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While it’s easy to imagine the month of Ramadan freezes business for the F&B sector, the opposite is true. The holy month opens a gateway of opportunities for marketers in the retail sector. Like every festive season, brands across the domains try interesting brand activation strategies to capture the attention of a massive audience and create personalized connections.
We’ve noticed a shift in consumer behavior from people celebrating Ramadan and all festivals digitally with their family and friends across the globe to today’s well informed customers. Now, people are more likely to search online for the products they want to shop for or services they like to opt for.
Did you know that Google Search and YouTube are the top touchpoints for consumers in Saudi to research products during Ramadan?
When Saudi customers use Google search to explore products, they explore YouTube in the holy month for prayers and food recipes. This is where brands have a great opportunity to level up their search and video advertising. Now, the challenge is figuring out what the customers are purchasing during this holy season.
Research on customers’ shopping behaviors across different verticals reveals in Ramadan reveals that consumer electronics, home and garden, fashion, food and groceries, and beauty products are in major focus.
Here’s a quick drill down from Google’s Consumer Insights, showcasing the timely spending by the Indonesians during Ramadan across multiple verticals. Combining these insights with loyalty efforts through Capillary’s robust Loyalty+ platform is the blueprint for strategizing and implementing successful Ramadan marketing campaigns.
With so many traditional marketing strategies available, a unique approach is necessary to make you stand out. Data-driven marketing can help you take that holistic approach to reach your shoppers. Let’s keep these four aspects in mind while analyzing your customer data:
While this is the time of the year when brands strategize and implement great Ramadan campaigns, market saturation is obvious. Too many brands may land up with generic offers, discounts, and campaigns that may not deliver the value they seek.
That’s why it’s important to take a deep dive into customer data & insights you might be collecting with Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). You can use advanced analytics platforms like Capillary Insights+ to perform a psychographic analysis of your shoppers’ behavior. 360-degree view of customer’s journey with your brand can give you better insights about their preferences and help you personalize their shopping experiences.
According to a Google Consumer’s Report, during Ramadan, 78% of consumer electronic shoppers shop both online & offline. This implies brands need to maintain an omnichannel presence for their customers.
Capillary has helped the largest retailers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) understand their customers through a multi-segment strategy. It has categorized customers into 13 segments based on variables like recency, frequency, monetary, preferred shopping category, discount, etc.
Here are the top 5 data-driven Ramadan Campaign ideas that have generated great results for the brands working with Capillary. Mentioning factors that contributed the most to customer satisfaction before, during, and after Ramadan.
Channels Used: SMS, Email, Push Notification
Result: 2.1% response rate, AED 138K in sales through the campaign
Taking a user-case, Maryam, a 35-year-old mother of 2 children – Fatima and Sultan – is married to Ahmed. Maryam craves cheesecake and chocolate cake at 7 PM in the evening. Maryam is not an outlier in her preference.
Capillary’s data revealed to this F&B brand that cheesecakes are the most ordered products between 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., just around Iftar time. The uplift in order volumes continues well after midnight until around 2 AM as Suhur closes.
Based on this surprising insight that cheesecakes are as much popular as Knafeh and other traditional Ramadan delicacies, the brand designed a targeted Ramadan campaign. It helped the brand save on communication costs without any loss of sales with channel prioritization.
Capillary and the brand arrived at a statistical model to predict the probability of a customer responding to Ramadan’s Buy-one Get-one offer between 6 PM and 8 PM. The channel prioritization feature of Engage+ helped the brand reach shoppers with the offer on the channels they are more likely to interact with. The campaign targeted a limited set of customers, resulting in a 2.1% response rate for day 1 compared to a 1.3% response to the previous year’s bulk campaign.
Channels used: SMS, Email
Outcome: 8% additional transactions and incremental sales of SAR 24,000
Situation: While office Iftars mark Ramadan, family gatherings, and Suhurs with old mates, this holy month has an inherently social aspect. For Ahmed, Maryam, and the kids, the shorter working hours and the upcoming long break for Eid give the perfect window to go out and shop.
