Delivering 1:1 Customer Experiences to Accelerate Revenue

+200% YoY growth of European subscriber base in March and April of 2020
+100% YoY revenue increase in the US
+50% better conversion rate using push notifications and email combined (versus email alone)
+25% increase in user engagement
Babbel Header 2280x900px

The Business

  • Media & Communications, E-learnin
  • Berlin, Germany (Clock) Since 2007

As a market leader, Babbel offers one-month, three-month, six-month or yearly subscription options to its language-learning programs. The app saw triple-digit growth during COVID-19 and learning activity in the app doubled from March 2020. Together with SAP Emarsys, they diversified their marketing activity from just to what now includes personalized mobile marketing.

The Challenge

  • Consistent cross-channel execution
  • Delivering real-time, relevant engagements
  • Scaling mobile strategies

Overall, the brand had to maintain innovation to remain competitive with smaller, more agile players in the market. In addition to a new focus on the live tutoring
space and making the app free for students, Babbel needed to boost personalization within its app. The goal was to create a quicker, easier path-to-purchase for those with high likelihood to convert right away while serving helpful suggestions and courses to those who may be undecided.

“At the end of the day, we want to personalize the whole product experience. Eventually, no two people who enter [our] bubble should have the exact same experience if they use the product differently… [and] we’re working to have personalized recommendations at all times… [in the future, things will become] much more diverse… real-time personalization will get much more interesting for us in the future.”
Quote Babbel Nina Pollex 01 160x160
Nina Pollex
Director of CRM at Babbel

The Solution

With the SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement Platform, Babbel was able to gain insights about customers such as their level of intent to learn a new language. They were able to identify and segment high, medium, and low intent learners to streamline the right personalized engagement at the right time.

With email as the core communication channel, Babbel’s investment in mobile — personalized in-app messaging along with push — converted
50% better than email by itself. After implementing personalization within the app, Babbel began driving better brand awareness, gaining more subscribers, and boosting engagement.

The Impact

Due to their investment in mobile, Babbel saw year-over-year growth, especially in the US market, which has been their biggest market to date. Push and mobile messaging also converted better than email, which has traditionally been their go-to communication method. They also increased engagement in key segments.

The vision is to ultimately create UX parity across all platforms and devices – web, desktop, email, and mobile – completely optimized based on customers’ affinity, programs or courses taken, plus more.

200% YoY growth of European subscriber base in March and April of 2020
100% YoY revenue increase in the US
50% better conversion rate by using push notifications and email combined (versus email alone)
25% increase in user engagement
Hero Intelligence

Explore the SAP Emarsys Product Hub