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Speaker/s name

Raghavendra Hunasgi, Arnaud Jolif, Matthew Vernhout, Emily Benson

Description

When email is your primary revenue channel how do you maximise results and ensure sustainability. Risk vs Reward

Speakers
Raghavendra Hunasgi, CMO, Evolutyz Corp

Arnaud Jolif, Chief Marketing Officer, DeinDeal AG

Matthew Vernhout, VP, Deliverability North America, Netcore Solution

Emily Benson, Email Marketing Strategist, Dixon Schwabl Advertising

Video URL

https://vimeo.com/531524284

Transcript

Matthew Vernhout 0:30
Hello everyone and welcome to our session today I've got three fantastic panel members here to chat with me today we're going to talk about the business of email. First up, we have Emily Benson with Dixon Schwabl Oh advertising. We have our Arnaud Jolif from the DeinDeal. And we have Raghavendra Hunasgi. Hopefully I got that right. He told me not to pronounce his name, but I did it anyways, coming in to talk about the business of email, we're going to talk about sort of the differences between b2c b2b and talk about things from a CMO perspective or email. So if the other panel members would like to join me here, that would be fantastic welcome. Maybe we can just do a quick round of intro. So I'm Matthew Burnham. As I mentioned, I'm the Vice President deliverability with NET Core, I work in the US division and the North American Division, I work closely with our clients to ensure deliverability best practices, authentication, some marketing strategy, etc. So I do sort of a jack of all trades kind of stuff around here. Emily, do you want to take just 10 seconds and introduce yourself, and then we'll go to Arno and Raghav after?

Emily Benson 1:47
Absolutely. So I'm Emily Benson. I work for Dixon schwebel, which is a women owned marketing agency in western New York. And I help our clients craft their email strategy, focusing on building relationships between their brand and their customers. And then I work across departmentally to craft creative and compliant campaigns that drive conversions.

Matthew Vernhout 2:07
Awesome. Or no?

Arnaud Jolif 2:11
Yes, hi, everybody. I'm Arnaud Jolif, I'm the CMO of DeinDeal, with the leading flash sales website, here in Switzerland, and we've been on the market for more than 10 years now.

Matthew Vernhout 2:29
And then Raghav, you're up?

Raghavendra Hunasgi 2:30
Hey, everyone. I am Raghav. And I'm the CMO at Evolutyz Corp been playing the role of cmo for close to eight plus years now and have been writing books around marketing, and email and all that stuff. And very happy to be here and pleasure interacting with all of you.

Matthew Vernhout 2:48
Awesome, awesome. Let's let's just dive right in. Right, we're talking here, we're at an email conference. And I always like to think about one of the most important assets for any business and email is really their email list, right? If you're, it's the way you're going to reach out to people, it's the way you're going to communicate with people. And things kind of are a little different when it comes to the b2b and then b2c space. So, you know, Emily, when you're looking at b2b lists that are actually bi b2b lists, and you're working with your your counts and your customers, right? How are you helping them grow their lists? How are you helping them sort of target and really sort of engage those customers?

Emily Benson 3:24
Well, I think there's sort of the misconception that b2b is not as creative, it doesn't have the same opportunity for you know, creative engagement, as b2c, there's this thinking that in b2c, you can get really interactive, you can get, you know, very creative in terms of the, the look and feel of the emails, and in terms of where you're approaching, you know, your potential customers. But it's really not that different in b2b, obviously, you're working more at scale, you're working with larger volumes, and you're trying to capture attention of, you know, busy folks like Rob Ave, or no CMOS, who might not necessarily, you know, be hitting their inbox quite as often as a consumer. But I think there's still a lot of opportunity to be creative, and to get your message out there in a really creative way. And I think that's kind of the key to breaking through in that b2b spaces, you're gonna get a lot of the same kind of campaigns of, like, oh, we're gonna run a display ad, people are gonna click through, we're gonna capture their email on our landing page, and then we're gonna, you know, hit him with a bunch of emails. And sometimes that works great for a lot of lead gen, like real high volume, but you're not necessarily going to be capturing the really qualified leads, unless you're really strategic about it.

