New feature helps business owners get up to 18 times in returns amidst anticipated economic slowdown, rising manpower costs, and food price hikes
In light of the challenging business landscape, local tech startup StoreHub recently introduced an automation tool, StoreHub Engage, to help retailers and restaurants engage with their customers, drive repeat sales and improve their business’ Google ratings through automated personalized SMS campaigns.
There are already over 300 businesses using StoreHub Engage, with restaurants and retailers seeing a median return on investment (ROI) of up to 18 times through a surge in repeat customers as well as new customers brought in by improved Google ratings.
Fully integrated into its point of sales (POS) platform, the feature allows businesses already using StoreHub’s ecosystem to automate up to four personalized SMS campaigns to existing customers within their database. This includes sending cashback reminders and birthday voucher codes - with the goal of getting existing customers to spend with the business again.
With consumer spending expected to slow down this year alongside rising costs in manpower and food ingredients, digitisation is no longer a nice-to-have for SMEs. In fact, SAMENTA (SME Association of Malaysia) has recently even urged local SMEs to fully adopt digitisation as a way to save costs through improved productivity.
Commenting on the current SME landscape, Wai Hong Fong, Chieftain and co-Founder of StoreHub, says, “Traditional brick and mortar businesses typically lack access to specialised knowledge to effectively reach their customers. We built Engage to help automate that.
“Imagine it’s your customer’s birthday - Engage will send them a personalised “Happy birthday” SMS with a unique voucher code. Instead of spending time doing this manually, or paying for expensive tools or specialists to achieve this, business owners can now just turn it on and let it run.”, says Fong.
Merchants can automate a variety of SMS campaigns to customers within their database - from birthday promotions to engaging customers who have not visited in awhile. StoreHub has seen SMEs make the most of this feature, with multiple merchants sharing their positive feedback.
“StoreHub Engage has not only helped us get customers to return, but gave us valuable insight into the journey of each returning customer - including how much they spend and how often they return. This helps us plan better on how to grow our business”, said Ajeep Badaru, Operations Manager at local eatery Teh Tarik Place, Kota Warisan branch.
To add, local cultural clothing brand, Jeel Official’s owner, Yash Rajesh, has experienced a boost in sales, mentioning that “As a business selling cultural wear, this feature has helped me reach out to my customers and boost my sales even during non-festive periods. This has saved me valuable time that can be used to manage other parts of the business better.”
Michelle Liu, one of the owners of Fin KL, a local cafe, also chimed in with their experience, sharing that “StoreHub Engage has helped us get more revenue through repeat customers. It's great that something so reliable and helpful to the business is also easy to use.”
StoreHub Engage is the latest feature to be integrated into StoreHub’s platform - an ecosystem of over 30 features built for retail and F&B SMEs to operate efficiently and grow. The platform started as a cloud-based POS but has since evolved into a full suite of solutions inclusive of inventory tracking, staff management, automated ordering and payment, real-time reporting and analytics and more.
