iZooto helps marketers execute the “so what” of analytics: Vivek Khandelwal, Datability Solutions

Websites and apps depend on a number of communication channels to seek higher traffic and promote user engagement. But instead of relying on the traditional channels like email, social media and SMS, several brands have now taken to “push notifications” to deliver messages in real-time and generate a higher response rate. Vivek Khandelwal, COO and Founder, Datability Solutions in an interview with Techseen talks about its push notification tool ‘iZooto‘ and how it helps the company achieve higher conversion rates.

Techseen: Push notifications vs. in-app messaging. Which is more effective as a marketing tool and why?

Khandelwal: Push Notifications and In-App Messaging are two very different communication methods with a very different objective. In-App messaging is focused on ensuring that user spends more and more time on the app (mobile/ web). In-App messaging is great for lure user’s who are exiting or to capture user feedback. Push notifications on the other side are used to bring users back to your web app. Push notifications are used to target set of users basis their past behavior – this could be either for retargeting, announcements et all. Both of them are targeting different set of users with different objectives.

Techseen: According to you, how can companies maximize exposure and ROI through push notifications?

Khandelwal: Businesses leverage web push as a communication channel primarily to engage users and activate dormant users. Some of popular use cases that we have seen being explored are:

• Retargeting: E-commerce businesses frequently use push notifications to retarget customers
• Content Distribution: Pushing out content updates to users. Dainik Bhaskar, Zee Business use this frequently to push out news to their users.
• Sale Announcements: Leading businesses such as Jabong, Limeroad also use this to drive traffic to their flash sales.

FreshMenu for instance, uses iZooto to push out alerts about their menu and are able to drives upto 12% of total sales using iZooto.

Techseen: What are the key elements that a good notification should incorporate?

Khandelwal: A good notification should definitely incorporate the following elements-

• Icon / Logo: People might receive numerous notification in a day. You have to make sure that the user knows the notification is from you. Your logo plays a vital role in helping the users identify you.
• Catchy headline: Never underestimate the potential of a title. Every template needs to have a title, an interesting one. The catchier your headline, the better chances for people to click on it.
• Crisp Body Copy: Write the body of the notification by phrasing your sentences with minimal words, but also pack it with effective action words. Make it crisp and to the point, but make sure you don’t compromise with its effectiveness.
• Call to action Buttons: This is the most important part of your template that will drive users to your website. Make sure you place in such a manner that it can’t be missed. Design the call to actions buttons in such a way that it stands out from the rest of the elements on the notification. Call to action buttons are the first thing that should catch the user’s eye.
• Visual relief: Make your notification colorful with small icons which can be added alongside the call to action buttons and adding colorful elements empowers it better.
• Landing Page URL: Make a call to action button which will lead the users to your landing page. It is not necessary that users would like to buy things that are only on offer. So make sure you add the URL of your website.

Techseen: Are your solutions customizable and scalable for independent clients? Do you provide any definite templates for them to work on?

Khandelwal: We have a dedicated customer success team that works closely with our clients to ensure that are able derive maximum out of web push notifications. We help our clients in both, implementation and user engagement. There are specific best practices that we have identified over the past 6 months which have worked and we recommend it strongly to our clients. Also, we have ready push notification templates that the clients refer to while drafting their engagement strategy.

Techseen: What are the key performance indicators (KPI) that iZooto employs to gauge business trends?

Khandelwal: There are multiple metrics to track performance of any user engagement campaign. Depending upon the category of the business and the campaign objective, we recommend tracking the following metrics closely:

• For Businesses focusing on driving leads – Category includes: Travel, BFSI, – Key metrics would include: Click Through Rate, Page Views, New Sessions, Conversions / New Leads
• For Businesses focused on driving sales/ transactions such as E-Commerce- – Key metrics would include: Click Through Rate, Page Views, New Sessions, Conversion %, Sale, Average Sale Value
• For Businesses focused on publishing, such as media house, publications, bloggers – Key metrics would include: Click Through Rate, Page Views, New Sessions, Social Shares, Time Spent on Site, Number of Page Views

Techseen: How accurate is iZooto for deriving deep insights into each asset for an ad campaign? Can you cite an example to support your response?

Khandelwal: iZooto provides detailed analysis for every campaign executed on the platform. iZooto campaign reports populate data against the target audience of each campaign comprising of number of notifications delivered to subscribers, notifications viewed i.e. impressions, notifications clicked resulting into page visits, clicks driving conversions with different objectives – generating leads, converting leads into customers, addressing cart abandonments, driving sales, to name a few. These statistics are fairly accurate, customers can compare the numbers against their own tracking mechanism such as Google Analytics with UTM parameters. One of our customers in banking sector pushed campaigns to subscribers retargeting users who had dropped off from the funnel. They were able to get upto 25% Click through rates and a 5% conversion rate.

Techseen: Can you share any stats implying an increase user engagement and retention through push notifications?

Khandelwal: We now work with as many as 3000+ businesses and individuals across the globe and have seen severe cases where the impact has been distinctly visible. All our clients witness an average click through rate between 5% to 15%. Here are some names that will resonate: – Koovs saw a jump of over 25% in the transactions generated by iZooto platform – Trak.in, now gets close to 40% of repeat traffic from web push notifications – AngelBroking is using iZooto to drive investor education, witnesses a Click Through Rate of over 14%, far higher than EMail, Social or SMS – FreshMenu now drives 12% of their Monthly Sales using iZooto, increasing by 18% on a month on month basis – CouponHaat, a leading affiliate gets almost 90% of it’s repeat traffic from web push. User’s visiting the website again covert better than email and social.

Techseen: Some organizations are still building internal data analytics team, why should they use iZooto’s platform instead of building their own?

Khandelwal: iZooto is an actionable analytics platform that helps marketers execute the “so what” of analytics. Most of the businesses are building analytic teams in-house. However the idea is to provide these teams with a platform that allows them to execute actionables and test their hypothesis. Lot of analytic tools, either in-house or 3rd party, often lack the ability to actually execute the insights that analytics generates. iZooto addresses that problem statement in a nifty manner using web push notifications as a communication channel.

Techseen: Who are you leading customers as of now?

Khandelwal: Some of our leading customers include – OyoRooms, Jabong, FreshMenu, Koovs, Limeroad, American Express, HolidayiQ, YesBank, Aditya Birla Money, et all.

Techseen: What is your current team strength and do you plan to expand anytime soon?

Khandelwal: We are a lean team of 17 people right now, spread across technology, sales and customer success. We plan to hire for few more critical positions over the next 4-5 months.