Matthew Vernhout 4:44
Excellent. Yeah. And then, in contrast, you know, I always find like b2b, it tends to be smaller, less, a little more targeted, hopefully a little more, you know, relevant to the the needs of the recipient, whereas b2c tends to be a little bit more of a wider net you're talking to significantly larger Your population of people are no What do you have to say about sort of list health and sort of data collection for that b2c space to x or contrast what Emily was just saying?

Arnaud Jolif 5:10
Well, first of all, for us, email is key, because it's the most profitable channel we have in marketing as they're delivered, our guest will be key for us. And for that, we make sure that people keep engaged all the way along is a decent gauge with us, and we stop sending out email and we let them get back to us. The other important thing for us as we have huge volumes of emails, we send out daily emails, we try to reduce the maximum marketing pressure regarding email, we don't want to be seen as spammers for them. So when whenever we can get their opt in, for specific emails, or like brand alerts, my favourite brand is back on flash sale. In that case, we will not send out a newsletter, we just send out the brand data hub. And we will introduce within a brand that within these notifications, part of the daily newsletter that we usually send out to them. And we are completely transparent with them regarding the marketing pressure, they can have how, whenever you your team, to our mailing list, we will always remind you the maximum of emails you will receive per day for us or per week, depending if your weekly or daily subscriber. And this is completely transparent with them. And I think that's the key. And that's why we keep on adding. We are over performing the market regarding engagement rate, because we have on average 23% opening rate. Also we send out daily emails to 85% of our mailing list.

Matthew Vernhout 6:57
Excellent, excellent. And then ragout sort of, you know, sitting in both, you know, foot in both worlds, if you will, you know, what are some of the things that you look at when it comes to sort of preventing list fatigue, right, when you want to make sure in the b2b communications, you're not basically pounding someone's door every day, basically, you're getting ignored. And then on the sort of the b2c space, like are not saying sometimes mailing every day is what you need to do. How do you kind of find that balance when you're looking at the two different types of messaging you're talking about?

Raghavendra Hunasgi 7:29
Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a very important at the same time, very tricky question, right, Matthew? So so the two things right one, when I like Emily, also rightly pointing out when I as a CMO, look at my own lifestyle and my own, you know, I don't want agencies to be, you know, telling me that they can help me generate more leads or increase my revenue on a daily or weekly basis, right. I mean, you just send one message and, and if I'm interested, I would definitely get back. So when you when you're doing a b2b mix, you need to make sure that your objectives are very clear. And once you have that nailed, make sure that you make it very interesting, right? One thing that as a CMO that I have seen worked phenomenally well for b2b brands is upfront, tell what value you will add and how you will help them Don't try to be too salesy every time saying, Hey, I'm the best agency here I'm going to help you double your revenues and things like that. So So when it comes to b2b context, there are a couple of important parameters right one is, I mean what when experts like you call as the centre of optimization, I want to make sure that I'm sending it to the time when the CMOS have the time to go read what I'm writing about number one, number two, I want to make sure that my messaging is very crisp and it only talks about value and once they know I'm here to deliver value but add significant amount of you know, growth to their business, I'm sure they will come back to us either say, Hey, this is great or not right now or maybe not understood. The third thing like you, like you said information overload and information. overkill is a big trouble today. And I had a New York based very very reputed agency where they almost started hunting me everywhere right on my email my wife, you know, LinkedIn mailers and everywhere and I was like I literally have to block them reports payments and right back saying hey, you know, please don't don't do this the b2b side. In the b2c world, like you said, that's a battle and it's a cutthroat world out there. Let's say I am a luxury brand who is selling bags. I know for sure that five other competitors are knocking the door every day. And they're what I have seen no work phenomenally well is how do I make sure that I stand out I cut all the cheese and send send mailers which are like just one screen right? saying, Hey, we are running a special flash sale, you know, which is why I'd only do Friday, and here's your coupon. I don't want to send stories and reams of content to my consumers who will who will not even open my next email. So so like you said these two are different words altogether. And you know, b2b is all about sending at the right time right message value at b2c is how Do I keep on creating the top of the mind recall for all the memorials?

