Site logo
Video

Speaker/s name

Nerida Cook, Andrew Beeston, Bryan Dobson, Nhan Tran

Description

Panelists
Andrew Beeston, Strategic Consultant CX Marketing, Oracle
Nerida Cook, Marketing Cloud Practice Lead – Australia, Bluewolf, an IBM Company
Bryan Dobson, co-Founder, Bower House Digital
Nhan Tran, Senior Customer Success Manager, Validity

Video URL

https://vimeo.com/531523188

Transcript

Andrew Beeston 0:27
Good morning everybody. Good afternoon and good evening wherever you are. My name is Andrew Beeston. Welcome to this panel. We're going to have a chat today about APAC, industry leaders, what we have thoughts about communication strategy, looking forward to 2022, and all of the different things that email is bringing to the marketing world. I'm a strategic consultant at Oracle Marketing Cloud. I have a love of females and collect them in my spare time. Today, I'm joined by my very esteemed panellists. Nerida Cook Welcome there.

Nerida Cook 1:08
Hi, everyone. My name is not a cook. I work at Google IBM. I'm leading the Salesforce Marketing Cloud practice there. Like Andrew, I'm a massive email nerd to look forward to talking today. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Beeston 1:20
I'm not sure I ever said I was a nerd. But Welcome. I'm also joined by Bryan. Bryan is unfortunately located in Melbourne. But we still welcome him. Bryan, welcome to the panel.

Bryan Dobson 1:35
Thanks, guys, we are a marketing technology company in Melbourne today, pleased to be here

Unknown Speaker 1:47
welcomed. And Nhan Tran. Welcome, Nhan. Good to see

Nhan Tran 1:53
Thanks, Andrew. Hi, everyone, my name is Nhan Tran. I'm the Customer Success Manager for Validity in APAC, we look up to our destination APAC resion, help them to optimise the email programme.

Andrew Beeston 2:07
Great. And today we're gonna be thinking about the context, kind of for email, if the next couple of years, we know that the pandemic has happened, and is continuing to happen across the world. And as we think about what has happened, we're going to be thinking about the future for email communication, how we can provide value to customers to subscribers in the long term. Part of the context here for Australia. For those who are watching from outside the country, and maybe the other side of the globe, Australia has had a slightly different response and impact from the COVID pandemic, is just a year ago when offices started closing down. But it feels like from stories that we read across the world that the pandemic rages on, while in Australia here we've had 48 to 50 days so far this year without any community cases. And as a result, things have been slowly getting back to normal, it feels like so the context for today's conversation is as that changes in the APAC region, and in Australia, what is going to happen? What are we going to do as email marketing experts? And what will businesses need to do to adapt and maybe some of our panellists will think about what they would like to see happen. As we know, email was one of the most popular channels to help businesses adapt to the kind of different environment. And remember those Hello, very important emails from the CEO that came out, you probably had an inbox just for those. Thinking about that, and thinking about the way that businesses adapted, why don't we start with nerada? How did this play out with businesses that you have worked with and what did people do?

Nerida Cook 4:07
Sure, so I guess I'm like everyone in every industry, email marketing was no difference at the beginning was just what to say. A lot of businesses struggled with that they were balancing the sort of what you alluded to there, what how much to talk about COVID if you talk too much about it, that led to all the jokes about being told by businesses to wash your hands. And then but if you didn't talk about at all, you could be accused of being a bit tone deaf, so struggling with what to say how to say it, and then also the operational uptick of that. Some industries we're seeing massive spikes on things like grocery e commerce, online education throughout the year, not just from people being at home more but also government subsidies and all that sort of stuff. Others were struggling with informational around store closures communicating that but also um, you know, whilst we are We weren't hit as hard from a major perspective or the internal travel restrictions, a lot of businesses had to deal with that. For those not understanding the context there, all the state borders pretty much shut to certain parts of the country. So having to talk about that when you're talking about your business, and also the impact that that had on internal delivery times and things like that. Um, yeah, so that was really just struggling with all of that I could see a lot of businesses what to say when to say it, how to deal with the realities of things. And also, trust became sort of a new dimension. Sure, there was the traditional areas of what your business did. But now all of a sudden, you know, if you were a retail store, you were dealing with the trust of your customers that you would, you know, screening your staff correctly and dealing with that. So a lot of businesses sort of had to think about communicating that in a new way through their columns as well.

Andrew Beeston 5:50
Hmm, yeah, there was certainly different angles that people were trying to take, and really kind of working out how to talk at the time. Bryan, did you find that that was the same across people that you work with?

