Rappi Reactivates Lapsed Users and Increases Purchases With WhatsApp

Founded in 2015 in Bogota, Colombia as the first “Superapp” in Latin America, digital commerce platform Rappi now serves consumers in nine Latin American countries and more than 300 cities. Behind the scenes is a team of technology entrepreneurs dedicated to driving economic progress in the region, rooted in the belief that Latin America’s future can be made brighter with technology that connects people to solutions. With Rappi, users can hire couriers for a variety of purposes, from grocery shopping (and food or prescription) delivery to standing in line for a product release, and much more. In Rappi’s own words, “with Rappi, customers access a vibrant ecosystem of goods and services, entrepreneurs grow their businesses, and people can convert time into flexible income.”

This on-demand-service pioneer turned to Braze in order to better reach the user at the right time, on the right channel, with personalized content relevant to them. Customer engagement is important to keep Rappi at the top of users' minds for everyday needs and to boost the brand experience, ultimately building customer loyalty.

The value that Rappi derives from customer engagement depends on the user stage. For newer users who recently downloaded the app, it’s important to show users the value of Rappi’s services. After that, Rappi focuses on retention, using a cross-channel strategy to deliver the best deals directly to their users’ mobile devices and inboxes. Ultimately, everything they do is all about strengthening customer relationships in order to make Rappi a deeply valued service amongst their customers and the ecosystem they serve.

Rappi Expands Their Retention and Winback Strategy to Include WhatsApp

Rappi’s team noted that with Braze Canvas Flow, our journey orchestration tool, they were able to automate sophisticated user flows and find operational efficiencies across teams. With all of their marketing channels and data housed in one place and with the ability to easily segment audiences within the Braze platform, they’ve sped up their processes and freed up time for other endeavors.

For these journeys, Rappi uses a combination of push notifications, in-app messages (IAMs), and email. Having added WhatsApp to their channel mix fairly recently, Rappi is expanding their WhatsApp strategy to drive stronger results. In the past, they mainly used WhatsApp for acquisition in connection with their membership program. Now, with an engagement and retention plan in place, they wanted to use Braze to send the best deals available for each user based on user data. Their goal? Be strategic with their approach in order to drive results while optimizing their marketing spend.

To do this, they first divided their audiences into two segments—Momentum (active users) and Reactivation (lapsed users)—and set goals for each segment.

Just as important: And they wanted to do this quickly. With Braze, they were able to build their campaign templates in the WhatsApp Manager and then populate them within Braze to personalize the campaign content for each user and target the campaign to each segment.

Rappi's Results: Strategic WhatsApp Engagement Drives Purchases

To measure their WhatsApp campaign performance, Rappi’s team looked at each group’s purchasing behavior in the month following the WhatsApp campaign. The active user group (Momentum) saw a 71% read rate, while the lapsed user group (Reactivation) saw a 67% read rate—signaling to Rappi that WhatsApp was an effective channel to reach these lapsed users due to its incredible read rate.Overall, they saw a whopping 80% increase in those who made a purchase versus the control group for the Reactivation segment—same audience, same value, same time period, but one group received a WhatsApp message in addition to a push notification and email.

Key Takeaways

• WhatsApp is a personal channel with an incredibly high read rate—this is the channel people use to talk to their friends, family, etc. For Rappi, they know if they are going to use this channel, they have to have something relevant and valuable to say.
• WhatsApp is an effective out-of-product channel to drive purchases and improve customer retention, increasing both a user’s lifetime value as well as the likelihood that they’ll continue to choose your product for years to come.

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