Matthew Vernhout 10:06
Okay, well, I don't know where Emily, would you would you challenge any of that? Or would you agree with those conversations or points?

Emily Benson 10:14
I think that the key to both is segmentation, right? I mean, you guys hit on some such good points in terms of like, you want to be talking to the people who are the most engaged differently and on a different cadence than the people who are less engaged. And the the key to do that is to have, you know, really smart programme set up, that are filtering based on that engagement, right, and giving the people the opportunity to opt down rather than out, right. So right off, if you have that message, and you don't want to hear from them for a certain period of time, you want to be able to give a CMO like that, that opportunity to say, I'm not interested right now, I don't necessarily want to not hear from you ever again. So I'm not gonna just you know, universally unsubscribe, but give me that opportunity. Be upfront, be honest about what I'm going to receive and give me that opportunity to say, I'm not there yet. But you know, keep me in mind for the future.

Matthew Vernhout 11:10
I've seen that implemented, it's sort of in that b2c space, like the snooze idea, I come back in three months when I'm ready. That's actually not a terrible thing for it's

Emily Benson 11:18
not a terrible thing. I mean, it establishes that bad, right? Like, they're, they're just not in that space yet. So give them the opportunity to say when they are I mean, the more that we can kind of put that control into whatever customer is, if it's a b2b customer, if it's a b2c customer, people appreciate that, you know? Yeah,

Matthew Vernhout 11:38
absolutely. And are we talking about segmentation? It's a good Good, good segue here. You were talking about sort of the smarter targeting when it comes to you know, here's a brand that I've self identified as I'm interested in and you retarget those, how do you find that that performs compared to sort of your maybe today? I'm not interested in a specific brand and your messaging so you send me more of a generic message? How do you find that the two segments differ when you when you do target like that?

Arnaud Jolif 12:05
What we figured out is that when we immersed the brand our ads with the daily newsletter, we multiplied by three, click through rate on this unit eaters, and the engagement was halved from 23%, up to 56% opening rate. So they are already waiting for these brands, when they ready opt in for receiving specific brand rates or product alerts. They're super happy to receive them. And they know that we have flushed sir. So if they don't buy today, if they don't receive the alert on time, maybe tomorrow, it would be too light to buy the deal. So that's why also there are sewing gadgets at checkout. Dirty man, what what we do a lot is a combination of segmentation and personalization. localization is very important in Switzerland, we're a small country, but we have four distinct languages areas in Switzerland, and they have also coached different cultural robots. So we also mix the content of the newsletter. We personalise, personalise it based on your favourite cities that you have declared or based off different opt ins that you give to us in order to personalise your newsletters. So if you receive too much information, just update your profile and just say I don't want to receive let's say, the restaurant D newsletter, I just want to receive my favourite brands, and you can just receive these images. So we're already hearing at what they say listening to them, sorry. And we just comply with the promise that we make no spam first

Matthew Vernhout 13:52
layering on user behaviour plus sort of a robust preference centres when it sounds like you're you're offering.

Arnaud Jolif 14:00
Yeah, it's very advanced preference centre. It's really the more declaration or data we have, the better. Of course, we use some AI to personalise the newsletter, but we really rely more on decorational data, we want them to tell us what they want to receive, we think it's better and that's where we get better engagement from them.

Matthew Vernhout 14:23
I wish more b2c places would do that, you know, I can't tell how many times I've clicked on a newsletter that I get and it's generic retail, it's like, take me to the men's clothing, and then I every newsletter they ever send me after that is women's clothing or children's clothing. So, you know,

click on the image of the thing that you want to see and it doesn't take you to that page.

There is that option too. Right is one generic link that takes you just somewhere so I think targeting segmentation all of those things, you know certainly are what leads to sort of providing value and you know, right from the point of a sale dmo right? You were talking earlier about those b2b messages and talking about providing value. What are some tips that you would say beyond just, you know, be upfront with the content, but like things that you're looking for, either as a sender that you would say, you know, here's the, here's the things that you need to include that provide that value when you're reaching out in the b2c space, or things that you would say, you know, would want to receive in those same messages to say, you know, here's the value you can offer me and how to present that to me.

