Infobip Enables Nigerian Fast Food Giant To Stay Connected To Its Customers

September 22, 2020 Mary

Infobip delivered its SMS platform with customer relationship management (CRM) integration capabilities to food and beverage group Eat’N’Go, enabling it to align its messaging with customer behaviour, boost consumer conversion.

Client background:

Eat’N’Go Limited is a Nigeria-based quick service restaurant (QSR) group that is the lead franchisee for three well-known US fast food brands, namely Domino’s Pizza, Cold Stone Creamery and Pinkberry Frozen Yogurt. The group has seen continuous growth since starting operations in the West African country in 2012 and currently owns and operates 110 outlets, employing 2 600 people. The company recently announced that it plans to open a further 38 new store locations that will see it expand its footprint to 14 cities across Nigeria. The group has maintained a year-on-year growth trajectory since its inception, and has earned the distinction of being Nigeria’s fast-growing company. Eat’N’Go revealed last year that it invested more than N10 billion (about R426.7 million) to date to expand its operations.

Industry landscape:

Oil-rich Nigeria is the most populous country on the African continent, with a population of about 206 million, and also boasts the largest economy. The QSR sector experienced robust growth during the past decade and, according to figures released by the Association of Fast Food and Confectionary of Nigeria (AFFCON) in 2016, the industry was worth N250 billion (R10.6 billion). This growth was underpinned by an influx of a large number of foreign fast food brands, as well as the establishment of a significant number of home-grown restaurants, and the sector is now estimated to employ well over half a billion people. Technology is playing a big part in shaping the future Nigeria’s QSR industry, with most companies in this sector offering food delivery apps or online portals. In addition, they are leveraging technology for constant communication with customers, offering personalised discounts and offers, and creating brand recognition and reinforcement.

The opportunity:

Eat’N’Go traditionally leveraged various communication channels for direct marketing purposes, especially using SMS solutions to communicate with its customer base of two million, with the aim of sending promotional information to achieve consumer conversion and sales through its stores. However, aside from segmenting customers across its three brands, the company realised that it had very little information about individual customers, and had no insight into the delivery rate of its SMS’, It also recognised that it was seeing a low conversion rate in relation to the number of SMS’ it was sending, which drove up costs and resulted in a low Return on Investment (ROI). The group acknowledged that it would need to deploy a better communication platform to address these issues, which were ultimately impacting negatively on its revenue and bottom line.

The solution:

Once Eat’N’Go identified its challenges and drew up metrics for what it required from a solution to meet its needs, the company solicited the opinions of several other players in the QSR industry about which technology company could deliver a solution that would best address its challenges. Consensus was that Infobip Africa would be the best choice, and the company was invited to present its proposal, followed by a successful trial of its SMS for Business messaging platform that ran for several weeks. Infobip Africa delivered the solution to Eat’N’Go in 2015, which immediately addressed many of issues that fast food franchisee had identified. Most significantly, Eat’N’Go realised that of the two million SMS’ it sent to its customer base, it only saw a 50% delivery rate – an expensive and inefficient exercise. By providing greater insights into the behaviour and preferences of the customer base, the Infobip’s SMS for Business solution allowed Eat’N’Go to target the customers who were more likely result in conversion. After some time, Eat’N’Go decided to improve its messaging platform even further and Infobip Africa was again contracted to deploy a full CRM system with SMS capabilities in 2019. This provided even deeper segmentation and insight into Eat’N’Go’s customer base, allowing the group to send personalised offers and promotional messages aligned to the preferences and spending habit of individual customers.

Business impact:

The CRM system and SMS for Business platform transformed the way Eat’N’Go communicates with customers, resulting in better conversion rates, improved ROI and lower costs. It also provided an improved customer experience through relevant messaging aligned with the unique preferences of each customer. Ultimately, the solution helped Eat’N’Go achieve its goals of boosting revenue and profitability.

Quotes:

“It was really exciting to work with Nigeria’s fast-growing company on this project. The synergy between our teams was great – they knew exactly what they wanted, and we were ideally positioned to deliver to their specifications.”

Shaun van Rooyen, Strategic Accounts and Partnerships Manager at Infobip Africa.

“This has been a game-changer for us. Infobip’s solution not only improved our communication with our customers, it helped to boost the overall performance of the company.”