Q&A with Rodolfo from Chama App

For this edition of App Marketers in Quarantine Answering Questions, Jampp’s Marketing Manager, Florencia Vago, spoke with Rodolfo Lutfi, Digital Marketing and CRM Coordinator at Chama App.

Q&A with Rodolfo Lufti

Rodolfo Lufti has 10 years of experience in Digital Marketing for e-commerce and apps, and has spent the last year and a half honing his mobile marketing and A/B testing skills at Chama.

For our readers outside Brazil, Chama is a start-up whose mission is to provide Brazilian consumers with a convenient alternative for ordering their cooking gas, making it easy to choose their preferred dealer based on price, quality, or ETA.

Florencia: Hi, thanks for chatting with us. So you’re based in São Paulo, right? Are you guys still in quarantine?

Rodolfo: Yes, they are opening things up. As of this week we have bars and restaurants starting to open, as well as hair salons. Since yesterday, we can go and eat there. They have a very limited capacity, 30% I think... which is weird because we are not on the descending curve yet.

Florencia: I imagine they're concerned with the business side, some businesses have not been able to adapt to the quarantine situation. In that sense, we are lucky that our product isn't affected by it. What was transitioning to the WFH model like for you and your team?

Rodolfo: The decision was taken very quickly. We got the message on a Friday afternoon: "don't come to the office on Monday". It was very early in March, but it really doesn't affect our work, we just kept working as if we were in the office.

Florencia: How do you stay connected with the rest of the team? Did you have to make any adjustments?

Rodolfo: Half of the company is in Amsterdam, so we were used to having these kinds of interactions already. For the Brazilian team, it is more lonely work now, but on the other side of that, I think I have more time to focus and concentrate on the work. I know some people wanted to go back to the office, but our holding company told us to shut it down because it is still not safe.


Florencia: Right, hopefully soon! Moving on to mobile marketing, tell us a little about how you got started?

Rodolfo: Chama is actually the first 100% mobile company that I've worked for. My previous job was in a digital company but it was mostly desktop. We did have a website that was mobile-friendly, but the app didn’t play a key role. I've been at Chama for a year and a half, and we are 100% focused on the app.

Florencia: Not a bad time to be working on mobile. This year has been quite intense. I imagine that for Chama the quarantine must have boosted the demand?

Rodolfo: Yes, the first two months we saw a huge spike in installs, we got a lot of new customers. The main gain was on the PR side, we had media coverage for free and that was very helpful.


Florencia: And has the surge in demand stabilized? Do you see more users staying long term?

Rodolfo: The current demand is still a bit higher than last year, but it is more in line with the numbers we had in January/February. It has stabilized somewhat. I think that what the quarantine brought is that people are more inclined to use delivery tools and things like that. Some of our customers are a bit reluctant to use cellphones for this service, since 96% of our Android users have low-performing smartphones.


Florencia: What’s one piece of advice/ best practice about app marketing you can share?

Rodolfo: I've always loved testing things, but specially here it's mandatory to test everything. And to base our tests and assumptions on research. So our focus as a Marketing team is to develop research and try to connect all these areas so as to make everything work better.

On the marketing side specifically, we also do a lot of testing, specially with messages and media partners. We usually A/B-test messages and timing (ToD, DoW), and we are also developing CRM groups on Braze, push messages, and emails. So it's a lot of different variables that can affect the results of a campaign.


Florencia: What do you think are the main challenges for growth marketers today?

Rodolfo: The first one is actually knowing who you need to target.
The second one, and we've been able to thrive in this, is... so we had a lot of overspend in a lot of media partners, because the frequency was off. The message was being displayed too many times. We were paying for no extra results, and since February we decided to lower our investment in some channels. With channels that don't let you see or control certain variables like frequency, it's important to test and manage the spend, which is something you can control.

We don't work with too many partners. We did a little bit of testing at the beginning of the year and now we are trying to look for other media partners that can maybe bring us new people.

Florencia: Speaking of testing media partners, what do you look for when searching for new partners?

Rodolfo: We have two concerns, one is safety and the trustworthiness of the partner, which is mostly related to preventing ad fraud. Since at the moment we are very focused on CPA, the second concern is to look for partners that can deliver bottom-of-the-funnel results, such as customers that will actually come back to the app and purchase.

We also look for partners that can do things that our current partners can’t, so we can try new initiatives.


Florencia: Do you have any podcasts/ books to recommend for those of us still quarantined?

Rodolfo: I’ve watched all the TV shows 😂. It's hard to pick one, but I like Billions a lot! And as for books, I'm reading Serena by Ian McEwan, I'm not done yet, but I really like it so far. And then there's a podcast called Codigo Aberto. It's basically a series of interviews to Heads of Marketing, it's very interesting. I used to listen to it more before the quarantine, mostly when driving, but I try to listen to one at least once a week.

Staying Connected

The pandemic and subsequent quarantine measures have impacted different verticals and markets in diverse ways. In our latest Q&A series, we chat with app marketers from around the world to hear their take on the current challenges and their experiences in the industry. Do you have any best practices, recommendations, or insights to share? Get in touch!