It’s no secret that the more you know about your customers, the more income you can earn. Nowadays, even individual entrepreneurs, such as craft stores or small beauty salons, use CRM systems to manage lists of their clients. Marketers have figured out that learning more about your customers allows you to make offers for extra purchases later. As a result, your profit increases. So building good relationships with your clients is essential from the beginning if you want to keep them long-term. As companies grow, CRM systems also become more and more complex to provide extra tools for better customer research. 

But what if even an advanced CRM system proves insufficient for the settled goals at some stage? In what cases might this happen? And which tool might come to the rescue?

We at UniOne have decided to figure out this practically based on the experience of our valuable customer – Allo.   

Why has the existing CRM been changed

Allo is a group of companies with Ukrainian roots, founded in 1998 as a retail chain. Today it is one of the largest marketplaces in Ukraine, with more than 15 years of experience in e-commerce, selling millions of goods annually. Up to 10 million users visit the allo.ua website monthly. Finding the best way of communicating with them and making correct decisions on customized proposals seems to be quite challenging.

In the middle of 2021, UniOne’s and Allo’s crossed paths when we were honored to deliver marketing emails to their audience (with Allo already being integrated with Bloomreach, a Customer Data & Experience Platform). After becoming a CDP Institute Partner this year we’ve decided to share this story with you.

Before we met, the e-commerce platform’s users were handled by Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. The steady growth in the number of visitors raised the need for a new function called “cascade communications”.

Allo wanted to set points of contact with their customers, which would allow them to use the cheapest communication channel first. If the recipient did not react, there should be an opportunity to engage more expensive ones. It is a great way to save money by diversifying marketing channels.

Direct messages in messengers and SMS may be up to 200 times more costly than emails (while also being less informative). So the possibility of eliminating the need to send messages to just 20% of clients who have already interacted with the company’s letters or app would save thousands of dollars annually. That was a necessary point that Microsoft Dynamics (or, at least, the partner who provided support for this CRM) could not provide at that moment due to the massive amount of existing data.

Pros: enjoy and evolve

Honestly, we weren’t fully engaged in the migration process, but we know that it was a bit exhausting for the customer. The collaboration between UniOne and Allo began in November 2020, and in March 2021 we successfully delivered the first 10 million letters to Allo subscribers through the Exponea CDP.

Initial setup and integration was less than flawless, requiring editing the “Unsubscribe” link, fixing mismatches in the statistical data, and temporary server overloads. Most of the issues were successfully resolved to date. The entire improvement process requires continuous involvement. So together with Bloomreach, we continue cooperating on finding the best solutions for all new requirements.

However, today we assume that the actual advantages the customer gained were well worth the troubles. And here are some reasons why this CDP might be a good choice for an e-commerce business, as stated by customers:

• It provides “smart” predictive analytics, builds models depending on users’ interactions, and forecasts their future behavior.

• It gives you all the varieties of trigger communications that lead your potential buyers to the actual purchase:

• abandoned view;
  • abandoned cart;
  • price changes of the goods in “favorites”;
  • a reminder of “burning off” bonuses due to the loyalty program;
  • reminder to rebuy some goods (the one Allo is going to implement);
  • dynamic (pop-up) banners with the recommended goods based on the users’ behavior (the one Allo is going to implement as well).

• More personalized and targeted contacts with customers reduce excessive communication points.
  “Before the implementation, the user could get several communications per day via different email campaigns, plus a promo in messenger and SMS on top of that. Now the communication map is built more efficiently and productively,” specified Oleksandr Bardakov, the Head of the Allo CRM Department.

• Real-time display of the audiences
  “Using Microsoft Dynamics, it could take from 30 to 60 minutes to build a cohort and the same time to recalculate the data,” noticed Oleksandr.

• The user-friendly interface makes interaction with the platform efficient, straightforward, and easy.

• Reliable email transport by UniOne ensures that all the letters will reach their destinations.

Cons: be ready for them

Well, nobody is perfect, right?

Technical progress never stops, and marketers give you better and better proposals each time.

Being asked, “What do you see more of in Bloomreach?” the Head of the Allo CRM Department mentioned the following:

• More “overview” dashboards for analytics.
  “Bloomreach offers a wide range of tools to see your delivery/open/click rates and other data online (and that’s great). But we’ve encountered some challenges when trying to get a big-picture overview, where we end up building more individual dashboards for each scenario and channel. We’re currently trying to figure out the best way to put them all together to help us make overall decisions about marketing efficiency. If we don’t deal with it, Bloomreach representatives have shown their readiness to help according to our technical task.”

• Speed limits for emails without robust prioritization.
  “We were going to connect our transactional emails to Bloomreach in the second stage of our integration. The challenge is that all the emails go to one single queue. So, if you have a sizable marketing campaign, it may take up to 30 minutes for all emails to be delivered. We’re hoping to speed this up for our customers who’ve just made an order and are waiting for confirmation.”

Benefits: calculate and rejoice

The most practical readers may still wonder: “What about the measurable achievements?” 

Nobody likes their money to be counted, but we’ve asked ALLO for some proof in figures to show. So, here’s what they’ve kindly shared with us:

By the end of 2021 (6 months after complex integration was complete), they’ve gained the following results:

• The total rise of purchase conversion rate by 38%
• The CTR increase by 20%
• Dramatic decrease of negative feedback from the subscribers, thanks to more efficient use of the channels.

“Today (August 2022), all the parameters have significantly decreased due to the war in Ukraine. The exception stands only for the CTR in the email channel, which, surprisingly, is even higher than before the invasion,” states Oleksandr Bardakov.   

Let’s summarize

As your business grows, you might be wondering what marketing platform will better fit your goals. Hopefully, from this article, you can see the practical benefits of using Bloomreach as a possible upgrade option. So, as your business evolves, consider this platform for your marketing needs and UniOne for sending emails.

Take care, and let there be peace!