Raghavendra Hunasgi 15:31
Beautiful, right? Yeah, very, very beautiful question. So, so I'll just record an example of how an agency kind of got a very large steal one of the leading banks in North America where, you know, my, my classmate from MBA is the CMO. And this is a beautiful narrative that she was telling, we keep getting these mailers about, you know, you know, we are a video agency that creates a beautiful storytelling We are, we are an outdoor shoot agency, that we kind of create your customer testimonial videos and things like that. So this is a leading bank in North America that wants to embark on the 100%, digital banking and talk about it, and then talk about how their whole digital transformation of the bank is happening. And, and they wanted to bring in top five of their, you know, the corporate or the enterprise customers talk about how seamless the bank was, in terms of their app, use a user experience, and all of that, and they wanted to record these videos. And when she started, you know, looking up online, she was, you know, she kind of got all sorts of, you know, emails saying, Hey, we will do it for free, you only pay us if you like the video and things like that. But what really caught our attention was one particular agency that sent her an email with links to three of their, you know, past work with, with another leading bank. So what essentially we are trying to say is, you need to establish that social trust, you know, just by saying, like you said, just putting out the content, saying, I am great, I'm great. Might not convinced the customer, the moment you establish that social trust, the moment, they put out three similar testimonial she clicked on and she landed, she saw the content, she was completely blown away, she said, is the agency I want to go out and then she closed it. So So one thing that is very important is while email continues to dominate, as the most preferred channel of communication for marketeers, it is also very important, and how do I make my emails more smart and more interactive? How can I send that one key messaging that will nail you know, the CMR, the decision maker saying, Wow, this is the vendor I want to work with. And and so so so that was one case study. The other one was more around, you know, cost optimization. And this is a personal experience where we were looking for an agency. I mean, we spend around $100,000, every quarter on just on the Google ads. And we wanted to make sure that, you know, are we doing the right spend? And are we getting the right outcomes. So there was an agency that kind of sent out an interactive, when we clicked on the link, it took us to an interactive page, a landing page, which was beautifully crafted, which says, you know, it's like an interactive calculator. It says, you know, enter your spend here, enter your target audience, you know, are you you know, targeting CIO CTOs. What kind of people what kind of areas, and it will automatically give you these are the number of qualified leads you should be getting, if this is a spend, you're doing, and then we're blown away. We're like, oh, wow, I mean, so. So the second form of content is, you know, be very authentic in educating your customer saying, This is the spend, this is what you expect. And that was that was another example. So value not in just saying or writing. If we can kind of exhibit that in some form on the digital platforms. I think that will be that will be the coolest thing.

Matthew Vernhout 18:45
Okay, great.

Emily Benson 18:47
And that's all research. Right? I mean, so to Arno's point you know that the front net b2c space you you get the customers feedback, but you don't really have that opportunity in b2b like no CMOS aren't really going to be going into a preference centre to click a bunch of you know, links and say what they exactly they want so that's where research comes in. Right? That's where you have to delve deep into your target audience and say, you know, is this uh are we targeting banks? Are we looking at big banks and what do they want to see do they want to see proof points they want to see that return on the investment they want to see you know, the capability is upfront so that they can get a good picture and it's going to be a sound you know, choice or are we looking to you know, do something when prove out that we can do the flashy interactive thing or that we can do the you know, thing that's going to drive the most revenue and that's you got to dig in before you have any of these ideas right. So that you can then prove it out with your tactics.

Matthew Vernhout 19:45
Right, that actually flows into like the whole idea of like, you know, b2c space has a sort of that touch point, if you will a like cold email, right. A lot of people talk about cold email and how you know, when done poorly, and I feel like I'm the recipient of a lot of poorly done called email, it looks very much like spam. Right? It is off topic, it's not providing the value, it's not providing the touch points. So I think that goes back as well to sort of the research of who you're contacting why you're contacting them, the type of message you're sending them. You know, Emily, well, what would you add on top of that, to make it less, you know, sort of that cold email, b2b spam, feeling and more that, you know, b2b, here's some value that I'm actually trying to show and provide to you. What would you what kind of tips would you have for bots?

