Rasello, an SMS broadcast service, wants to give businesses in Africa an edge on mustering solid customer-base by enabling them to send customised messages in their promotional strategies.
Natalino Mwenda, one of the founders, told HumanIPO that the firm, founded in December 2011, has a business model where businesses only pay for SMS credit to push SMS Broadcasts to their consumers.
“All other services such as group analytics, online broadcasts, public pages, social plug-ins are free for businesses to benefit,” he said.
Currently, the company has above 300 businesses using Rasello in Tanzania alone, with broadcasts seen up to 5,000 times online each day, Mwenda said.
“We are eyeing smaller and medium sized businesses to enable the firms generate a database of interested consumers and market to them at their convenience at industry low tariffs through purchasing SMS credit from the platform to serve direct marketing,” he added.
According to Mwenda, his business wants to enable other businesses to get deeper insight about their consumers through Resello’s group analytics, which enables the businesses using the SMS broadcast service to serve more targeted updates, news or offers in relation to their consumer groups.
Rasello, which is interactive, helps know how to round up the interested clients This will enable the businesses to connect and communicate more to their loyal clients. The clients can also follow businesses they like — to receive broadcasted news, offers and updates via SMS.
Mwenda has been in the marketing industry for over 8 years. He says questions about return of investment on marketing initiatives, including the number of people the adverts reached and whether the businesses are connected to the customers, or how to constantly engage the customers to a brand often exist.
Mwenda and Puspa Raj Bhattarai founded Rasello.
