How Cyclofix leveraged Twilio Segment and Twilio Engage to cut acquisition costs to zero and boost customer retention

The big win

Cyclofix, an innovative French bike repair platform, enlisted the help of Twilio Segment when they decided to redirect their marketing efforts from customer acquisition to retention and cut their acquisition costs to zero. This resulted from increasingly high customer acquisition costs (CAC) and ineffective strategies to mitigate customer churn.

So, Cyclofix’s CMO, Clément, was tasked with coming up with strategies to improve retention, where Segment played a key role. One main retention project powered by Segment and Twilio Engage included introducing a novel email-based loyalty program. Every fifth repair earned the customer a €5 voucher, and customers who made their first repair received personalized emails with information tailored to their bike brand. Cyclofix also connected Typeform to Segment to maintain a satisfied customer base by excluding those with a low Net Promoter Score (NPS) from receiving automated emails.

Table of Contents

1. Fueling the marketing engine with data
2. Shifting from customer acquisition to retention
3. The early impact of Cyclofix's new data-driven marketing

Cyclofix, a premier French bike repair service, caters to the needs of busy individuals by ensuring swift repairs of bikes and scooters, completed at the customer's chosen location within a 48-hour timeframe. Facing the challenges of a dynamic startup with an expanding customer base against mounting acquisition costs, they turned their attention away from expensive advertising and towards bolstering customer retention and churn prevention.

Clément Tardy, Cyclofix’s CMO, and his team, was tasked with coming up with a plan to improve retention, but there was a problem — their tech stack was not set up to deliver marketing campaigns at scale. As Clément puts it “we made a decision to shift our focus to customer retention quickly and move away from paid acquisition, which was our primary marketing strategy. Effectively cutting our marketing spend to zero. Our entire team was focused on cutting costs and planning how to refocus on retention. But we didn’t have the right data to know what to focus on. We knew we needed better onboarding and a plan to handle churned customers, but we didn’t know where to start.”

So, Cyclofix turned to Twilio Segment, Clément continues “we ultimately chose Segment over other tools for three reasons. Firstly, implementing Segment was simple, and I could do this without much reliance on the tech team. Secondly, we had been using SendGrid for over five years and we wanted something that would integrate well with it. Lastly, the easy-to-configure and flexible platform meant the marketing team had the autonomy to quickly spin up new campaigns and experiments that were customer-first and trackable.”

The introduction of Segment set the stage for a whole new chapter. It allowed the marketing team to efficiently manage data and set in motion new marketing campaigns based on behavioral insights gathered from Segment, subsequently driving up customer retention. In addition, interactions with customers became more personalized, fostering stronger relationships with customers and increasing the chances of retaining them.

Fueling the marketing engine with data

Before implementing Segment, Cyclofix had a hard time effectively using data for marketing planning. In addition, their tech team was overwhelmed and didn’t have time to support with getting the data they needed. On top of all this, the company was spending a lot of money on paid media without proper observability on performance. All these issues became costly for the company.

Clément and team decided to solve this by implementing a first-party data strategy connecting key data sources like their website, mobile app, and customer surveys from Typeform. Once this was in place they centralized their marketing tactics into one platform with Twilio Engage, a data-first multichannel marketing solution built on top of Segment’s Customer Data Platform (CDP).  

Cyclofix chose Twilio Engage’s Premier package, which includes native channels like email and SMS, to streamline their operations and improve customer engagement. They chose Twilio Engage because it meant they could consolidate all their marketing tools in one place, making  it the most cost-effective option. With Twilio Engage, Cyclofix was able to design and send emails directly from the platform using real-time data, simplifying their previous setup which involved workaround solutions. The platform also offered the ability to experiment with new channels like SMS and WhatsApp to re-target customers who didn’t engage with their emails – they also mapped customers based on the most used device and channel so that they could reach customers where they wanted to be communicated with.

Once Segment and Twilio Engage were fully implemented, Cyclofix was then able to start experimenting with their new retention tactics. Taking advantage of Twilio Engage’s native channels the marketing team had the freedom to design custom emails and strategize on leveraging SMS in their campaigns, in a friendly user interface that’s powered by first-party data.

Cyclofix transitioned to a data-driven marketing approach to enhance its customer retention initiatives. But a new hurdle emerged in the midst of rolling out their new data-driven tactics — Cyclofix merged with beweelsociety. With customer data from each of the two companies living in two different systems, integration seemed daunting. However, thanks to Segment the marketing team were able to easily merge the data into one Segment workspace, seamlessly integrating the different data sources. This had the added benefit of unlocking new first-party data sources for beweelsociety, which did not previously have a CDP.

With this new unified data from beweelsociety, the marketing team used Broadcasts, a batch and blast email sender within Twilio Engage, to send personalized emails rewarding beweelsociety's loyal customers with discounts on new bikes. Additionally, insights from Segment revealed that some customers were not using the most recent version of the Cyclofix app. To address this, they utilized Broadcasts to send reminders to customers to update their app, which had updated pricing. The team then automated this process by building Journeys that automatically triggered an email detailing updated repair costs to customers with the older app version upon booking a bike repair.

Shifting from customer acquisition to retention

With the whole company shifting towards customer retention, the marketing team sprang into action. Starting with an anti-churn campaign, the marketing team launched tailored emails to customers based on the timeline of their last repair, with promotional codes and surveys sent over an 18-month period. Before Segment they weren’t able to build these integrated 1:1 engagement experiences for customers.

The marketing team then moved to improving onboarding — implementing an email onboarding campaign. New customers received welcome emails upon registration, and those who had made a repair joined a new campaign. If there wasn't immediate engagement, Cyclofix sent reminder emails or an SMS and utilized customizable Typeform surveys to gather feedback.

They also introduced an email-based loyalty program. Every fifth repair earned the customer a €5 voucher, and customers who made their first repair received personalized emails with information tailored to their bike brand. Cyclofix also connected Typeform to Segment to maintain a satisfied customer base by excluding those with a low Net Promoter Score (NPS) from receiving automated emails. For every campaign, the marketing team set up conversion goals to better track the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

To enhance these retention strategies, Cyclofix utilized data insights like the 'date of the latest repair' to refine their anti-churn efforts, ensuring marketing communications were timely and relevant. Using Trait Activation, customers with traits such as ‘last repair within the last 30 days’ were excluded from certain media buys to optimize ad spend. This approach was extended to customize messaging based on the number of repairs a customer had completed or the cumulative amount spent, allowing for a more personalized engagement. Furthermore, by integrating feedback data, such as the latest NPS from Typeform surveys, Cyclofix could exclude customers with a recent poor experience from paid ads until their concerns were addressed.

The early impact of Cyclofix's new data-driven marketing

With better data observability, thanks to Segment, the marketing team has recently started to re- test paid acquisition with Meta, TikTok, and Google. Connecting key AdTech channels as Destinations, Cyclofix created customized audiences and sent personalized content. Importantly, this also allowed Cyclofix to exclude individuals who had already made a purchase from the audiences, making their ad campaigns more efficient.

The new retention and churn campaigns have so far been very effective, surpassing industry standards — achieving email open rates of over 70% and recording high click-through rates (CTRs) of 5.7%. As Clément puts it “Segment has empowered the marketing team to experiment and ship without the tech team being involved at each stage. Our marketing campaigns are now powered by first-party data, so we can actually build campaigns that we know customers will find helpful. It’s still early days in our retention journey but we’re very happy with the results so far."

Lisez l'histoire de Cyclofix en français