Context

A marketplace platform needed to improve customer engagement by informing users about new promotions and encouraging them to buy and sell products. Traditional methods like emails and push notifications weren't effective enough, prompting the need for a new communication channel.

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Problem Identification and Consequences

The existing communication methods (emails and push notifications) were failing to effectively engage users and promote marketplace activity. This led to:

1. Lower user engagement with promotional content
2. Reduced effectiveness of marketing campaigns
3. Missed opportunities for increasing buying and selling activities on the platform

The challenge was to create a more effective communication channel without building an entirely new system, which would have been time-consuming and resource-intensive.

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Solution Implementation

To address this issue quickly and efficiently, we decided to leverage and modify the existing chat service:

1. Altered the chat service logic to allow system-generated messages, enabling marketing communications through the familiar chat interface.
2. Implemented an archiving feature for marketing messages, ensuring they would be automatically hidden after a specified period.
3. Conducted load testing to identify performance issues when sending large volumes of messages.
4. Implemented a gradual rollout strategy, prioritizing system stability over feature speed.
5. Optimized database queries and scaled infrastructure to handle increased message volume:
   • Fixed inefficient database queries by properly utilizing existing indexes
   • Increased the number of async job processors and event consumers
   • Scaled Kafka topics by increasing partition count
   • Removed legacy EventStore to eliminate bottlenecks
6. Added controls to pause message sending during inconvenient hours and allow manual management through an admin panel.

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Business and Product Gains

The implementation of this new marketing channel through the existing chat interface resulted in significant improvements:

1. Increased message read rate: 24% for chat messages compared to 15% for push notifications
2. 1.5% increase in conversion on the offer creation form
3. 150,000 new offers published on the marketplace
4. Message sending speed improved from 18 to 50 messages per second after optimizations
5. Better user reception due to the familiarity of the chat interface
6. Improved system resilience and reliability with added controls for message sending

This solution not only met the business requirements but also provided a fast, effective way to engage users and drive marketplace activity without the need for extensive new feature development.

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