Bryan Dobson 6:00
Yeah, I think because we've worked with a number of clients in different verticals, they all responded in different ways. So obviously, the travel vertical, which was extremely hard hit in the beginning, they had a very different narrative. They had to get people home, they had to make sure that everyone who was going on holiday couldn't. What communicated to in a timely fashion. And then obviously, in the kind of consumer space, it was much more around. Okay, well, let's educate first time buyers, you know, that people couldn't go out. So this whole new wealth of consumers that didn't really purchase online, much before, we're now using using using online facilities for the first time. And I think what it did is it actually drove more focus on timeliness and personalization. You know, is the reader mentioned around you know, being tone deaf? marketing to consumers on a product they can't legally buy or have access to is an extremely poor experience going to people look down in Victoria? Hey, why don't you fly to Queensland this weekend, is a terrible experience. So we talked about building the trust, and part of that trust was sending the right time the message, like him, like, across all the verticals, probably there was such a quick pivot, depending on what the restriction for the timeline is, we saw that the need to be flexible to play out across all those businesses, because rules changed, because we didn't want to be told that it really was such an impact, just not only on the strategy of what we're doing, but also the operation fulfilment, you know, an email campaign taking two weeks, absolutely unacceptable, because in two weeks, everything to change the game. So I feel like the way the way that everyone worked from strategy to fulfilment to recruiting completely changed throughout that time.

Andrew Beeston 7:51
Mm hmm. Yeah. And I guess part of the conversation we'll be getting into is, can we maintain that change? Will there be differences that stick around? Now you would have had a similar experience as a customer success manager, working with customers? How did you see them respond? As things kind of unravelled, as it were?

Nhan Tran 8:13
Yeah, so I definitely agree with that. And Bryan, so we did see the email, delay difficulty for the consumer products and consequently, required for travel industry. And with the industry that have enough already raised, you may think that the interval foreman might have a hit, but actually it's not the engagement increased when business applied the right strategy. So they changing the terms of sending the email content smartly, and again, is quickly adaptability. It helped them in during the parliament. Me Now, most reasons stated in a webinar, we did see this training after the incident, right, which is the unit feedback system that Mary's have run to ask the subscribers about how they perceive about the email, whether it's junk or not junk, which means that we we definitely have a feel that the panic fatigue and keep it in my world. So from now on, your email programme needs to be managed carefully.

Andrew Beeston 9:14
Yeah, definitely. And I guess, part of managing that really carefully is trying to, to respond correctly having the right data at the time to be able to respond correctly. But there's of course, if you're in Victoria and you are being told, come up to Queensland when Queensland shut the borders, Victoria's shut the board, everyone is shutting borders, you can't do that. And so from my experience, of course, at that at the adoption of more digital kind of poses within a business and the way that they think about things, it's really accelerated super fast, and some businesses went from having, you know, regular old sales a month, beta having a whole month of Christmas. Seems, you know with panic buying and things going on. So that that's easy enough, in the sense of how to think about things during a crisis, crisis thinking is, is usually very focused, and usually very onpoint. And decisions are made pretty quickly. But when it comes to a time, like now, as things kind of, they're little bit easy, you know, the vaccine is being rolled out, albeit extremely slowly in Australia. Maintaining relevance, and keeping front of mind and maybe maintaining some of those practices that were adopted during COVID, may or may not continue. It depends on the kind of business and the impacts that I had. So what, in your minds? After we see all this activity? What can businesses be doing now, after things kind of start calming down? And the sense of crisis goes away? Bryan, why don't we start with you? What are your thoughts for how to continue to keep loyalty or engagement or other things like that?

Bryan Dobson 11:12
I think horribly, is there's a certain part of me that thinks, the way that we've started to markets, people and personalised because of legal requirements, etc. I really hope we continue that through, there's no, there's no longer this. You know, this one approach works for an entire nation, honestly, you know, a country as big as Australia with all those different regions. You know, we need to market to people in that fashion. And kind of it made people utilise personal personalization as a function of their business, not from, hey, this is nice to have, because it drives relevancy and conversion. But hey, we really need to do this, because otherwise, we're not legally compliant. And we're really annoying customers. So I really hope to see that continue on afterwards that people will see personalization as almost a business function within marketing. Feel like, also the way that we have the dialogue with customers? It's it didn't I don't know if anyone else noticed, it wasn't sometimes the hard sell. But it previously has been, you know, it was a lot more taking into stances. Everyone's situation, what's actually happening within, you know, the world social, socio economic. And it was kind of there was a lightness to the engagement. It wasn't sometimes a hard sell, hey, here's some products, we got five products on it. It was more, you know, how are things going, and it is increasing the relationship with the customer, because it wasn't always about selling. Because some, some points, people couldn't sell. Or at some point, people realise that, you know, there's a tone deafness and just sending products to customers. And with those additional kind of customers that came on who hadn't transacted before, there's an onboarding part. And I feel like organisations adapted pretty quickly realising maybe we can't market during these times the way we used to. And but there's actually a lot of positives from those around personalization, tone, and also timeliness. Like, I really feel that there was a lot to learn. And I feel like the people who did very well, who were agile is none mentioned, you know, they were agile, they change quickly, those are the guys that succeeded. And I feel like they will continue with that ingrained in their business as we move forward.

