redBus successfully pilots Google’s AMP for email

redBus successfully pilots Google’s AMP for email

AMP has allowed redBus to greatly increase engagement with users and reduce bounce rates

Bengaluru, April 24, 2018: redBus, the world’s largest bus ticketing platform, has successfully tested Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page) feature, as one of the few brands, globally, who came on board for a trial of the concept. Google recently announced implementation of AMP or interactive email, for users of Gmail.

AMP is a technological leap for emails, allowing them to be interactive and dynamic, as opposed to a fixed or static display of information that it used to be all these years. The concept allows for hosting of live content on emails, triggering respondents to engage with the content without having to be redirected to another website or app, thus reducing drop-offs.

The developers at redBus consider the usage of this technology to be a powerful way to create more engaging, interactive and actionable experiences on Email, enabling recipients to interact dynamically with content.

redBus will be using AMP for the process of collecting feedback from bus travellers for rating and review of bus operators they travel with. The whole process will become a lot easier with AMP as users will complete the process without leaving their email inbox where they have been asked to review their bus travel experience.

Going forward, redBus intends to use the concept for other use-cases such as purchasing a ticket or even tracking the live location of their bus from within the ticket Email itself, greatly enhancing user experience.

“We have witnessed a positive change in behaviour among our mail recipients, post implementation of AMP, which is clearly a game changer. Hosting dynamic content on email makes a huge difference to the overall experience of customer-brand interactions and consequently on the amount of user-generated content we can collect. We are happy to be one of the 9 brands globally at the time of the launch, to have partnered with Google to pilot this new technology” - Krishnan Ramaswami, Senior Vice President, Product, Analytics and, Acquisition for redBus.

About redBus

redBus was founded in 2006 in India and today is the world’s largest online bus ticketing platform. After having solved complex problems of bus customers in India, redBus also launched operations in Singapore and Malaysia in 2015 and acquired a majority stake in Peru based bus ticketing platform Busportal (now redBus.Pe) in the subsequent year. With this acquisition, redBus successfully launched operations in Latin America markets, Peru & shortly thereafter, Colombia. 

redBus has globally sold more than 180 million bus tickets till date and has a customer base of around 20 million users. redBus is now part of the MakeMyTrip group (Nasdaq, MMYT) which is the largest travel aggregator in India with offerings across categories such as Flights, Hotels, Holiday Packages, etc.

The business owns the following products - redBus™, redPro Win™, YourBus™  and Seat Seller™, which come together to serve and address the fragmented bus industry across geographies. 

·   redBus™ is the popular consumer-facing travel brand enabling customers to buy bus tickets online. Consumers, depending on where they live, can access redBus on the web (redbus.in, redbus.my, redbus.sg, redbus.id, redbus.pe and redbus.co).  They can also download the highly rated redBus mobile app from Google Play Store and Apple App Store. We enable a customer to search for bus services on a route of his/her choice, reserve a seat and make a payment to confirm the booking, thus bringing the seller and buyer on a single platform to facilitate easy bus booking.

·   redProWin™ is a cloud-based solution built for bus operators. Approximately 2500+ bus operators in India, SEA and Latin America use this platform for their day to day operations. Through the use of engineering & data analytics, redPro Win offers features such as Pricing and Occupancy Analytics, Analytics around Customer Ratings and Reviews of bus services, and a Promotions and Pricing platform to improve Yield. These solution help bus operators improve operational efficiency as well as service quality.

·   YourBus™ is a real time location tracking platform for buses. It helps bus operators with understanding Deleys through Punctuality reports and also monitor Driver performance through Overspeeding, Route Deviation and Undscheduled Halts reports. The real time bus tracking helps redBus with equipping passengers on the bus with real time location updates and sharing the location information with friends and family for enhanced safety.

·   Seat Seller™ is a GDS for bus inventory distribution and is used by more than 20,000 retail agents and 200+ OTAs to sell bus tickets to their customers.