A Lesson in Anger Management and Digital Marketing!
Day 2: Chronicles of an Uber Commuter
After reading my first article on being an Uber Commuter in Bangalore, quite a few people are asking me how to join Uber Commute as a driver. So click here to sign up (with my referral code :D)
I turned on the Uber Partner app in the morning and got a ride request in about 5 minutes. Tried calling the lady who booked the ride, but her registered number was unreachable. In the meantime, she tried calling me from another phone and got a busy tone. After some back and forth, I connected with her 3–4 minutes later. Frustrated, she said she wasn’t interested and cancelled the ride. Hmm… a lesson in anger management, keeping myself from arguing with a customer and politely accepting her decision. I’ll spare a thought for the next cab driver who calls me, and reply a little more kindly.
Day 2
My second Uber Commute ride is much easier than the first. The lady who hailed the Uber knows what Uber Commute is, so she sits in the front passenger seat. I introduce myself and tell her about Momoe. She says she has heard about Momoe from her friends who use it and like it, but she hasn’t tried it. That’s bittersweet feedback for a Marketing guy.
Doing Consumer Marketing at Momoe, it is a constant challenge for us to get the fairer sex to use the app. We hear multiple women tell us that their friends/ boyfriends/ husbands use Momoe, but they still hesitate to use it. Comes down to the trust factor, they say. Women will wait and watch and be certain before using digital payment instruments.
She then goes on to ask questions about how we engage Momoe users, how we keep them coming back, and what channels work best for engagement. Terms like user cohorts and lifetime value come up, and I ask her if she is from the marketing domain as well.
Turns out, she heads User Engagement at Spoyl, the social app to sell new and gently used (pre-loved!) fashion apparel. They help users list their closet occupiers and sell them at a good price. Once the item is sold, they pick it up, complete the laundry and quality check, and deliver it to the buyer.
Spoyl is a TLabs accelerated startup founded by ex-Intuit folks Bhargav Errangi and Sumit Agarwal. They have raised $100K from TLabs and other angels. It is part of the growing collaborative economy (which also includes carpooling).
How did she join Spoyl, I ask. She was the founder of Revamp My Closet, which was acqui-hired by Spoyl. An exit story! She now continues doing what her passion is, and also works with a larger team with more muscle and traction. Good to hear that!
Who are your target customers, I prod. Pat comes the reply — they focus on the young college-goer who wants to affordable but good looking and quality fashion. We exchange ideas on how to scale to the next level of users, and how to engage people in college campuses. We reach her destination when on the topic of whether radio is an effective medium to build brand awareness.
A snippet on our learnings from Momoe: Digital was never a great medium for us, because the app had to be used at a physical store or restaurant. So we had to pay to acquire users digitally, and then pay again to send them to places where they could use Momoe to pay. So we stuck to a combination of brand awareness campaigns (radio ads + community events like Sunday Soul Sante) and on-the-ground activations at our partner merchant outlets. So I have a contrarian view of digital marketing — be careful and use it right, else you will burn through your cash reserves before you know it!
