myBillbook is an all-in-one billing, inventory and accounting platform that helps Indian SMB owners to increase their business efficiency and profit margins. Founded in 2019, myBillbook’s app, web and offline desktop platform is now used by 1 crore businesses. Their intuitive and easy interface helps businesses to simplify workflows from everyday activities like billing and reconciliation to complex ones like preparing and filing GST reports.
As a popular product, myBillBook sees many downloads for free trials. There are primarily two segments of users: Self-serve users explore the platform, discover the product value and go on to purchase plans independently. The other segment of users, termed ‘hand raisers’, reach out to myBillbook’s Inside Sales team to understand the product’s full value.
When Snehal Samant, VP Growth, came on board in 2023, he and the myBillbook team identified the business potential in increasing the number of ‘hand raisers’. This user segment is recognised as having high-intent within the larger SaaS space, and the team observed that these users have high Conversion Rate and Average Revenue per User. To achieve the objective of driving higher numbers, the team needed a powerful, all-in-one platform which could reach the right user at the right moment through the right channel and could enable powerful experimentation and analysis.
myBillbook Leverages CleverTap to Fulfill its Vision to ReInvent Customer Engagement
myBillBook is a versatile product that does much more than invoicing. It helps SMB owners manage inventory, analyze performance, send reminders and collect payments, and build relationships with customizable business cards and greetings. As a tech-savvy company that has built a market-leading digital product, it had similar expectations of its CRM platform. It wanted a solution that would help it understand customer behaviour, anticipate journeys, and craft highly customized campaigns and messaging that connected and delivered value.
CleverTap met this criteria. Samant and the team decided to leverage the platform’s diverse features to reinvent customer engagement at myBillbook and drive up Inside Sales revenue efficiently.
We wanted a platform that would help us completely overhaul our lifecycle messaging. Our immediate goal was to engage people who would benefit from assistance but were reluctant or just did not know how to reach out to us. We wanted to spark relevant conversations at the right time.”
Snehal Samant,
VP Growth, myBillbook
Micro Moments: The New Cornerstone of the myBillbook Growth Strategy
To replace the earlier traditional drip campaigns, which were not delivering the desired results, the myBillbook team formulated a new strategy.
The first objective was to find a better way to identify users who could become hand raisers from among the free trial users. The team decided to use the concept of ‘Micro moments’ – an innovative framework utilized by leading consumer companies.
Micro moments are key user interactions dotted throughout the customer’s buyer journey, such as when users start the free trial or when they finish a certain product activity like saving three invoices. The myBillbook team identified several micro moments from analyzing sales data and interviewing sales agents, as well as analyzing correlations between user activity events and self-serve plan purchases.
Driving Growth with Tailored Multi-Channel Messaging and Journeys
myBillbook had seen healthy reply rates on WhatsApp and knew that SMB owners are more active here than on other channels. Hence, WhatsApp was chosen as the initial channel for the revamped engagement.
First, free trial users are segmented based on a Need, Intent, and Fit (NIF) model which uses the self-submitted user information during onboarding. Then, tailored messages are delivered to each user along complex, customized journeys with delays, outs, and nodes intelligently triggered by key micro moments.
The objective of these campaigns is to get High and Mid NIF users who could be Sales Qualified Leads for myBillbook’s higher value plans to raise their hands. Low NIF users are helped with product marketing content to self-serve. This way myBillbook manages to generate a much higher Revenue per Agent as well as increase overall CVR of free trial users.
The messaging initially starts out as helpful, friendly greetings like “Welcome to myBillBook. Watch our 5 minute product tour” when a user signs up for a free trial. For High and Mid NIF segments, a sales approach is adopted, which includes sharing information about demos, pricing, and discounts.
Each micro moment has a journey that lasts 12 hours to 48 hours with multiple messages. Instead of a one long drip journey, myBillbook uses a series of these micro journeys. These messages succeed in nudging many users to reply and start conversations on Whatsapp. Hail Mary messaging with stronger pull factor, such as flash sales, is sent to users who have yet to reach out even after spending some time on the platform. The granular customer understanding and high level of customization are delivering a reply rate of up to 15%, and boosted the volume of hand raisers by 3x.
Overall, myBillbook has seen a jump of 35% from hand-raisers Inside Sales revenue and a 30% increase in Average Revenue per Agent.
Building on this success, the team is now focusing more on specific micro moments it knows are doubly critical. It now leverages in-app notifications, pop-up messages, and even SMS, effortlessly orchestrating consistent messaging across these channels. SMS is proving to be quite an effective fallback when users do not open WhatsApp messages. Also, increasing the number of touches delivers the additional welcome benefit of boosting the inflow of leads.
By engaging during crucial micro moments, we’ve efficiently leveraged our free trial users and accelerated the Inside Sales pipeline. With CleverTap, we are able to execute a data-driven approach, coupled with personalized messaging. This has been instrumental in driving significant growth and efficiency.”
Snehal Samant,
VP Growth, myBillbook
Harnessing CleverTap’s Diverse Capabilities for Data-Driven Success
In their quest to understand the customer deeply, myBillbook leverages CleverTap’s segmentation feature extensively. It uses criteria such as the user’s platform (Android or iPhone) to tailor messages. Onboarding questions such as the size of the business and how the user found myBillBook determine if the prospect is in the High or Low NIF bucket. This useful information allows myBillbook to efficiently focus its efforts on its most valuable users.
A/B testing is another feature myBillbook uses regularly to monitor and maximize engagement across channels.
myBillbook also highly values CleverTap’s data visualization capabilities. “We can ensure our segmentation and campaigns are working as intended, make swift changes if they are not, and monitor the changes effectively,” says Chetan Raikar, Product Marketing Manager at myBillbook who oversees setting up journeys and campaigns. He refers to trend reports and analytics, typically around segments, at the start of these activities. The pivot feature within data visualization helps him analyze high app usage patterns for scheduling campaigns appropriately. He downloads some reports, such as users qualified in a campaign, to track how these users progress after they convert and move out of CleverTap, and appreciates the continuity. “CleverTap’s data visualization and reliability has boosted our confidence in our decisions,” adds Samant.
CleverTap’s data visualization capabilities enable us to view data from multiple angles and quickly identify trends and anomalies. This has boosted our confidence in strategizing and execution. The high data reliability and regular audits ensure that we’re always working with accurate information, allowing us to make informed decisions that drive results.”
Snehal Samant,
VP Growth, myBillbook
A Closer Look at Micro Moments
The myBillbook team is constantly on the lookout for more micro moments and opportunities to experiment with nudges. For example, the team noticed that quite a few users tried myBillbook, left without buying, but returned after a while. This moment is known as the ‘boomerang user’ moment. When such a user lands on the app or website, myBillbook sends them a nudge like ‘Hey there, been a while! Welcome back. Can I help you?’. Users found this reach out very useful and this is now a strong new lead source for the Inside Sales team.
We use CleverTap to continually spot moments that are important to the customer. Then we make a sincere effort to add value during these key instances, so users interact frictionlessly with our brand and can make the right purchase decision.”
Chetan Raikar,
Product Marketing Manager, myBillbook
What’s Next
myBillbook will continue to explore new avenues for growth and engagement. “Along with being versatile, CleverTap is intuitive and easy to use,” notes Raikar. The company plans to use the platform to create and target in-app banner ads at key micro moments to generate leads for ecosystem partners like insurance providers. It will also leverage AI bots to instantly engage users who raise their hands with accurate, contextual replies. These are just upcoming initiatives with CleverTap, which myBillbook considers a long-standing partner on its growth journey.
