Data-Driven Loyalty: How Upside Leveraged Ragnarok, Iterable, and Census for Success

Earlier this year, leading fintech and retail marketplace app Upside wanted to organize their siloed data, increase engagement, and improve their ROAS. To accomplish this, they teamed up with our partners Census and Iterable for their innovative technology platforms and called on the Ragnarok team to lead strategy and develop a personalized loyalty program.

We’re excited to share some amazing customer results on the blog today. Earlier this year, the leading retail and fintech marketplace app Upside joined forces with the Ragnarok team along with our partners at Census and Iterable to build a personalized loyalty program that improved Click Through Rates by 96%! In the process, we built and analyzed more than 80 message variants to optimize their program.

Here’s how we did it.

About Upside

Upside is a modern financial platform that’s all about helping both regular folks get more bang for their buck and businesses earn more profit at the same time. They’ve helped millions of people since they began in 2016! They use smart technology and clever strategies to make sure consumers and businesses alike benefit from their services. In short, they’re all about making your money work better for you.

Upside’s Challenges

Like so many companies today, Upside’s biggest challenge was siloed customer data. They were doing a great job collecting it, but the more customer data they collected, the harder it became to manage. And creating personalized automated marketing processes at scale was a challenge.

Upside’s customer data lived in Snowflake, while customer communication lived in Iterable. This disconnect hindered the advanced marketing moves they needed to make. Additionally, the absence of comprehensive customer context across various platforms stifled their ability to optimize ad spend and customer service workflows.

The Solution

It was a collaborative effort to help Upside reach success. Here’s how it happened:

Syncing First-Party Data: Census, our trusted partner, played a pivotal role in this first step. Census empowered Upside to access their comprehensive 360° customer data stored in Snowflake. This not only simplified audience creation but also enabled real-time synchronization, automating updates across Upside’s suite of business tools. Goodbye manual data uploads, hello automation!

Developing a Personalized Loyalty Program: With this technical infrastructure in place, Upside leaned on Ragnarok’s CRM services to strategically enhance their personalization efforts. Thanks to our expertise in handlebar logic, we collaborated with Upside to deploy a comprehensive lifecycle campaign centered around purchase behavior.

With these sequences in place, a user could receive 29 possible messages based on their actions through the program. To encourage more purchases, users received updates throughout the month to track their progress and inspire them to reach their purchase goals. Users who reached their goal received loyalty rewards.

Testing Personalized Messages at Scale: Leveraging the power of Iterable’s marketing automation capabilities alongside Census’ behavioral data sync, we tested and refined loyalty program variants and sequences. This process allowed us to fine-tune the messaging to a level of precision that greatly resonated with Upside’s audience.

In fact, we didn’t stop at a handful of messages; we went all in, creating and meticulously analyzing over 80 message variants to optimize the program. The result? We improved Upside’s CTR by an astounding 96% month-over-month increase.

All of Upside’s Results

Upside’s objectives were clear, and the results speak for themselves:

More Powerful Segmentation:

Upside acquired the ability to construct tailored audiences on top of Snowflake using an intuitive, no-code UI specifically designed for marketing teams.
Improved ROI through Contextual Targeting and Personalization:

Upside can now effortlessly exclude existing users from ad targeting, consequently improving their ROAS. Additionally, the retrieval of churned users across marketing channels through first-party data bolstered their marketing endeavors.
More Consistent Customer Experiences:

Customer 360° data was seamlessly integrated into their operations with Salesforce and Zendesk, ensuring that customer-facing teams have necessary context from real-time and historical first-party data during customer interactions.
Automated Personalization at Scale:

With all of the data in the right place and over 80 message variants ready to go, Upside can now truly personalize its marketing messages with first-party data at scale.

Build Your Personalization at Scale with Ragnarok

We didn’t just provide solutions; we led Upside’s strategy, personalization, and execution of their new marketing campaigns at scale by leveraging the power of first-party data, with the help of Census’ data sync. Upside’s results speak volumes, and we’re here to guide you on a similar path to marketing success. Our team would love the opportunity to replicate this achievement for your business and bring in the right technology partners to help you succeed.

Reach out with your goals and questions today.