Emily Benson 20:38
I mean, I think that goes into that personalization aspect, right? You try to, you know, whether you're doing account based marketing, or just the sort of more traditional research and you have your prospect list and you're digging in, I think you want to try to position, whatever it is, whatever capabilities that you're trying to sell in a way that's going to be the most sort of appealing to, to the group that you're reaching out. So I think having a really robust testing strategy for that is, is key. And that's something that Kathy talked about earlier in her fantastic AV testing session. But you know, having that strategy where you say, Alright, we're going to set up, you know, some of these emails, we're going to see if our target audience is responding to, you know, maybe identifying with their industry, and we're going to try to personalise based on that, and then you're going to set it up, and you're going to run it and you're going to see what your engagement is, and see if that proves out, right? And then have that backup, say, Alright, people are not, you know, these CMOS are not identifying with our agent, their industry, they're not saying, oh, as a, you know, transportation person, I'm not really engaging with that on that level. And so then you test out a different strategy to say, what do they respond to what's what's going to prove out what they need?

Matthew Vernhout 22:02
And then, you know, we don't necessarily have the same idea of cold email and in the b2c space are no, at least not in the European Union, or your or anywhere in Europe, even in Switzerland, where you have, you know, data privacy laws that require sort of at least a warm consent of some kind, to communicate, where do you look at sort of that, you know, introducing your customer, if you will, to your brand. So they've already selves, sort of self identified, raise the flag or raised their hand and said, you know, send me some emails, but how do you sort of welcome them into that programme and sort of warm them up to, you know, get used to the things you're sending, maybe get that richer profile data so that you can send them some more targeted messaging,

Arnaud Jolif 22:48
where first reach out with them, telling them hey, first of all, thanks for joining the club with us. And then we give them our USP, what makes us different, why they have subscribed, what are the different benefits of being a cook community member of tynedale. So we just list the different benefits that we get, we try not to put too much marketing pressure at first. And for the first 30 days, they won't receive the daily newsletter, as any subscriber, they will receive different newsletter, where we try to introduce each one of our business lines, we have four main business lines, and we try to introduce each topic. And if we see that during the first three days, they don't purchase anything, then we will incentivize the first purchase. And based on which channel which business lines they bought on, then we will try to do some cross sell and upsell telling them Hey, thanks for trying the service. We hope you're happy with your NPS survey. And then we say Hey, why don't you try this in order to try it, get additional discount on this. And we guarantee you that you will be happy when we tried to get a connection with them and try to have a discussion with them. Right? always asking for the feedback if they happy and we try to be fun in what we do. After the 30 days onboarding period, then they get into the newsletter. And we remind them whenever if you receive too many message just up to your preference and here's the link to your preference into super transparent on that briefing to mores it's for them to unsubscribe, the betters that will be engaged because otherwise they will click on the spam button and then it can have some effect on my whole mailing list. So we are very cautious with that and we prefer to let people go if they want to go and we are the most transparent as possible. The more that we can on this.

Matthew Vernhout 25:03
So it's a mix between I want to see how you behave and a mix up here sort of the things that we offer that you use to gauge consumer interest and build that profile. Maybe even without asking them all those questions you just sort of look at and do that research on your own to say they behave this way.

Arnaud Jolif 25:21
Yeah, we and we have some a, did you know that we also had this kind of service, did you know that we also do this, we have a new service coming in, here is a preview for you and an exclusive discount code to test it, just give us your feedback, etc, we always ask for their feedback. People are very chatty, at the end of the day. Today, with social media, we prefer to have them in the discussion around email, it's easier for us of through web forms than on social media with a complaint. Usually,

Matthew Vernhout 25:57
that's actually that's an interesting, interesting point, I think, you know, maybe raga. From that point, you know, how important is sort of that social listening to help tweak and modify the behaviour of your email programme when people start to complain about maybe too many messages or the relevance of certain messages and then taking that feedback from an outside channel such as, you know, Twitter or something like that, and then incorporating that into your email programme.

