Acquisition project | Netcore Cloud

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Acquisition project | Netcore Cloud

Why Acquisition ?

Any product growth relies on 4 pillars
Acquisition --> Onboarding -- > Engagement & Retention -- > Monetisation.
Given that we are moving from Product Market fit stage to an Early scaling Stage the way we acquire next 500 customers would change. I am taking a deep dive on how we can unlock the next 300 crores from some of our new channels WhatsApp, RCS, Zalo, Viber, Line etc. primarily focusing on WhatsApp and RCS.

About Organisation - Netcore Cloud

Netcore Cloud is a prominent player in omnichannel Marketing Automation, boasting over 15 years of expertise, particularly in email marketing. While we've reached a mature stage with various product lines such as Email API - Pepipost , Email Dojo, Journey Orchestration, Unbxd -Search Personalization, Product Experience Nudges - PX, and CRM/CDP solutions - Comsense, our recent focus has been on expanding into additional high engagement channels like WhatsApp, RCS, Zalo, Viber, Kakaotalk, WeChat, among others.

Despite our significant presence in email marketing, our newer channel ventures are still in the early stages of scaling. It's crucial for us to elevate these new product lines to the same level of maturity as our legacy channels to avoid losing market share to competitors.

For this discussion, I'm proposing the acquisition strategy for these emerging channels. We currently boast around 150-200 paying B2B customers, generating revenues close to about 65 - 70 Crores or 8.5 Million USD, indicating that we've surpassed the product-market fit stage.

Given the immense potential in the WhatsApp/RCS market over the next 5 years, as I elaborate in this post, which amounts to a staggering 3.25 Trillion USD(Worldwide), 1 Trillion USD(domestic), it's imperative that we capitalize on this opportunity and ensure the successful scaling of our new product lines.

Product Offerings and its ICP

Deepdive into what are my product lines within these channels and who my ideal customer is..

My Product offerings include
- API-first developer-friendly platform (CPaaS Platform)
- Marketer-friendly Journey Orchestration and Campaign Management Module
- Two-way conversational Chatbot
- Support for segmentation, Dashboards and other intelligent visualization tools necessary for one to manage and analyse messaging
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP):

- Company with a Gross Market Value of at least 50 Cr
- Workforce ranging from 100 to 1000 employees
- Focus on D2C and BFSI industries
- Target Audience:
- - Developers/Product Managers tasked with building products on top of our offerings
  - Product Marketers/Digital Marketing Managers seeking ease of use and visualization dashboards
  - CEO's / CMO's/ Founders in search of a reliable omnichannel marketing engagement partner without the complexity of managing extensive tech stacks

- Marketer-friendly Journey Orchestration and Campaign Management Module
- Two-way conversation Chatbot
So to Summarize (5 Different ICPS - who currently use WhatsApp/RCS)