Andrew Beeston 13:34
Definitely sounds like, you know, the businesses that were able to respond and motivate kind of different parts of the business to change, certainly benefited from that. And I wonder, though, if people will continue to think like that, or if they will, you know, go back to old habits. And I don't know, if you've seen that, particularly, as people kind of go well, things are slightly over, we don't have to send as many CEO emails or timely emails or things just shove it down, shove it down channel, because we know emails worth a lot of money.

Bryan Dobson 14:11
I think I think we're definitely seeing a return to that kind of old mentality, which is is disappointing. But I also feel like there are people taking a lot of learning so probably the bounce back to the you know, kind of pre COVID marketing strategy will probably relate to how much the channel was important to the organisation for that period. Now, if it was a case of you know, the kind of the organisation maybe a lot of redemptions in every team and they kind of didn't do much for that period. They probably bounce back very quick because they didn't make those learnings. But organisations that used email was the lifeblood to continue during COVID because its doors were shut. Everyone had to be digitally first. I think that they saw the commercial impact of what they were doing. And we'll continue. And kind of just looking at the number of emails in my inbox, the tone, the subject line, the customization, you can almost see those that have learned and those that haven't, by the number of emails being sent if they're personalised, based on demographic location, current lockdown state. So I feel like, there will be many that haven't learned anything from the exercise. But I feel the ones that have been extremely agile during this time, and have adapted well and pivoted. They're the ones that have learned the most. And I really hope they continue to do so over the next next few months.

Andrew Beeston 15:39
Yeah, sure, man. Now, you've spoken, I guess, when we chatted about kind of loyalty and engagement. And during this time, what do you think people will be doing after this? After things come down? How do you think that they'll continue to maintain those those aspects of their business and marketing?

Nhan Tran 16:02
Yeah, so I think the panic Fox many business, you know, don't open the digital store online, if they haven't gotten before. And everything is now online. So we could see a lot of people going online shopping for the first time or people changing, ran for because they have different needs and interests. So as a marketers, you really need to make sure that you maintain relationships and relevant information to them. That's it the way that you can maintain let them loyalty to your email programme. So, personalization, and segmentation is definitely more important than ever, to people. You don't want to just simply receive the general dimension anymore. They want you to tailor your message to them, they want to receive the right message at the right time. So that's the most important, like, never gone.

Andrew Beeston 16:55
Yeah. nerada I'm not sure if you saw the last session, but Emma Edgerton was talking about receiving an SMS at 3am or 5am. On morning, about a sale in LA when she's based here in Sydney. Do you think that that is good? Do you think that businesses are more aware of that kind of behaviour after the pandemic has come? And whether they are going to continue doing those bad kind of habits? Or how are they going to maintain that loyalty and engagement for their customers?

Nerida Cook 17:29
That's interesting. Yeah, II hope not. I guess my experience has been within Australia, people tend to be a bit more cognizant of that. So maybe it's it's where that international aspect comes into it, that if you've got subscribers that you don't necessarily realise live overseas, that might be part of the problem. So maybe it's about adding more data points into play there too. But just to follow up on some of the points for the others were making before too is like what Bryan said, I really hope we don't use lose this sort of human aspect as well. You know, I've been joking over the last year that it's, I feel like it's people communicating with people instead of businesses act people, and you just really hope that they've seen that success. And I know, some clients have done less, but gotten more from it. And so you hope that the business will all start to, to understand that it is a communication channel that you are talking to human beings, and it's not just, you know, well, let's see hitting up at the end at the end of the day, and, and sort of go from that point. Now, actually, I've also seen it sort of go into new industries. So I'm sort of traditionally non digital communication industries like utilities. And in the past that they show, they've used email, SMS, but they're starting to bring more of the, I guess, the traditional segmentation personalization aspects that you would normally have seen in sort of a marketing environment into the stakeholder communications. And I think that's been really encouraging, obviously, driven by need, there was a lot of hardship over the last year needing to talk to people about their billing and all that sort of stuff. So making sure that all of that same thinking came through into those, I guess, non traditional email, communication industries. And I think that's been something that's been a big part of the last year as well.