Arnaud Jolif 26:23
Then well, we, we, we always monitor or so sorry, Ravi, we monitor social in order to understand if we have too much marketing pressure. If we're seen as spammers, then we will react very fast. And we will try to understand what went wrong under marketing pressure. Ravi, maybe?

Raghavendra Hunasgi 26:44
Yeah. So, so yeah, about very, very valid point, right. And so I'll tell you the whole journey that I've seen over the last five years, I had a cousin and he, this is a typical use case, it is a 19 year old kid. And for some reason, his his dad took his, you know, Amazon account and was searching for, you know, diabetes issues and things like that for for his dad, like this guy's big grandfather. And from that point, he was bombarded with messages for the geriatric population, you know, get your free itis done a diabetic thing, you're walking aid, and he was like, getting frustrated, he was like, why the hell am I seeing these, you know, messages, and fast forward five years from them? Today, I'm in the it's super personalised, and then, and it's very tailor made, right. And if he I mean, if you look at it, the whole ICP, the ideal customer profile that is created from a lot of these leading e commerce majors is is heavily on the, you know, the social listening and the active social monitoring, they do. I mean, let's forget about the dark side of social listening and all of that, maybe that's for another day and another forum. But, but from the from the user benefit standpoint, let's say a lot of us, right, whether you're on a Google search, whether you're on Facebook, you're looking at a you know, apple, you know, iPhone 12 ad, you're looking at a one plus ad you're looking at some ad for a product, and boom, in 30 minutes, you get a personalised email, which they say here is a 20% discount coupon, here is the new features that you need to look at the product. So I feel personally social monitoring and social listening has significantly improved the user experience, especially in personalising the offers, you know, know more about the products and things like that. So it's a it's a, it's a motion of change, what we saw, like, let's say, three to five years ago, and versus now.

Matthew Vernhout 28:45
Great, yeah. And I think when it comes to sort of that integration and sort of looking at things, you know, you have to remember we talked about this earlier, right? Not every businesses have, sorry, let me rephrase us. Consumers have multiple businesses, maybe all doing the same listening. So they may actually be trying to send you similar or the same messages at the same time, whether it's through cookie tracking, whether it's through listening in on social integrations, or things like that, from a, you know, b2c point of view when you're trying to target those consumers. And I say consumers, meaning business consumers, you know, what types of things are you trying to not be overly creepy about because you're listening, but at the same time, answer some of those unasked questions. Emily, do you have any thoughts on that?

Emily Benson 29:42
I think whenever you talk about personalization, and whenever you talk about research, especially research that delves into some of those, you know, ai profiling opportunities, the danger, the risk there is to is that you get too creepy right? Like you get too granular about We've done all this research, and we know that, you know, the CMOS pain points are this, this and this. And we combine that with, you know, their, their traffic history or whatever cooking information we have. And we can get super granular about, you know, we know that you are having trouble in this area in this era, it just, there's, it's sort of that uncanny valley, you know, kind of scenario where there's a bell curve, where you get to a point of like, Oh, this is peak of, you know, personalization, where I feel like this brand understands me and cares and has a solution, that's going to be a value to me for my specific problem, and then you fall over to the other side of, like, they know too much about me, I don't want them contacting me, I'm very creeped out about, you know, they know way too much about my business that I did not share with them. So you have to be careful, right? You have to ride that line of, you know, we're listening to you, we understand kind of in a broader sense of your your pain point, you know, as a C suite person. And we have the solutions available for you, but not fear into that territory of like, you know, we know exactly how much was on your balance sheets in the last quarter. And we're a little disappointed in you, frankly,

Matthew Vernhout 31:17
that goes back, you know, I can't help but think every time and I'm sure they're sick and tired of people talking about it. But the whole, like Target profiling for women who are showing signs that they may be pregnant, where they know, if you buy X number of products and the certain time periods, chances are you're pregnant. And that's sort of where it got sort of that really creepy personalization because they were able to target and coupon appropriately. But almost took that a step too far. And made it you know, overly obvious that they knew, in some cases before other family members knew or not, how do you how do you prevent that, if you will, you know, in that b2c space, you know, I'm sure you do it, if I'm on your site and looking at certain certain things, you know, you probably want to promote those things. I find, sometimes there's too much of a delay in those messages, because maybe I've already purchased and then the next email I receive is, hey, by the way, we have this thing that you want, I've already purchased it. So there's How do you find that balance of providing the consumer, the information they're actively looking for, versus first off being on time. So being efficient with your timing, and then not being overly creepy by you know, here's those things that you were looking at, specifically that you didn't buy and six other options that are almost the same?

