With over 600 million internet users, India is currently the second-largest internet market in the world. Despite this, many of the country’s rural citizens remain offline. While internet penetration and digitization have revolutionized the way big businesses operate, small businesses are moving more slowly. Creating awareness about the advantages of digitization and user-friendly services are essential steps for accelerating this change.
Launched in 2018, BharatPe solves this problem for merchants by enabling them to accept payments from their customers through a QR code, using any of the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) apps available in India. In addition to payments, their product portfolio includes other financial products like gold, loans, bookkeeping, and insurance services.
A major challenge facing the company is users who drop off while navigating products like loans or bill payments within the app. Merchants were dropping off during various stages of the user journey like the KYC (Know Your Customer) stage, either due to lengthy navigation or network issues that are common in India.
The marketing and branding team communicates with users with Out of Home (OOH) billboards, pamphlets, marketing collateral (such as danglers, posters, and merchant onboarding kits), or through the app. Within the app, they use in-app and push notifications in addition to banners to educate and communicate with users. They needed a marketing automation partner that could create a seamless experience across all their channels, physical and digital alike.
BharatPe previously relied on “spray-and-pray” campaigns that used generic messaging without any sort of personalization or user segmentation. The team understood that a more effective user engagement strategy required a better understanding of their customer in order to create relevant campaigns. They also needed a robust way to measure the impact of variables like content, timing, and imagery.
With over six million active users, the company needed a complete engagement toolkit to anticipate user needs, segment users, and engage them with contextual and personalized messages. By partnering with CleverTap, they’re able to connect with users in much more meaningful ways to drive retention and growth.
Onboarding happens in 2 ways: either the user installs the app after learning about it through advertisements, referrals, or the sales team, which onboards merchants in markets. Those merchants who install the app without any sales assistance are called do-it-yourself (DIY) merchants.
For a DIY merchant, the onboarding journey begins the moment the user shares their mobile number. They’re guided through the onboarding process with automated notifications. If the user hasn’t completed the onboarding process within a set period of time, they receive messages urging them toward completion while reminding them of the app’s benefits.
With CleverTap, they created personalized journeys. When a merchant drops out of a user flow after a specified timeframe, they automatically receive a push notification, in-app, or SMS message that takes them to their last-visited page. Or, if a merchant installs the app but doesn’t order a QR code sticker, they receive a notification within two working days saying the free QR code sticker is waiting for them.
The team also designed a journey for users who dropped off from the mandatory KYC process and can’t access certain features or benefits of the app. In this case, a notification is sent to remind these users of what they’re missing.
The team uses funnels to understand which journeys, campaigns, and segments are performing best and which need to be further optimized.
Using CleverTap’s sophisticated segmentation engine, the team creates segments based on multiple parameters like geographic distribution, past behavior, intent, or language. For example, if they want to send a message in Marathi, a regional language in India, they segment their merchants based on geographical location and past behavior.
Furthermore, if they need to engage top-transacting merchants who were active within the last 30 to 150 days, they’re easily able to create relevant behavioral segments.
WhatsApp is hugely popular in India, with over 340 million active users*. WhatsApp messages have high readability, making them one of the most preferred channels of engagement for BharatPe. With COVID-19 and the increased shift towards contactless payments, they leveraged WhatsApp campaigns to connect with users in a friendly, interactive manner.
Do push notifications have better click-through-rates (CTR) with images or without? Do personalized messages convert users better than generic ones? What is the best time to send a message?
BharatPe answers these questions by using control groups that shield a percentage of their audience from variables in their campaigns. Comparing the control group with the general audience helps them analyze campaign effectiveness, then iterate to improve results.
From executing campaigns on a seasonal basis to scheduling 20 campaigns a day, BharatPe has scaled its engagement massively with CleverTap. Gone are the days of blasting notifications to their entire user base of six million merchants. Now, they easily segment users to create more personalized and impactful messages. Incorporating analytics, segmentation, and funnels has helped them double CTRs for their push notifications.
Huzefa Bohra Manager-Brand and Marketing Huzefa Bohra Manager-Brand and Marketing Considering the requirements of the market, BharatPe is extending its product portfolio to cater to the needs of distributors and wholesalers. Currently, they are also working towards building products like ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ for the end consumers. We are proud to partner with BharatPe and be a part of their growth story.
