2,700 Leads in a month: Furniture rental company drives growth with Airtel IQ Hyperlocal Marketing

A top furniture rental company, known for offering stylish furniture, gadgets, and appliances, partnered with Airtel to spread the word about their online platform and physical stores. They wanted to attract more people to visit their new physical stores using Airtel IQ Hyperlocal Marketing. Impact generated during the first month is as follows: generated 2,700 leads and 1,400 new website signups. 

The Challenge 

Meeting the Rental Furniture Needs of Young Movers: A Marketing Challenge 

In India, a massive young population of nearly half a billion under 25 is fueling the rise of furniture rentals. These millennials and Gen Z renters value flexibility and convenience. Furniture rentals allow them to easily move around for work or lifestyle changes, and they can access trendy designs without a big commitment.  

The furniture rental company captured this insight and positioned themself as a platform that offers a wide variety of household furniture & appliances. They created an online furniture rental platform which stuck with the proposition – no more expensive purchases, just rent what you need! They also understood the consumer’s apprehension about renting furniture only based on images and information available online. Which is why they recently opened physical stores in Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, and Delhi. Their customers could try the furniture before renting. While they offer flexible payment models- pay only after use and a pre-paid model for rentals, the idea of opening physical stores was to garner trust since the customers could now see and feel the quality of products offered before committing. 

With all the advanced developments and customer centric journeys in place, the team had to find a more personal and direct medium of outreach to engage with their audience. For their pilot, they decided to go ahead with the 25-35 crowd who just moved to a new city. They had limited identifiable metrics to understand their audience. What they needed was an omni channel platform available with customer cohort data to run the campaigns, coupled with accurate data analytics & capability to send hyper personalized communication. 

The Solution

Overcoming Marketing Hurdles: Connecting with the Right Rental Furniture Seekers 

Airtel proposed a one-month exercise for the furniture marketing team to start off their campaign and experience the capabilities of the platform. They started with Bengaluru city, targeting people in their 20s & 30s who had recently moved and were hunting for apartments online.  

Using the Airtel IQ Hyperlocal Marketing self-serve platform with insights from 350mn+ customers across 55+ unique cohorts, the marketing team was able to define the right group of people within the proximity of physical stores and drive the targeted customer engagements using Whatsapp and SMS.  They set their audience location preference to Bangalore, closer to their store. Some of the unique behavioral cohorts they applied for included migrated individuals, job seekers and online shoppers, among others. The unique capability of Airtel IQ Hyper Local Marketing helped the marketing team craft personalized messages for each person based on the interest- groups selected and run the campaign with real time delivery insights across SMS & WhatsApp. 

The Impact

The Impact of Targeted Campaign: Growing Leads and In-Store Visits  

The initial hiccups that the team was struggling with, to reach out young movers in Bengaluru saw a solve with Airtel IQ Hyperlocal Marketing. The month-long pilot campaign helped them generate revenue opportunities with 2,700 leads and 1,400 new website signups. The number of visits to their physical stores also saw a significant jump due to the targeted engagement campaign they ran. This targeted engagement strategy effectively drove customer acquisition and brand awareness for the furniture rental company.