Overcoming internal silos is many times the bottleneck of digital transformation in marketing. Samba.ai helped Czech grocery delivery startup Košík to connect the business intelligence team closer to marketing and start benefiting from AI-augmented personalization based on a huge amount of data the startup collects.

Why did you start looking for marketing automation technology?

We wanted to find a tool for marketing automation and email campaigns to enhance our retention activities and strengthen the customer experience.

What was the main reason for choosing Samba.ai?

Honestly, Samba is part of Rockaway Group just like Košík. That made things easier. At the time, we were also looking into other options, but most of them were too expensive for what we needed. Samba was more flexible regarding features and pricing. Moreover, David (the founder of Samba.ai) consults upcoming features with my team to grow together.

What was your expectation regarding the solution?

The key expectation was to have a single tool for managing our campaigns on the level of customer audiences and omnichannel. It saves us a lot of time and manual work, as we are a data-savvy business with the repeated purchases in a matter of weeks. We also expected a native connection to third-party campaign tools like Facebook.

What obstacles did you have to overcome while implementing Samba.ai?

As a grocery delivery business, we are unique. Many marketing automation features usual e-shop needs are not valid for our case. Precise segmentation is a crucial job, keeping in mind different consumer preferences in marketing offers. For example, we cannot send a newsletter with beef at a discount to a vegan. The volume of data we analyze is gigantic. So Samba helps us mostly with execution and channel activation, but our internal BI team provides data and custom audiences for such communication.

How do you use the advanced functions of Samba.ai?

Samba has a smart flow campaign feature with intention triggers, which is helpful for automation and planning. Also, the automated RFM analysis works perfectly. I appreciate the integration with Power BI, which allows me to easily check the results of campaigns. I believe the analytical features of Samba must be especially interesting for small businesses with no data teams.

Is there any feature Samba.ai is missing right now?

There are a few minor features I would appreciate. Some email campaign tools have, for example, more advanced A/B testing or email scheduling. But I do not doubt the Samba team will develop them soon.

What do you consider the biggest innovation by Samba.ai?

Connecting audiences to Facebook would be one of them. In terms of simplification and user experience, an integrated email editor has developed significantly in recent months, which makes our work even easier.

What changes did the solution bring to your team?

It did not bring immediate changes to the team. We still have only a one-person team operating Samba. On the other hand, Samba helped us to overcome internal silos and connect the marketing team to business intelligence. Now we are working closely together to get the best out of personalization. In this regard, Samba is considered a powerful tool within our organization. And the truth is that we could use more people working on this part of our marketing efforts.

How would you describe the overall cooperation with Samba.ai?

The cooperation has been great so far. I would always want the Samba team to have more time on our requirements, but I understand we are not the only client. To this day, we did not come to any serious problem and Samba’s customer support was always ready to help if there was a need.

Would you recommend Samba.ai?

Overall, yes, I would. But it would depend on the size of the e-shop asking and if the e-shop would be able to use the full potential of Samba. There are a couple of Samba features, which are very advanced and require at least a minimum amount of experience working with data. But in terms of price-to-performance ratio, Samba belongs to the best solutions on the market.

About Tomáš Bzirský

Tomáš is an experienced performance marketing professional, focusing on paid search, email campaigns, social media, customer segments, and data. Prior to joining grocery delivery startup Košík as a head of performance marketing, he worked for many key players in travel, automotive, and e-commerce.