Arnaud Jolif 32:37
Yeah, so there, there are different ways that we do it today. Within the menus later, what we tried to do is not to put too much personalization and be ad user aware, we tried to be crowd based Lavelle, based on different personas, in order for people not to be to feel like they are monitored by us. The second thing is we don't use any more add to user tracking on social media and social listening, we really tried to put a limit on the privacy. And we think that that really helps us in order not to have too many and subscription. And we have less spammers, since we've done that. And the third thing is when we personalise at the user level, we will put in some areas of the newsletters, just some brands are ahead and not some products. So our category of product, but not the exact product that you have clicked three times on, because they are already retargeted. On other channels, srei advertising, usually they will have these product reminders. So we don't put them directly in the newsletter, except if they clicked on, I want an alert on this specific product. That's the only case otherwise, we would just talk about the category or or the brand that they use to click on over the last few days.

Matthew Vernhout 34:17
Okay, great. And then, you know, I think there was a great comment from our note here about targeting personas, right for marketers who maybe aren't targeting personas, can you sort of talk about the importance of that and talk about, you know, what you should start looking at when it comes to building a persona?

Raghavendra Hunasgi 34:38
Absolutely. And, and I would, I would probably, you know, stress a little bit more about, you know, the, the persona importance of creating the persona, especially from the b2b standpoint, because what happens is, you know, in b2b, like Emily was mentioning in the beginning of the conversation, you only have a certain number of chances to make that mark on the CMO on the CFO. Or where they will say yes, I love these guys. And you know, let's sign up and move forward. Or they will say, you know, I don't want to hear from them for at least let's say six months one year, because I already have another agency on board. What happens is I mean, I'll tell you, there are so many times, being a marketeer, if you start sending me how artificial intelligence machine learning an algorithm that can help improve my testing of my products, you know, significantly, it's all Greek and Latin To me, it is consuming high, you know, inbox. B, it is also consuming my, you know, mind space and bandwidth saying why on the earth, I'm trying to sell me an IT product, where I am not the decision maker, and my friend probably, you know, Jim is the decision maker. So you should be sending all these emails to him not to be. So if you don't study the personnel, right? Probably you're going to turn off the buyer for a very, very long period of time, right. And so so so let's say if I'm doing a b2b, you know, email campaign, I need to make sure that I have defined my personas. And my list is very clearly it says, If I want to talk about, you know, a beautiful, you know, email platform, let's say, you know, the company you work for Netcore, I mean, you guys are leaders in emails. And every time you send a mailer about you know, how cool you are and how great you are to a marketeer, he would love to read it. Imagine sending that to a CFO or sending that to a CTO. I mean, he would say I care less whether you are the best, or you know, you're the greatest. So, so so it plays a huge role and the success of your campaign, your outreach efforts, you know, your marketing depends probably 70 to 80% of that depends on how clearly you have defined the persona. In fact, you know, a lot of these leading analyst firms, whether it is Gartner or Forrester, IDC, research, all of them tell the top three things to consider before you tailor a campaign is to define the persona, and you know, the ideal customer profile. And if you don't have a clarity there, your messaging will go wrong, your everything will go wrong. So so so I think it is extremely important. And I think from a b2c standpoint, both of them have added, you know, immense amount of value and information on that area. So, so I think that that's, you know, very, very critical probably one of the top three things.

