Case Study: Marketplace Increased Purchases by 1.5x with Mobile Push Notifications

Online is steadily replacing offline in all areas of life, and trading has become the flagship of these changes. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the process significantly. As a result, even the most conservative shoppers have started ordering online. During this period, the popularity of marketplaces skyrocketed. After all, consumers not only buy clothes and home appliances online but also order groceries and household products. A lot of these purchases are now made through mobile apps.

We'll reveal the secrets of implementing customer communication in a mobile app by the case of the large Azerbaijani marketplace Umico Market.

Project

Umico is a super app, or a complex application, that combines a marketplace, universal loyalty program and mobile bank. The audience of Umico is 1,500,000 users, while the total market size is estimated at 2,500,000 customers. The app has more than 5,000,000 sessions monthly. The company is guided by the mobile-first principle due to the specifics of the business, so mobile push notifications were chosen as the main communication channel.

Umico Market is the first mobile marketplace in Azerbaijan. There are tens of thousands of products in different categories: electronics, cosmetics, perfumes, household goods. The range is rapidly expanding, and the number of platform users is growing.

Customers can pay their order when confirming or receiving it. Purchases can be made on the site or through the mobile app. The application allows you to track order status and receive cashback on each purchase. Such shopping is convenient for buyers, and customers' comfort and benefit are the company's key values.

Benefits for users:

• A wide assortment, including almost all main categories of products, from household appliances to cosmetics and food. The marketplace product feed features over 150,000 products and is updated several times a day.
• Convenient delivery to customer's home or nearest pickup point.
• Credit.
• Installment plan.
• Price comparison.
• VAT refund, for which it is enough to scan QR code on the receipt.
• Ability to buy goods and services from other platforms (ticket aggregators, Ali Express).

Umico Bonus is a universal electronic bonus card using which customers can get cashback with Umico bonuses in different companies throughout the country. Among them are supermarket chains, restaurants, cafes, service centers, beauty salons, sports clubs, gas stations, and others.

With the Umico Bonus program, members can receive cashback both from partner companies and directly from manufacturers. Bonuses are awarded to users for online and offline purchases, even if they are made in a small convenience store.

In the Umico app, customers can track their purchase history, compare prices from different sellers, share bonuses with friends or family members, and add a bank card to their Masterpass digital wallet.

All that a user needs to receive a cashback is to register in the Umico system using a valid mobile phone number and then present a bonus card when purchasing in Umico partner stores.

Umico Bank is a mobile bank where you can apply for a co-branded BirKart Umico bank card and receive up to 1.5% cashback when making payments.

With a loyalty card, users can spend the accrued bonuses in partner stores. Even if the buyer purchases without using bonuses and pays for the order with a BirKart, Umico still identifies this client.

With such a complex and multi-level structure of Umico, one cannot do without a CDP to combine user data from different sources, not only online but also offline, and create a single customer profile. The company opted for the our omnichannel CDP.

The main tasks of us as an omnichannel customer data platform:

• collect user data (website, mobile application, loyalty program, CRM system, etc.);
• unify them within one profile;
• form segments using tracking and advanced segmentation;
• provide communication in different channels (today company uses mobile pushes, emails, app inbox notifications, and widgets).

An example of an app inbox message in the personal account of the Umico application:

The Umico brand has ambitious goals for 2022:

• Synchronizing offline and online sales;
• Collecting data on all user activities across the marketplace, loyalty program and banking application in a single profile;
  

• Increasing sales, optimizing ROI by maintaining the desired DAU/MAU ratio of at least 20%.

The our team helps Umico achieve these goals.

Tasks

• Increase retention rate.
• Automate user communication to bring them to the app efficiently.

Solution

When working on the Umico project, the first thing we did was enable user communication in the mobile app through the mobile push channel. Mobile push notifications can be used for both promotional and triggered campaigns.

The important step was to set up Multilanguage since it is vital for the company to speak the same language with customers. In the case of Umico Market, these are Azerbaijani, English and Russian.

The system sets the languageCode parameter in the user profile depending on the selected language in the app interface. For Umico Market, this variable can take the values az, en and ​​ru.

Read how Multilanguage helps save +20 hours a month>>

Multilanguage is available to all users of the our system in the Professional and Enterprise pricing plans.

To automate the sending of triggered messages, we've enabled web tracking and advanced segmentation to receive data on customer activity in the app.

Based on the events sent by web tracking, we set up seven triggered campaigns, detailed below.

Abandoned Carts

If a user left the product in the cart and didn't place an order, an abandoned cart mobile push will be sent to them in an hour.

Message text: Don't delay the purchase! ? Place your order while stocks last!
Campaign workflow:

Abandoned Browses

If a user viewed products in the app but didn't add anything to the cart and left, they will receive an abandoned browse mobile push in an hour. Campaign workflow:

Price Drop for Products in Cart 

If a user has items in the cart and the item they are interested in drops in price, they will be sent a mobile push.

Message text: The price of the item in your cart has been reduced. ?Old price: X, new price: Y. Hurry up to buy!
Campaign workflow:

Price drop for Viewed Products 

If a user viewed products but didn't buy and the item they are interested in drops in price, they will receive a mobile push.

Message text: The price just dropped for the item you're interested iny!
Campaign workflow:

Back-in-stock Products

If a user left the product in the cart and it is out of stock, they will be sent a mobile push when the product is back in stock.

Message text: ? The item you’re interested in is back in stock! Get it while it's available.
Campaign workflow:

Complementary Products

The next day after receiving the order, we send a mobile push with the items most often bought with the purchased product.

Message text: ? An addition to your purchase. We offer a product that will perfectly complement your last purchase.

Suppose we couldn't find recommendations for the most expensive item in the order. In that case, the system picks one high-priced product as a recommendation for the next most expensive item in the order.
Campaign workflow:

Above campaigns are configured to send a message at a specific time so that users receive a notification at a convenient time. After that, contacts are added to the Do not send group and excluded from the segment for promotional campaigns. After 9 hours, these contacts are deleted from the group and can receive other mobile pushes. Such settings help avoid bombarding app users with unnecessary messages and send them only what they are more likely to respond to.

Reactivation

We launch a reactivation campaign for users who haven't viewed product offers for a month. The product to be recommended is selected according to the browsing history. Below is an example of this mobile push in the our editor.

Campaign workflow:

After receiving a contact event, the system checks the value of the languageCode variable and, depending on it, sends a mobile push to the recipient in the corresponding language.

Results

Triggered mobile push notifications allowed Umico to optimize remarketing costs and promptly bring users back to the app. 

Automated mobile push campaigns have proven to be effective for solving retention-related tasks. In particular, users who receive triggered mobile pushes make purchases 1.5 times more often. The app experienced 20% fewer abandoned carts after enabling triggered messages in this channel. User engagement has grown; they began to access Umico through the app more often, and the interaction with the company's services has become better.

The company’s marketers also noted other performance indicators of triggered mobile pushes:

• Open rate is 5 times than mobile push promos.

• Conversion is 2 times higher.

Conclusions

As practice shows, mobile push notifications are an effective re-engagement tool.

They are indispensable for keeping a company connected with users in a mobile app. By setting up triggered campaigns, you can ensure continuous customer communication and keep them engaged, which will positively impact loyalty and sales.