Turning Surplus into Celebration – how Fiksuruoka coordinated their communication across various channels through a single platform

Step into the world of Fiksuruoka, and you enter a movement. This isn't just an online grocery store; it's a vibrant response to one of our planet's most pressing challenges: food waste. With every click and every parcel delivered, Fiksuruoka (also operating as Foodello in some markets) is on a mission to ensure that perfectly good food nourishes people, not landfills. Their commitment to sustainability is woven into the very fabric of their operations, transforming surplus groceries – whether nearing a best-before date, sporting old packaging, or simply overstocked – into opportunities for conscious consumers.

For five years, Custobar has had the privilege of partnering with this forward-thinking company. The results of their dedication are genuinely inspiring. As Henriikka from Fiksuruoka shares, they have successfully rescued 20 million kilograms of food since their journey began in a humble garage in 2016. "It’s a figure that almost defies imagination," Henriikka notes. "We once created a visual for 15 million kilos, and it was like a mountain of food over Helsinki. It really brings home the scale of what we can achieve together." This profound impact is a testament to their innovative model and unwavering passion.

For such a celebrated brand, renowned for its diverse and high-quality offerings, the desire is always to make every guest feel uniquely cherished. This means ensuring their communication is as personal and captivating as the experiences themselves, and their loyalty program is seamless and rewarding – especially when you're managing such a fantastic array of experiences across hotels, safaris, and ski resorts!

The Quest for Smarter Connections: A Mission-Critical Challenge

For a company like Fiksuruoka, where the inventory is as dynamic as their mission is urgent, connecting the right products with the right customers at precisely the right moment is more than just a marketing goal – it's fundamental to their success. The challenge was clear: how to effectively communicate about a constantly changing array of unique, often time-sensitive, surplus items to a growing community of eco-conscious shoppers.

Generic, one-size-fits-all approaches wouldn't do. Fiksuruoka needed to:

• Cultivate a deep understanding of their customers' diverse preferences and buying patterns.
• Move beyond broad outreach to deliver personalized, timely information about specific batches of food.
• Master communication across multiple channels; email, sms, app & web pushes and external marketing channels, meeting their customers where they are.
• Seamlessly weave their powerful story of impact and sustainability into every interaction.
• Be certain that the chosen solution will not only grow with them, but be an evolving growth engine for future

The core objective was to make the food rescue journey effortless and engaging for their customers, empowering them to make choices that are good for their wallets and great for the planet.

To effectively reduce food waste, we need to reach our customers with timely information on the channels they actually use. Custobar is central to this – allowing us to coordinate email, SMS, and even sync audiences to our social media ads, ensuring good food finds a home.

 

Henriikka Raussi

Head of Marketing Finland

Fiksuruoka - Foodello

Custobar: The Engine for Fiksuruoka’s Multichannel Purpose

Fiksuruoka's search for a Customer Data Platform led them to Custobar. They required a solution that was not only robust and versatile but also intuitive enough to be wielded effectively by a fast-moving team. Key to their decision was Custobar's ability to:

1. Unify Customer Insights: Create that all-important single view of the customer, bringing together purchase history and interactions to paint a clear picture of who their shoppers are and what they care about.
2. Enable Precise Segmentation: Allow for the creation of highly specific customer groups based on past behaviour, preferences, and engagement, ensuring communications are always relevant.
3. Automate with Intelligence: Free up the Fiksuruoka team by automating key communication flows, from welcoming new food rescuers to re-engaging past purchasers.
4. Orchestrate a True Multichannel Dialogue: This was paramount. Fiksuruoka needed a central hub to manage and deploy targeted campaigns across email and SMS, and critically, to build custom audiences for their advertising on external channels like Meta and Google. The platform's capabilities for app and web push notifications also provided valuable future-proofing.

As Henriikka puts it, "Our business model demands agility and precision in how we communicate. Custobar provided the comprehensive multichannel toolkit we needed, combined with a user experience that allowed us to get straight to making an impact."

From Data to Delivery: How Fiksuruoka Champions Food Rescue with Custobar

At the heart of Fiksuruoka’s daily operations, Custobar acts as the central nervous system for their customer engagement strategy:

• Tailored Multichannel Outreach: Imagine a fresh delivery of organic coffee arrives. Using Custobar, Fiksuruoka can swiftly identify customers who have previously purchased organic items or are coffee connoisseurs. An engaging email can showcase the new arrivals. For an even more immediate nudge, especially for highly perishable goods, a targeted Push message or SMS can be dispatched.
• Amplifying Reach with Smarter Ads: It’s not just about direct messaging. Fiksuruoka leverages Custobar to create laser-focused audience segments that are then shared with Sanoma, Meta and Google Ads. This ensures their advertising budget is spent wisely, reaching new potential customers who are most likely to embrace the Fiksuruoka mission.
• A Consistent Voice Across Every Touchpoint: Whether it's an email detailing the story behind a rescued artisan product, an Push alert for a "last chance" offer, or a social media ad inviting new users to join the movement, the underlying data and segmentation in Custobar ensure every message is on-brand, relevant, and timely.
• Streamlined Automation, Maximised Impact: Automated customer journeys, such as a welcome series explaining the Fiksuruoka philosophy or reminders about the positive impact of each purchase, are managed efficiently, fostering a deeper connection with their community.

"The ability to coordinate our communications across various channels from a single platform is invaluable," Henriikka would emphasize. "Whether it's an email, an app Push, SMS, or feeding precise audiences to our digital ads, Custobar helps us ensure our message about specific, time-sensitive stock gets to the right people, in the right way. This is crucial for maximizing food rescue."

