Rappi Delivers with SMS and Powerful Customer Segmentation

Imagine traffic so bad that any time you want to go to the store it takes you an hour each way to get there. Imagine needing something at the last minute for a party and having no way to get it in time. Imagine needing anything and it only costs an extra $1-2 to have it delivered to your door. That’s what Rappi is doing in Mexico and Colombia right now for over 700,000 people. Order anything and have it delivered by one of over 2000 delivery people (even a last minute Halloween costume!).

Rappi is a YCombinator graduate that in barely a year has over 700,000 customers, 2000 delivery people, and placed over 1 million orders with 400 employees in Mexico and Colombia. That’s pretty amazing for any startup and when you consider that rate of growth bringing a new idea to new markets—well our hat is off to them.

Rappi works like a lot of similar services. Using their app or website you place an order for groceries, something from your favorite restaurant, pretty much anything, the order is picked up by their orange-jacketed delivery people and brought to you. The delivery charge is only a dollar or two and you can pay through the app or directly to the delivery person. The clever part is that because the cities are so congested with traffic, they work on a hyper-local system of stores and delivery people. They can deliver things faster because the people making the deliveries are in the neighborhood, so close they can even deliver on foot and still be fast.

The delivery aspect is cool, but fast delivery doesn’t drive business, knowing and catering to your customers is what will make or break you. How does Rappi do that?

Powerful user segmenting and tracking through the Infobip Portal and SMS API.

Here are some examples of the kinds of targeting Rappi does that drives their business forward. If a customer uses Rappi, but stops ordering, Rappi will send an SMS to the customer inviting them back. They can even tailor that offer based on their last orders (nothing like a coupon or discount to bring a customer back). Rappi can target different offers to people who buy snacks late at night versus moms who buy diapers and baby supplies in the middle of the day. The person who is always ordering dinner from a certain place a few times a week, could get an offer from a similar restaurant around the time they might be ordering.

The data are all there ready to be used to give customers tailored offers that make a delightful experience. And delighted customers are more likely to be repeat customers.

Rappi’s 700,000 customers in six cities (Mexico City, Bogota, Cali, Medellin, Barranquilla, and Pereira) make them very attractive to sponsors who would like to bring their products, literally, to consumer’s desktops. Rappi has given away cans of Red Bull, special offers for parties, and a promotion for a chicken restaurant that was so popular it had to be shut down early. Rappi advertised a special for the restaurant chain Frisby on a Sunday. After sending 2000 SMS coupons they had 150 orders in an hour. Think about that for a moment. SMS messages on a Sunday getting 150 orders in an hour. You can’t get nearly the same results with any other channel and with the power of customer segmentation, those messages were sent to just the people who might be hungry for some chicken on a Sunday.

Rappi is an amazing success because it’s built on a great idea and has the tools to execute their vision. One of those tools is Infobip’s Messaging Solution Suite that was offered to all YCombinator startups. Our suite gives you all the tools you need to build and track targeted SMS campaigns that bring results.