WhatsApp as a Startup Marketing Channel

One of the first lessons in marketing is, or at least should be, that you communicate with your customers on their territory. For example, if you want to reach students in Paris, you’re not putting a print ad in a Japanese newspaper published exclusively in Nagano. Taking that to digital marketing, you should allow your customers to connect with you on the platforms they use every day. One of these platforms is, of course, WhatsApp. Is your startup using WhatsApp for marketing? Salz & Brot, the place where you can find great rental homes, is using it. StartInDUS chatted with Salz & Brot co-founder Tim Zimmermann to learn more about their experience.

Salz & Brot uses WhatsApp to inform users about available homes in the city they’re looking. As one of the target groups for Salz & Brot are students, the selections focus on the 30 biggest student cities in Germany. As Tim puts it

“we have a young and very mobile target group, that uses WhatsApp widely.”

He also believes WhatsApp is a great channel to communicate about homes.

The early signs, the service is only in use for about 5 weeks, are good. About 1500 people looking for a new home are already using the service, even without big marketing spendings.

“The open rate is over 90% and as the content is very relevant to the users, the click rate is also in the high double digits range,” says Tim.

A great thing Salz & Brot has found, is how users react to the service. In fact, just like email notifications, it’s a one-directional form of communication, where Salz & Brot sends out messages with what’s on offer. Once connected to the company, users are actually turning to the platform to ask questions. And to thank the company for the service. With emoticons included. This obviously increases the pressure on the support team, but it also brings this startup in closer connection with its users.

One challenge in using WhatsApp, is that the app owners don’t seem to like commercial use very much.

“Due to constant changes to the API and encryption by WhatsApp, there are often issues at the service providers, which means we cannot guarantee a stable system”

according to Tim. However, as WhatsApp is a Facebook company, the expectation is that this will change in the future.

Finally, we asked Tim which tool Salz & Brot uses. They have chosen WhatsATool from atms. This is a daughter of a big player in the German service numbers market, which have a strong focus on data security and privacy. For Salz & Brot, that was an important factor, as keeping their users’ data safe has a very high priority.

There are of course more tools on the market. One is Whappodo, which startup Abendtuete used in December to communicate about the Culinary Advent Calendar.

Are you using WhatsApp? What’s your experience, and which tool are you using? Let us know!

For this post, we talked to Tim Zimmerman of Salz & Brot. If you’re looking for a new home to rent, Salz & Brot is the place to go. Find your new place on salzundbrot.com and don’t forget to sign up for their WhatsApp service.