Unifying the Conversation: Transactional Messages with Fiksuruoka Finesse

For a brand as dedicated to its mission and customer experience as Fiksuruoka, every touchpoint matters. This philosophy extends beyond marketing campaigns to include essential communications like order confirmations, shipping notifications, and other transactional messages. Many businesses overlook the potential of these interactions, often sending them from different systems, leading to a disjointed feel.

Fiksuruoka, however, saw an opportunity to further enhance consistency and efficiency by managing these crucial messages through Custobar. This decision was driven by several clear benefits that align perfectly with their customer-centric approach. Sending transactional messages via Custobar ensures that the look and feel are perfectly harmonized with their marketing communications, presenting a unified brand front. Furthermore, it brings all outbound customer communications under one roof, providing a complete overview and simplifying management.

As Henriikka from Fiksuruoka explains, the choice was straightforward: "The obvious reason for shifting our transactional messages to Custobar was that then they have the same visual look as in other messages, and we also have all the communications to the client going out from one place. Also, adding marketing content to the transactional messages is possible with Custobar in a better way than with another tool."

This strategic move means that even an order confirmation can be more than just a receipt; it’s another opportunity to reinforce the Fiksuruoka brand, share relevant information, or perhaps even include a subtle nod to their food rescue mission. By centralizing these messages, Fiksuruoka ensures every communication, no matter its primary purpose, contributes positively to the overall customer journey and is managed with the same care and precision as their targeted marketing efforts.

Expanding Horizons: Engaging New Markets with the Foodello App

As Fiksuruoka looked to grow beyond Finland, they launched their Foodello brand in Benelux region. This expansion brought with it a new strategic asset: the Foodello mobile app. The app represented a powerful opportunity to build direct relationships with a completely new customer base. However, having an app is one thing; turning it into a dynamic and effective communication channel is another.

This is where Custobar’s capabilities became instrumental. To leverage the app's potential even further, Foodello needed a way to send timely, relevant messages directly to their users' mobile devices as part of the overall communication flow. Custobar’s robust push notification feature provided the perfect solution.

By integrating their app with Custobar, the Foodello team was able to:

• Send targeted push notifications about new surplus arrivals, special offers, and flash sales.
• Re-engage users who hadn't opened the app in a while with a friendly nudge.
• Create another vital, direct line of communication, building a loyal following in a new market.

This allowed Foodello to quickly establish the app as a cornerstone of their customer communication strategy in Benelux, proving how a unified data platform with versatile channel support is essential for driving international growth.

Rekindling Connections: Tangible Success with Winback Automations

Having all customer data and automation capabilities centralized in one platform, like Custobar, truly shines when it translates into tangible business benefits – and for many, increased sales is the number one key performance indicator (KPI). Fiksuruoka embraces a culture of continuous improvement and data-driven experimentation, and Custobar, often in conjunction with its connected platforms, provides the ideal environment for effectively developing and testing a wide array of automations.

One such successful test, representing just a part of their broader series of data-informed initiatives, involved their strategic use of Winback automations. Understanding that a timely, relevant nudge could bring inactive customers back into their community of food rescuers, they leveraged Custobar's automation capabilities to put this specific theory to the test.

The results from this particular Winback automation test speak volumes about the effectiveness of their overall data-driven approach. For customers who were part of this Winback program, Fiksuruoka observed:

• A Conversion Rate (CR) approximately 8% higher than comparable groups not receiving the automation.
• An impressive 18% increase in the volume of purchases from these re-engaged customers.

These figures aren't just numbers from an isolated campaign; they represent more rescued food, more active customers participating in Fiksuruoka's mission, and provide a clear demonstration of how intelligent automation – rigorously tested and refined – can turn potential churn into renewed loyalty and sales. It’s a testament to Fiksuruoka's commitment to understanding customer behaviour and using tools like Custobar to respond with personalized, automated communication at the right moment, a strategy they actively test and prove across many initiatives.

A Partnership Built on Shared Purpose and Lasting Impact

Our five-year collaboration with Fiksuruoka has been a source of immense satisfaction. It’s a profound example of how technology can serve a greater environmental and social good. We deeply admire Fiksuruoka's innovative spirit and their relentless dedication to their cause.

"Custobar has been a reliable partner in our journey," Henriikka might conclude. "The platform provides the essential multichannel tools that empower us to connect effectively with our community and advance our core mission. It’s a system that supports our team every day as we work to turn a global problem into a positive solution."

The Tangible Taste of Success: More Food Saved, A Community Empowered

The true measure of success for Fiksuruoka is written in the millions of kilograms of food saved and the growing community of consumers making a positive difference. Custobar is proud to be an enabling part of this equation.

Through a smart, data-informed, multichannel marketing strategy powered by Custobar, Fiksuruoka has consistently:

• Accelerated the journey of surplus food to appreciative homes, directly minimizing waste.
• Deepened engagement with their customers, fostering loyalty through relevant and meaningful interactions.
• Optimized their marketing efforts, allowing the team to dedicate more energy to strategic growth and impact initiatives.
• Expanded the reach of their vital mission, inviting more people to become active participants in the fight against food waste.

Having a single platform like Custobar to manage our core customer communications across various channels – email, SMS, and supporting our external ad targeting – brings real efficiency to our marketing. After five years, it’s proven to be a very reliable system that supports our daily work in making a positive impact.

Henriikka Raussi

Head of Marketing Finland

Fiksuruoka - Foodello

The Adventure in Food Rescue Continues

We are genuinely excited to continue supporting the incredible team at Fiksuruoka as they write the next chapter of their success story. Their journey is a powerful reminder that with passion, innovation, and the intelligent use of data, businesses can indeed change the world for the better.

If Fiksuruoka's story has inspired you to think about how a deeper understanding of your customers and a smarter multichannel approach could elevate your own mission, we at Custobar would be thrilled to explore the possibilities with you. We truly love data and the amazing things it can help businesses achieve!