Andrew Beeston 19:17
Yeah, I have to say, thinking about that, you know, I'm here in my house, I think everybody else is. It's Bryan obviously lives in the palace. But we we are in the context of where we live. My kids come in after school. And there's this human element. I'm often on a phone call when they walk in and see in kind of internal conversations and external conversations with clients are very more human focused. I mean, I think that has certainly been drawn out. And the trick is to continue to think like God and it we can pretend anymore, that we go to work, and we're one type of person and then we go home or we're a different person, and the As people receiving emails aren't either, and how do we continue to bring that? How do we kind of remove that old way of thinking that you did to divert people, I'm a subscriber, and I'm a worker, and I'm a dad, you know, all of that kind of stuff. So it's, I think that's trickier. And that we're probably requires upper level management thinking when it comes to, you know, coming up with the ways that our whole business communicates, because it's not just just email as one channel or SMS, or out of home, or whatever it might be. I guess one thing, maybe, that you would hope, I guess the biggest thing that would stick out, we've talked about a few of those different things. Well, what are what are kind of one thing that you hope sticks that you've enjoyed, during this time, from an email perspective? Well, we start with, near and I woke up what's nerada?

Nerida Cook 21:06
Go, um, I guess, it's been such a disruptive year, and I feel like every business has had to be in the video. So I'd love for them to continue that mindset. Things like interactivity, and email, um, that human element, taking it beyond that, and thinking about, um, you know, how your loyalty programme might be more meaningful, you know, maybe giving back community were sort of trying to bring that human element into what you're actually presenting, as well as how you present it, and then trying to bring in having a bit of a play. And investing in those teams to have the bandwidth to actually experiment and continue to experiment with would be my hope.

Andrew Beeston 21:46
Yeah. Do you think that people position to think experimentally,

Nerida Cook 21:55
I think the last year has been a good reset for everyone. So if we can't do it now, it's never gonna happen. So to the point some of the others were making before we've got to, I think, as I'm working in the industry, and then within our own businesses, as well, everyone's got to try and maintain, maintain the rage, so to speak. And keep that mindset up, because it will be too easy to slip back into business as usual. But I don't think that's what's actually best, right? Like, it's about proving that point. So I hope over the last year, people have been testing and keeping track of their results, and they can make some good business cases about why this stuff actually works.

Andrew Beeston 22:31
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, and have you seen that human side of things really come out? I mean, this is an obvious one, where we're on a call, and people walking in and out of the room may be a thing that has changed people's opinions and really soften. Have you seen that? How has that changed things?

Nhan Tran 22:50
Definitely. So I'm, like, you know, 2020 is the year that no one expected things can happen on plan. humanity's sympathy. Empathy is the most important thing that sender need to keep in mind when sending indication to subscribers. Just want to call like one of my clients in travel industry, they do not promote travel things, but they send as a patient base related to travel, that's very helpful for Joe lesson, for example. So they think about there's a thread that requires some useful information. And that helps our subscriber to feel better during the talk fine. And for me, I think the truth is, we normally don't forget who helped us during the talk to the smart business, we'll apply that well. more slowly, they will continue to enjoy the benefit of increased loyalty for their subscribers for years to come.

Andrew Beeston 23:49
Okay, all right. Yeah, it sounds sounds like hopefully this work now. It's going to last a few years. And Bryan, I know, we've talked about you talked about travel a little bit earlier. From from my perspective, customers have started taking up the idea of really just getting more data, especially while they still can maybe third party cookies are going away. pandemic feeling is going to go away slowly. There are other changes in the inbox. How are you seeing, or what do you hope that people will do now? Well, they'll start now that will reap benefits in the future if they're not already doing it.

Bryan Dobson 24:30
Um, I think probably from from my perspective, and what I would hope that they're doing now that they haven't in the future, is probably keep up this rate of transformation. The whole COVID was a catalyst for change the way the kind of enablement and the transformation we've seen very high velocity was because of finding to stay relevant to stay open. I really hope that we continue to see That speed, you know, there's that often quoted thing on on LinkedIn, which is, what was the number one cause of transformation and your business will take your CFO, CEO, or COVID. And I really hope that businesses understand if you enable your teams, they can transform. And often the thing that's holding them back is red tape decision making on alignment of goals. Whereas, because everyone was so laser focused on a specific strategic transformation goal, we achieved it, whether it was implementing click and collect in two weeks, because you know, we have to for COVID. And probably the one thing that I would like us to kind of take away from the experience is that transformation is possible. And there is always going to be changed, but we need to embrace that change, and use it as a catalyst for transformation. And I'm really hoping we continue to see that over the next year, with the technical projects that are going on, and how people use check. It's continued that speed of transformation. It's good for the customer. It's good for the business, good for your team. So I'm really hoping that we can all learn a lot from that.

Andrew Beeston 26:11
Yeah, definitely. I think part of it is getting that buy in from businesses now. Slowly, things are changing. As we talked about. Here in Australia, the government stimulus is about to be pulled back from people who are being held in jobs because of it. They think maybe 500,000 people will be unemployed or won't have the support of job keeper. And we know that at least in New South Wales

You May Also Be Interested In

Our Business Membership Programs are available for 2024