	ICP 1	ICP 2	ICP 3	ICP 4	ICP 5
ICP Name	Maxlife Insurance - Sanskriti Verma	Asian Paints - Shashank Giri	Ujjivan Bank - Rakshit S.	Bajaj Finserv - Siddharth Anand	Drape Story - Akshee Agarwal
Persona Position	Senior Product Marketing Manager	Brand Manager	Digital Lead	Senior Principal - Digital Marketing	CEO
Age	28	30	33	38	36
Organisational Goals	Increase Revenue from insurance products	Lead Generation and Ultimately Revenue	Digitisation of the Bank	Decreasing the CAC for new customers.	Scale business
Role Priorities	Increase engagement for their customer from our Martech stack.	Scaling up Omni channel efforts by devising strategic plans to increase enhanced targeting of past customers.	Projects that are for digital transformation for the organisation.	Engagement Strategy, Performance Number, Keeping Budget in check. Reducing CAC	Putting a digital framework in place to drive engagement, processes at scale
Role in buying process	None - She wasn't the decision Maker	Medium - Decision to buy taken before he joined.	High	Very High	Very High
Reporting Structure	Reports to Chief Marketing Manager who reports to the Business Unit Head	Reports to Brand Head	Horizontal - He and the Business Head are equally important	Too Senior - So didnt ask, but he is part of the APP team which is one of their Business Units	CEO - Supported by two Operational Assistants.
Preferred Channels	Zoom, Face-2-Face, Email, WhatsApp, Call	Call, WhatsApp, Google Meets	Zoom, Email	Face - 2 - Face only.	Zoom, Gmeet
Products used in workplace	Haptik, Leadsquared	Salesforce, Excel, Slack, Trello	Exotel, CRM - Hubspot, Yellow.ai	Salesforce, Yellow.ai	Gallabox, Wati, Leadsquared, Shopify
Where do they spend time	Creating Orchestration Journeys, Campaigns, Creating Content, figuring out revenue attribution	Coordinating, Strategising, Stakeholder communication, Running Campaigns	Making sure data compliance is met	Strategising, POC's	New Vendors, Operations, Customer Enquiries, Hiring, Meeting B2B partners.
Pain Points	Reduce Failure rates, Figuring out the best content targetting strategy	How to arrest block rates, Improve delivery rates, New and improved machanisms for engagement.	Managing Multiple Vendors, Getting Compliance checks done for data across the funnel.	Heavy Dependency on Netcore, Own Organisation working in silos, Too much custom development, High Cost of running Business	Netcore Enterprise High Cost, No technical Know how, Integration challenges
Current Solution	A combination Of Netcore + Haptik + Excel and relying manual reports shared by our Support teams. ChatGPT for Content Creation	Experiments with new types of messaging and dynamic messaging capabilities across multiple Channels.	Working with a tech partner - Exotel for writing custom solutions for data encryption/decryption between Netcore and their own CRM.	Support from NC, and Custom built solutions, A dedicated CSM for handling all projects, and driving execution from NC side.	Support from NC, and Custom built solutions, A dedicated CSM for handling all projects, and driving execution from NC side.

In addition to the ones listed, for the sake of inclusivity I also spoke with Vrinda from IGP, she heads Marketing Digital Analytics, Rohit from Lots Wholesale, and many other folks from Air India, CAMS mutual fund, Finobank etc.

The Ideal Customer prioritisation framework.

Given that I have varied ICP's to focus on, I will use the ICP framework to decide my channel selection.

ICP 1 - Maxlife:
- Organization Size: Large
- Industry Domain: BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance)
ICP 2 - Asian Paints: (Prioritized)
- Organization Size: Large
- Industry Domain: D2C/Ecommerce (Direct-to-Consumer/Ecommerce)
ICP 3 - Ujjivan Bank: (Prioritized)
- Organization Size: Medium
- Industry Domain: BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance)
ICP 4 - Bajaj Finserv:
- Organization Size: Large
- Industry Domain: BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance)
ICP 5 - Drape Story:
- Organization Size: Small
- Industry Domain: D2C/Ecommerce (Direct-to-Consumer/Ecommerce)

	Adoption Curve	Frequency	Appetite to pay	Total Addressable Market	Distribution Potential
ICP 1 - Maxlife	High	High	Yes	Sizeable (50 lacs - 1 Cr.)	Yes
ICP 2 - Asian Paints	Low	High	Yes	Sizeable (1 - 2 Cr.)	Yes
ICP 3 - Ujjivan Bank	Medium	Low	Yes	Sizeable (1 - 2 Cr.)	Yes
ICP 4 - Bajaj Finserv	Medium	High	Yes	Sizeable (3 - 5 Cr.)	Partial
ICP 5 - Drape Story	Medium	Medium	No	Not Sizeable (10 lacs)	Yes

Conclusion : After analyzing the provided facts, it's evident that focusing on ICP1, ICP2, and ICP3 would be the most strategic approach. Here's a breakdown of why we're not pursuing ICP4 and ICP5

ICP 4 (Bajaj Finserv): Our current capabilities may not fully meet the complex needs of a large-scale BFSI organization like Bajaj Finserv. Addressing their diverse and mature use cases would require significant investment in support and scaling up our platform.
ICP 5 (Drape Story): While Drape Story operates in the D2C/Ecommerce space, they are still a small organization. Their limited ability to invest in premium analytics, journey orchestration, and chatbot services may hinder our ability to monetize effectively.

