
SQUEAKEE
Squeakee helps brick-and-mortar merchants drive traction on their promotional offers, by registering them on its website, Offerson.com, which in turn helps users identify relevant offers within their locality.
FOUNDER
Abrar Shaik
Elements disrupting this space
90 per cent of the market is unorganised, and not online
A reasonably well-performing mid-sized local merchant can compete online with bigger players, if given the right support in terms of traction and visibility
BEHIND THE SCENES
On one hand, the company helps a brick-and-mortar merchant create a presence in its L-commerce website, Offerson.com, activates it across desktop, mobile and native platforms, and helps the merchant drive traction (for its offers) through social media, search engine optimisation, and SMS, to name a few. On the other, it helps users discover relevant promotional offers, and discounts in their locality. As of today, the company has over 10, 000 offline partners
REVENUE MODEL
Instead of charging a merchant for registering on its website, it charges them a subscription fee on a monthly basis.
CASE STUDY
OBJECTIVE
Help Big Boss Men’s club, a merchant who had no prior online presence, develop an online presence and drive traction for its offers
IMPLEMENTATION USING SQUEAKEE
Signed up the merchant on the website and allowed self-serve access
Published the merchant’s promotional offers on desktop, mobile and other native platforms
RESULTS
In a week, the merchant generated 43 hold requests and 500 page views.
