How “AbhiBus”- India’s fastest growing ticket booking platform re-targets its diverse users and implements user engagement strategies as shared in an interview with Truepush. 

 

lInterview with Naman Dhimole, Product Manager at AbhiBus.

 

1. What is your company name? What was your intention for starting it (What is the unique problem you’re trying to solve)?

Sudhakar Reddy, founder & CEO of AbhiBus, started the company in 2008 to revolutionize the Indian bus booking system by taking it online. By introducing a first of its kind software solution, his vision focused on reducing the time and effort it took to book and discover a service. In 2014, we shifted our focus from being a SaaS company to be more focussed on the B2C side as well. With our unmatched connection (network) with Pvt and RTC operators, we zoomed past most of the competitors and secured the leadership position within no time.

 

abhibus logo
Book bus and hotel tickets online-AbhiBus

2. What is your website? What are the different marketing channels that you are trying to gain more visitors on your website?

AbhiBus.com is one of India’s largest online travel reservation platform with a strong presence in Bus Booking, Bus Rental and Hotel Reservation space. Knowing that our customer base is greatly varied in age, gender, demography, and WTP, our marketing channels are widespread. We funnel in customers through efficient social media marketing through segmented and optimized advertisements. Our team regularly works to optimize SEO & discoverability through micro-sites. Our strong offline marketing, along with celebrity endorsement is often combined with seasonal campaigns. Catering to our customers has helped spread positive word-of-mouth for our company which fuels our organic growth.

3. What factors do you consider while building a marketing strategy?

Well, the factors considered while developing a methodology depends on the goal at hand. Any successful strategy is realized when the executive goals overlap with marketing capabilities. We at AbhiBus define our broad goals and carve them with data and industrial experience.

4. How do you enhance brand consistency using various marketing channels?

To have an edge over the competition, our product and marketing team works hand-in-hand. The increased efficiency gained takes our vision to the next level by not just giving coupons and reward points (AbhiCash) to our users but combining it with a better user experience. It enables cross-selling between our various businesses, an increase in customer loyalty and a decrease in UAC. The combined focus has made us the number one rated app for online booking on the Android Platform. (4.4/5 stars)

5. What are the different ways of growth or marketing channels that maximize customer acquisition/ retention?

We believe in serving value to our customers and we did do that in a unique way: Honest Pricing and Transparency of costs. Let me explain – The prices typically swell during peak seasons and get slashed during off-peak. We have a platform called Edge that gets the customer notified (in real-time) about the price changes that are made by operators. This transparency has resulted in a huge and more importantly, a loyal customer base for AbhiBus. We evolve regularly and update our user experience through in-app changes and training the customer support team.

6. Lastly, what is your opinion on push notifications in general?

Push notifications are getting a lot of flak lately because they largely lead to digital noise on mobile phones. We have also seen noticed that unregulated push notifications can lead to attrition and uninstalls. I firmly believe that push notifications can prove to be a POD against the competition when used wisely. We practice careful user behavior studies and AI/ML integrated customer segmentation while deployment. Push notification should not ‘shout’ at the customer, but, aid them to use the service better. Ensuring a personalized and encouraging notification to the right customer at the right time is the key.

Our analysis:
Sending push notifications at regular intervals is the key attribute for AbhiBus. Segmenting audiences based on their interests and sending personalized push notifications at the right time creates a huge impact and helps one’s to stay ahead from its competitors. Truepush audience segmentation feature allows categorizing the audience into various segments based on country, state, city, platform, and browser, etc.

Also, read:

GrabOn on User Engagement Strategies- Interview with Truepush Push Services

How “BLes.com”, an international news media company makes use of Truepush to Re-target and Re-engage Its users (Interview)

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