On one of the days when Ahmed was returning home early, he received an offer from his favorite luxury brand in a manner he couldn’t refuse. Based on the survey brand shared earlier with him, they know Ahmed is a conscious customer, like 36% of Saudi Arabians who avoid harmful ingredients for beauty products. The couple was interested in discovering organic perfumes and decided to visit the stores to learn more about this offer.
Capillary helped the brand target family customers with different preferences for different categories. In this case, we helped the brand decode the consumer behavior using past transaction data and ran a 20% off on the bill containing 1 men’s and 1 women’s perfume.
This Ramadan campaign generated 8% additional bills and incremental sales of SAR 24,000 as compared to the previous year’s bulk campaign for the same offer.
Channels used: Social (Facebook), WhatsApp
Outcome: 3X better campaign ROI compared to other channels
While Maryam was exiting the mall, Fatima was amused to see a funny-looking cartoon character image along with the QR code and asked her mother to click her picture with it. Maryam instinctively remembered that she had come across an offer on her Facebook feed a few days back. But how was Maryam targeted on Facebook?
Capillary worked with the brand to generate a “Parents Segment” who had visited the brand’s store in the last 6 months, and to everyone’s surprise, 78% of this segment was available on Facebook and nearly 90% on WhatsApp. The brand pushed the WhatsApp campaign & Facebook campaigns for this segment of customers per their channel preferences.
Later, when Maryam received a message from the brand on WhatsApp, she recalls that’s the same place near which she clicked Fatima’s picture. She checked the offer and then scanned the code using the link shared to get details. She received a personalized offer on kidswear issued to her based on her previous transactions. The time she checked discounts on one of the outfits Fatima adored on her last visits, she felt so happy and instantly placed an order.
In this fashion, the brand received 3X more conversions simply by targeting customers on Facebook & WhatsApp marketing alone.
Channels used: Social, Push Notification
Outcome: Incremental sales worth 559 OMR in 2 days
While shopping for homeware items to gift during Lebaran, shoppers prefer availability, quick deliveries, and pocket-friendly items. 42% of Saudi shoppers often switch between brands per the delivery timelines.
Understanding such customer behaviors helps brands be festive-ready as they plan personalized campaigns to reach shoppers. Since most shoppers in the Middle East search for gift ideas on YouTube and Facebook, we helped luxury brands optimize their Facebook Ad campaigns. Capillary’s Engage+ made the campaign’s goal setting, message optimization, and campaign management seamless for the brand to reach its target audience.
Maryam was a part of the loyalty customers target list based on the previous year’s Ramadan campaign transactions. Brand filmed the spirit of the holy month, highlighting values like charity, spirituality, and kindness. They targeted the core values of Ramadan to create an emotional connection with shoppers and made sales alongside.
Through Facebook campaigns and Push Notifications, the brand earned loyal customers. In the campaign, customers were given 20% to 45% off based on the loyalty tier and the campaign was successful in generating 559 OMR incremental sales with an additional 0.3% hit rate over a period of 2 days.
Channels used: SMS, Email
Outcome: Incremental sales worth AED 900,000
Ramadan brings with it plenty of occasions to socialize with friends and family. Pre-lebaran, people often search for personal care & beauty products. When everyone wants to look their best, jewelry is a great way to elevate a look.
UAE’s leading jewelry brand partnered with Capillary to perform micro-segmentation for its audience. A well-targeted SMS & email campaign was launched for Ramadan. Maryam was targeted with the Eid offer to win a free gold coin above the purchase of AED 5000. Since the majority of the target audience was smartphone users, we’ve used rich media messaging (learn more about RCS for SMS campaigns) to boost the chances of customers checking the offer.
Don’t forget consumer experience is the key!
Approximately two-thirds of Saudi Arabian consumers experience online shopping issues during the holy month. This clarifies the importance of optimized online experiences over the Ramadan brand activation strategies you likely execute for any festive season.
Drive your customer engagement strategies and earn more loyal shoppers with Capillary’s robust Loyalty+ by booking a demo with our Loyalty Experts today.
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