How ekar reduced CAC by 40% in a year using Voucherify and Braze

ekar is the Middle East's largest personal mobility company, offering users on-demand access to a wide range of carshare, subscription leasing, and other mobility services. ekar aims to transform transportation consumption by enabling car rental and leasing companies, as well as peer-to-peer rentals, through its Mobility OS platform. 

• Rising costs and complexity of Talon.One hindered promotions efficiency and scalability.
• Need for a user-friendly promotion engine that could be managed by a small marketing team.
• Ineffective multi-channel tracking limited promotions insights, while high CAC made efficient scaling a challenge.

Moving from Talon.One to Voucherify

ekar needed a flexible solution to incentivize users to try their car rental services and boost app adoption. Initially, they integrated Talon.One, but quickly realized it was too expensive and rigid for their dynamic business needs. With no easy way to upgrade or downgrade pricing plan as demand shifted, Talon.One wasn’t a good fit for the fast-moving mobility industry, where customer preferences and market dynamics change frequently.

ekar turned to Voucherify, finding it a much more cost-effective and adaptable solution for their needs. The migration was quick – Talon.One's promotions and attributes were easily translated into Voucherify's built-in entities and custom metadata, without any disruption to the end-user experience.

Beyond the more flexible and transparent pricing structure, ekar’s marketing team also appreciated Voucherify’s user-friendly interface, which made managing promotions and coupon codes simpler, more efficient, and less resource-intensive.

Personalized promotions for the mobility industry

A core component of ekar's promotional strategy is incentivizing first rentals by offering discounted or free first-time rentals to new users. This tactic is effective in lowering the barrier for first-time customers, encouraging them to try the service and ultimately drive app downloads and initial bookings.

To better control their marketing budget, ekar uses metadata such as rental type, car type, and rental duration to target specific behaviors and optimize spending. For example, ekar runs  promotions exclusively for longer rentals or specific car types, ensuring that their incentives are being used by the right customers under the right circumstances.

Additionally, ekar uses Voucherify’s customer segmentation to group their user base into specific cohorts. This allows for highly targeted campaigns, such as promotions tailored to frequent renters, long-term customers, or users in particular geographic locations.

The impact of Voucherify was immediate. Over 500 unique coupon codes were generated for influencer campaigns, bank partnerships, and time-limited promotions. By leveraging user behavior data, ekar was able to segment its audience more effectively – for example, targeting frequent Sedan users with SUV rental discounts, which increased cross-category bookings by 15%. Personalized campaigns also improved user acquisition, driving a 20% lift in install-to-first-trip conversion rates. Most notably, ekar achieved a 40% reduction in customer acquisition costs within a year.

This success was driven by a combination of streamlined promotion management and data-driven targeting enabled by Voucherify and Braze. Finally, ekar’s marketing team felt empowered to launch and scale campaigns without relying heavily on engineering resources, while customers received relevant incentives that encouraged both trial and repeat use.

Braze integration for enhanced personalization

ekar uses Braze as their CDP and marketing automation tool. Thanks to the robust integration between Braze and Voucherify, ekar's team can synchronize customer data between both platforms. This enables ekar to use Braze’s Connected Content to deliver personalized promo codes directly to targeted Braze audiences.

With Voucherify’s intuitive interface and deep Braze integration, the marketing team can now independently manage promotions and deliver personalized coupons through email, push notifications, WhatsApp, SMS, and in-app messaging. Promo codes are applied with a single tap, enhancing usability and adoption.