The use of customer relationship management (CRM) tools has exploded in recent years, so that the market size is expected to experience compound annual growth of 12.5% and be worth $145.79 billion over the next six years. This growth is largely due to the rise of online merchants who use CRM tools to drive sales, increase profits and beat increasing competition from other providers.
One such platform that helps consumer brands use their data to grow is Game balla CRM platform for customer information and marketing, which was launched in 2020 by Egyptian entrepreneurs Ahmed Khairy (DIRECTOR) Ahmed El-Assy (CPO), and Omar Alphar (CTO).
Gameball says brands use their tools to build long-lasting relationships with customers and ensure retention through personalized loyalty programs that are informed by data.
Khairy told businessroundups.org that growth has been exponential since the startup’s launch, and they’ve served more than 7,000 companies to date, reaching 20 million customers. The startup plans to grow this further by embarking on a marketing campaign and setting up hubs in regions where the platform will be on-demand in the coming year.
Gameball’s expansion drive is backed by a $3.5 million seed funding it raised from 500 Global, P1 Ventures, Launch Africa and Middle East VC’s Seedra Ventures, Arzan Ventures, Propeller, Core Vision, as well as a number of regional investors.
“In the future, we will focus more on commercializing the product. We are also trying to focus on certain countries that will give us access to certain regions… like the UK to give us access to Europe, and Saudi Arabia for the GCC region,” said Khairy.
“We see a lot of growth coming out of those markets, and besides being mature markets, it’s easier for them to adopt solutions and technologies like Gameball. Their economies are more or less stable, so we can better leverage them for growth.”
Hisham Halbouny, general partner at P1 Ventures, said: “The consumer landscape is evolving rapidly with brands competing for customer engagement, trust and retention. Gameball solves a major multi-billion dollar challenge that could transform digital marketing, customer loyalty and monetization around the world. We are excited to support the team on their journey as they expand their footprint in new markets.
Khairy, Assy, and Alfar started building Gameball as a Shopify app, before moving on to building an API solution for businesses outside of Shopify.
Khairy says clients using their platform can run multi-channel marketing campaigns, run loyalty programs, build customer profiles for targeted promotions, and rewards for increased engagement.
“Our customers have many channels and points of interaction with the customers, but bringing all those things together in one dashboard, where they can actually get better insights into their customer behavior and customer insights and then use that data to run efficient marketing campaigns, is one of the biggest pain points for our customers. So we started building for that problem,” Khairy said.
Gameball’s clientele includes Sega, Xiaomi, Experience Philippines, and Breadfast. Image credit: Game ball.
Khairy added that by analyzing customer behavior, Gameball is able to provide monetization opportunities for brands and help them efficiently upsell and cross-sell within their customer base.
“We empower marketers to gain better insights, data and visibility into customer behavior. We’re basically giving them the tools to more efficiently run the retention and marketing campaigns based on this data, and to personalize those relationships and monetize them,” he said.
He added that the platform helps brands tap into existing customers, who can provide more value to businesses than new customers. In addition, companies no longer need to blindly spend money on customer acquisition through paid advertising, as they have the ability to tap into existing ads through targeted campaigns and loyalty programs.
Gameball’s customers span all industries, including e-commerce, retail, and fintech. Its clientele includes Sega, Xiaomi, Experience Philippines and Breadfast.
