Southeast Asian tech startup StoreHub, a platform that helps growing enterprises automate and grow their businesses, announced the launch of StoreHub Engage, an all-new automated SMS marketing tool that helps retailers and restaurants engage with their customers, drive repeat sales, and build customer loyalty by automating personalized SMS campaigns.

Fully integrated into its point of sales (POS) platform, the new feature allows businesses already using StoreHub’s ecosystem to automate up to four personalized SMS campaigns to existing customers within their database. This includes sending cashback reminders and birthday voucher codes — with the goal of getting customers to spend with the business again. 

Across all markets, there are already over 300 businesses using StoreHub Engage, with restaurants and retailers seeing a median return on investment (ROI) of up to 18 times through a surge in repeat customers as well as new customers brought in by improved Google ratings.

With the Philippine economy expected to pick up in 2023, local businesses have been encouraged to increase digital adoption in order to leverage on opportunities to grow their business. In fact, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Secretary Alfredo Pascual recently urged growing businesses and entrepreneurs to adopt digital solutions to “operate more efficiently, reduce costs, reach bigger markets, and earn more profits.”

Commenting on StoreHub Engage, Wai Hong Fong, Chieftain and co-Founder of StoreHub, said: “Traditional brick and mortar businesses typically lack access to specialised knowledge to effectively reach their customers. We built Engage  to help automate that.”

“Imagine it’s your customer’s birthday - Engage will send them a personalised ‘Happy birthday’ SMS with a unique voucher code. Instead of spending time doing this manually, or paying for expensive tools or specialists to achieve this, business owners can now just turn it on and let it run,” said Fong.

Merchants can automate a variety of SMS campaigns to customers within their database — from birthday promotions to engaging customers who have not visited in awhile. StoreHub has seen SMEs make the most of this feature, with multiple merchants sharing their positive feedback.

"I used to engage with my customers manually. I am glad it's automated now as it makes things easier, saves me time, and potentially helps me increase my revenue,” said Romeo Ramos, the owner at Inigos, a Filipino and Korean street food eatery in Manila. 

"StoreHub Engage has been an effective feature in helping us boost our revenue, as well as a big help in building customer satisfaction,” said Rogelio Palle, the owner at Dungeon, another StoreHub merchant. 

StoreHub Engage is the latest feature to be integrated into StoreHub’s platform - an ecosystem of over 30 features built for retail and F&B SMEs to operate efficiently and grow. The platform started as a cloud-based POS but has since evolved into a full suite of solutions inclusive of inventory tracking, staff management, automated ordering and payment with QR, real-time reporting and analytics, and more.