Product Category/Market

Martech is a highly saturated and competitive market, even the slightest experiential problems can push a customer to migrate to another platform. We have experienced churn problems leading to a loss of cumulative 100 crores last year, but I will address this problem in detail in "Engagement and Retention".
For now lets concentrate on whether there is enough market share to grow into?

Omnichannel Engagement including the likes of WhatsApp/RCS are not listed or positioned on any platforms like G2, Product Hunt, or other peer-reviewed software listings. Furthermore, we are not adequately represented as an omnichannel player due to the organization's large size and diverse product lines.

Breaking down my competition by Category : -

Message Sending API's - Gupshup, , Haptik, Infobip
Omnichannel Chatbots - ,Yellow.ai , WATI, Twillio , AiSensy
Abandoned Cart/Triggered Messaging - , Webengage, Clevertap, Moengage, Braze

Conclusion : While we have fairly high depth and breadth in our Omni-Channel offerings it has not been represented well in the public forum. I will address this problem by designing 3 different acquisition experiments in the section below, but before we go ahead lets validate the business potential.

Product Potential - Top Down - WhatsApp

TAM - META's revenue from WhatsApp + BSP/Tech Partner Markup - Lets Say Modest 20% (Actual Value is around 25) Markup for BSP's (Business Service Providers) - Multiplied by lets say 5 Years growing at modest CAGR of 15% (Actual Value is at 25)
1275 Million USD X 1.2 X (1.15)^5= 3011 Million USD
Current TAM - 1530 Million USD
Serviceable Addressable Market - 65 % of TAM - 995 Million USD

Date	Users (mm)
India	390	Serviceable
Brazil	148	Serviceable
Indonesia	112	Serviceable
United States	98	Serviceable
Philippines	88	Serviceable
Mexico	77	Not Serviceable
Turkey	56	Not Serviceable
Egypt	55	Not Serviceable
Germany	44	Not Serviceable
Nigeria	40	Serviceable
Italy	35	Not Serviceable

Serviceable Obtainable Market - We are placed the 15th BSP amongst Engati, Haptik, Yellow, AI Sensy, Kaleyra, Gupshup, Route Mobile, Vonage, Verloop, Infobip, Karix,360 Dialog, Twilio, Message Bird, CM, Zoho, Lime Chat, trengo, Sendinblue, Webengage, Moengage, Clevertap, braze etc.
Considering that we are not primarily a WhatsApp-focused organization, we aim to capture a respectable 5% market share. This equates to approximately 44.5 million USD or 371 Crores INR. Currently, our revenue stands at around 60 - 65 Crores INR, representing approximately 17% of our target market share. This leaves significant room for growth and potential profitability in our business.

Product Potential - Value Theory - RCS

RCS is positioned as a potential replacement for SMS, offering similar functionality at comparable costs. Leveraging our existing product features such as API, Journey Orchestration, Campaigns, and Chatbot capabilities, we anticipate capturing a substantial share of market (SOM) revenue, estimated to be around 220 Crores or 26 Million USD, mirroring our current SMS revenues.

Market Sizing as of today

Considering our current limitations and modest business numbers, we anticipate achieving a combined SOM of 600 Crores or 75 Million USD. This projection includes a markup of 20% across both products and is based on a capped market share of just 5%, which we believe is achievable. It's important to note that this estimation excludes any platform fees that Netcore Charges or any kickbacks received from META or Google.
So, its clear that we have clear upside potential, but do we have the right to win? What is going to be our Core Value proposition that makes our customers talk about our product?

Core Marketing Pitch

Marketing Pitch 1 :
Our core marketing pitch for WhatsApp/RCS revolves around our unparalleled ability to personalize interactions based on user behavior across websites and apps. By integrating our SDKs into our customers' assets, we can recommend products, identify preferences, segment users based on their funnel stage, and create comprehensive 360-degree views of customers. This level of personalization sets us apart from other API or Chatbot-focused players who struggle to achieve such depth.

Marketing Pitch 2 :
Furthermore, our recent acquisition of Unbxd, a leading player in Search and Product personalization, reinforces our position as the top contender in this space. This acquisition gives us a significant edge in delivering high-quality recommendations tailored to each individual user.