Emily Benson 37:17
Okay, good point. Yeah, I think it can be helpful to to understand the people kind of ladder up to those decision makers, right? Because sometimes you'll have a solution that, you know, is going to help from a CMO perspective, perhaps, but really, what it's going to help with is the people who are under the CMO, right? Who are that sort of boots on the ground layer, so you can kind of get to them and start saying, Hey, I know how I can make your life easier, your jobs easier. All I need you to do is talk to your cmo. And and and help me educate him or her on those benefits. Right? So that's where that extra layer of research can help in laddering up to that, right? Absolutely. Yeah. chances. Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Vernhout 38:07
That was actually my next question is, you know, should your personas just be at the sea level? Or should you be targeting that, you know, VP, manager, or even like you said, Emily boots on the ground kind of individually to say, you know, here's the solution that's going to make your life easier, here's the talking points, you need to continue to sort of push this up the chain or push this up the ladder, if you will, to help educate and then say, you know, this is a solution we really should look at. You don't have that so much in the b2c space. Because, you know, in the end, that decision maker is probably the recipient for most of those messages. But I do think product education is certainly an interesting thing around that, when it comes to, you know, post purchase messaging, you know, I know you're talking about doing some survey or sort of like, you know, satisfaction type stuff. You know, how important is that for you to take in regards to, you know, future planning of your programmes or maybe even future planning of partners to continue working with

Arnaud Jolif 39:15
what one for us is key, it's the key indicator, whether or not we have the right the right product or the right partners in the area. And there we really tried to be customer centric, I know that any company wants to be customer centric. But there it's it's true for us if we see that we we have less than eight out of 10 and then we have automatically an alert to the search Director in Charge of the of the flush stairs or of the of the coupon in order to understand what went wrong and try to to to rectify that. The possible errors that we had tried to understand what went wrong, is it with the shipping is it with the quality of the product. And we have shifted over the last three years 30% of our inventory, just because of these NPS surveys.

Matthew Vernhout 40:17
So really important that

Arnaud Jolif 40:19
it's truly important. Yeah, we yet we, we turned on 30% of our providers or vendors just because of this NPS race. And it really so it's all it's at all the company well, that we are looking at these NPS reports. And each one of the, of the executives, we receive a daily report with the NPS that is related with this area, whether it's it's related with delivery was very treated with quality of the goods, whether it's related with customer care, etc.

Matthew Vernhout 41:06
Great, so we have about two, three minutes left here. So just sort of in closing, I would say, if I could get a final thought around something that either someone should try in their respective programmes, whether it's b2b or b2c, or a piece of advice that you would give to the audience to say, you know, incorporate this or think about incorporating this in the next quarter for your email programme. Emily, do you have anything you want to sort of closing thought or piece of advice?

Emily Benson 41:35
Sure. And I'm actually going to piggyback on what Arno just talked about in that voice of customer is important in the b2b space as well, right? anytime that you can get that customer feedback on either at the process, you know, what it felt like to go through, you know, purchasing the the product or the service, what it felt like to interact either with the salespeople, or whatever the onboarding process was, anytime you can capture that first person feedback from your customers, and then package it and repurpose it, you know, that's going to help you in not only in tailoring your programme, but also in bringing in your prospects, right? The voice of the people who have already gone through that. So use that to inform us that to pull in people who are fit a similar profile.

Matthew Vernhout 42:24
Great and are no Do you have a closing thoughts as we approach the end here.

Arnaud Jolif 42:29
And for us, it's very important to use all the elements of the email, also the preview snippet that you have, in your message, we use them to personalise and add some more information complimentary to the subject line, for instance, already to to get people read, open or email. They're

Matthew Vernhout 42:49
awesome. And then Raghav. Any final thoughts?

Raghavendra Hunasgi 42:53
Yeah, I mean, I just have, lastly, things to add, one, have the right market back in place, the right email service provider or the right platform, to make sure that the content is is super personalised, and three knows the persona very well. I think these three things.

Matthew Vernhout 43:08
Awesome. Well, thanks very much, all of you for participating. I'm going to be around all week, for the event in the chat in the different networking sessions. I'm assuming all of you will be as well. So if, if you have any questions, apologies, we didn't get to any of the questions in the live session. With such a good discussion, we kind of just ran at a time. Please do reach out to any of us, please do visit all of the sponsors stopped by the net core group. Definitely do reach out we'd all love to have a one on one conversation with you throughout the rest of the event. So thanks very much for joining us today.

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