Marketing Pitch 3 :
In addition to our personalization prowess, we differentiate ourselves as an Omnichannel Martech leader. Our offering includes sophisticated dashboards, advanced reporting capabilities, dedicated enterprise support, and specialized Customer Success Management teams with over 20 years of experience in the Martech industry.

Marketing Pitch 4 :
What truly sets us apart is our comprehensive approach. We offer API-first platforms, conversational bots, Journey orchestration, and Campaign management modules, all seamlessly integrated with popular platforms like Shopify, Haptik, Leadsquared, Salesforce, and more. This versatility positions us as a one-stop solution for businesses seeking comprehensive marketing automation solutions across multiple channels.

Now lets see how we can leverage these marketing pitches via different acquisition channels.

Acquisition Channels - 3 Experiments

Organic Search

Estimated cost for this experiment : 25 - 40 lacs
Resources required : 2 (1 PMM and 1 SEO Expert)
Expected duration : 6 - 8 Months

As I explained in the product category and market section, we have not been represent well in any of the peer reviewed software websites. Netcore still largely remains an Email only player, and with changing dynamics of market, its important for us to position as a Omnichannel player keeping in line with the product features we are building like Merch triggers, omnirecs , Derived Attributes etc.

Below you will find a detailed analysis of how user searches have been on the google search engine and what are the searches we should focus positioning us on the top.

Link to google Sheet for Detailed Analysis : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vic65qRhxB3_QIUwfsShhLhlunoZ2pjSVV_63UXDkj0/edit?usp=sharing

Its clear that focusing on searches focusing on my competitors and my product searches would give us better conversion rates at less effort. I have written 3 articles addressing these needs, but these are just the start, lot detailed and pressing articles across different forums have to be written to bring about any impact.

Article 1: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ucQPZzpHpU9hy8f6dPZ6pfY_ZrdlC7Yj9yYnCcRmFgg/edit?usp=sharing

Article 2:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qem44Vaen0m8zi18bXfozQxbIygEWNohb3jdU4n09HI/edit?usp=sharing

Article 3:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bF_9x5P_kMPChnjoKmliBICvTI5t-qMQkqyQ9ySVRyw/edit?usp=sharing

Paid Ads

The objective of ads is to get your customers of tomorrow , today!

Estimated cost for this experiment : 50 lacs - 2 Crores
Resources required : 4 (1 PMM, 1 Digital Marketer with specialization in Targeting, 2 Content Creators)
Expected duration : 3 Months

Link to my detailed Whimsical on how we are going to target a specific ICP via Linkedin ads. (This is where most of my ICP's are)

https://whimsical.com/paid-ads-8Z5oADTqK6YFciDP4Sot4m@2bsEvpTYSt1Hj6RNQKMSorFrw6XG66ZcwL1

Marketing Pitch 1 : Video Creative - WhatsApp In Journeys for D2C/Ecommerce

Marketing Pitch 1 : Static Creative - WhatsApp In Journeys for D2C/Ecommerce - Carousel Linkedin Ads

Marketing Pitch 1 : Video Creative - Omnichannel Engagement/RCS In Journeys for D2C/Ecommerce

Referral and Partner Design

This is much nuanced and detailed acquisition channel, we could potentially also work on partner reselling frameworks if referral is something which wouldn't work on B2B.

Estimated cost for this experiment : 50 lacs - 2 Crores
Resources required : 10 (2 Product Managers, 7 developers (1 engineering lead, 2 frontend, 2 backend,1 Product designer, 1 Quality Guy), 1 Project Manager)
Expected duration : 1 - 2 years

Further steps and Conclusion

As we move forward, it's crucial to experiment with our acquisition channels to discover the most suitable framework for our organization. We understand that each channel is influenced by our product's stage, and what works for email acquisition may not translate directly to newer channels like Zalo, Viber, or Line. These platforms demand a different, faster, more cost-effective, and feedback-driven approach. Should we decide to pursue these opportunities, organizational adjustments will be necessary to provide adequate support. Recognizing the scope of this endeavor, I acknowledge that executing these steps alone would be challenging.
Moving ahead, I plan to outline strategies for Onboarding, Engagement & Retention, and Monetization in upcoming projects.

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