Growth Videos Category: Engagement

How Consumer Brands Can Win Loyalty and Drive Engagement

Speaker – Francesca Silvestre Cruz, Growth Marketing Officer at Davi Data Analytics Venture

00:37 – How Davi Helps In Accelerating Growth In Business

Francesca Silvestre Cruz – So thank you so much for having me MoEngage. I can’t wait to get on board and work with MoEngage. So I’m Jessica Sylvester Cruz. I work with Davi. So we’re representing our team and so happy to be here today. It’s my first time to address such a big crowd, so lower your expectations.

I’ll make it fun. Prior to joining Davi in December last year, I founded a growth consulting company called CNA Consultancy Group where I remain a partner. Prior to that, I was in Unilever for 10 years and really upon joining Davi and being in an analytics company, I’m floored by what data driven marketing can do and how it can help accelerate growth for businesses.

So today, I’ll be sharing with you very practical and familiar use cases for data analytics. And I just have a short preamble to sort of set up the meat of the talk. So just bear with my three slides as a setup and then I’ll go right down to it. So, okay. I think many of you can relate how complex it is to get data and information together.

First about your customers, right, and even putting together reports for your business review. So prior to joining Davi, it actually takes us two hours to put together business performance reports because like if you’re in FMCG like you would get retail panel data from Nielsen, get consumer home panel data from cantar, and then you get your business analytics from whatever internal IT data infrastructure you have and then putting it together.

It’s very inefficient and to keep up in today’s fast paced VUCA world, you really need to speed things up and have data at your fingertips, right? So it’s very important to get platforms that sort of aggregate all of these make it seamless and it’s actually more cost efficient.

You don’t need to invest in building it. You can really just plug onto such platforms like MoEngage. So it’ll really make the lives of marketers better but also make your business operations business decisions and growth agenda much more effective.

3:26 – How Davi Overcomes The New Age Challenges

Francesca Silvestre Cruz – So we are in a very complex and evolving world, right? So first, experience trumps everything. In the pandemic everyone in the Philippines learned to shop online and now retailers, like offline retailers are struggling to get people back because after all, you can really just search for what you want, see all the assortment, read the reviews, and then how do you replicate that kind of experience in store? It’s hard, right?

So, and second, there is this competition for attention. So you’re not, you’re no longer just competing with other brands for advertising headspace, but you’re competing with Netflix, competing with videos that our consumers want to watch online. And lastly, aside from people skipping ads, people are also becoming more mindful about getting their personal information used by brands and companies.

So these are like challenges that we need to contend with and I’m so excited to share how we are doing it in Davi using Go Rewards.

4:52 – Marketing Cycle With Insights and Analytics

Francesca Silvestre Cruz – Okay. Last preamble slide. So this is the marketing cycle where you start with insights and analytics. In today’s day and age, data analytics are already available, AI already available, and I’ve seen very rich, or much richer data that comes out when you use machine learning and artificial intelligence.

So again, it’s time to really think about how you can get your business accessing such kinds of solutions. And then when it comes to consumer segmentation as well, it used to be very challenging. We relied on third party data, Cantar, Nielsen giving us information about our users.

So the key today is really getting access to first party data, building your own user base, and knowing them more so that you can communicate and target them more effectively. And then afterwards reach is another thing. So as mentioned earlier, paid ads are so expensive because you’re no longer just competing with the big brands but the internet or social media has democratized the playing field. You’re now competing with smaller merchants as well who are running Facebook, Instagram as well and lastly, a measurement of how you make, more robust business decisions about what to invest in, how to allocate your budgets, what to do more of and less of.

It’s so important to have this information at your fingertips. And having explored the MoEngage platform, I’m so happy that finally we’ll be able to do it right then and there in that one platform instead of having to ask our data analysts and data scientists to sort of extract it from our data hub before us marketers can actually learn from the data.

So there, so again, that’s just a short preamble of what also prompted me as a marketer to start working in the data analytics industry because I wanted to improve my skills and at the same time I wanted to be a more effective marketer.

So I joined Davi of the Gohan Way group, December of last year and I discovered how brands can drive growth by increase, growth and users engagement and value using loyalty. And you don’t need to own your own loyalty data. If you partner with companies like Davi for Go Rewards, you can actually have your own customer life cycle management program, and do precision marketing, which I’ll talk about.

So Go Rewards is a little bit of Intro to our loyalty program and it’s a happiness booster because every transaction of our members they can earn points and these points they can use to pay for goods and services. So we get transaction data, we are able to offer members personalized offers based on where they transact or where they shop and what they buy.

So they cross earn and use points in retail like Robinson’s retail stores. So if you go to the supermarket, At Robinson’s, please download our Go Rewards app. You can earn and use points also in Sabu Pacific. So for, you know, your travels, when you gas up in Caltech and even banks like Go time. So Go time, we’ll be launching soon. So Raymond was here earlier and really they will, they will triple your points and go. So again, it’s really about helping people, especially people that are struggling today, get more value for their money.

9:27 – Why Do Loyalty Programs Matter?

Francesca Silvestre Cruz – So why exactly do loyalty programs matter, especially for FMCG marketers and different businesses, and here are four reasons why. Number one, it’s vast and significant in size unlike if you want to learn from traditional research, agencies like using consumer panels. They only have thousands of respondents, whereas to represent the population, whereas Go rewards, we have 6.5 million members and are growing.

This was just 5.4 million last year. Number two, we use actual purchase behavior every day. Our database grows and we ingest 129 terabytes of data. So it’s dynamic. It’s constantly being mined to trap actual transactions of members over time, down to SKU’s purchase time of day and day of the week when they shopped.

Number three, it connects brands and businesses to the most valuable shoppers. Our members have 30% bigger basket sizes than non-member shoppers, and they actually contribute over 60% to total sales of our retail partners. And number four, it enables customized one-to-one marketing and this is much better than the social media targeting that is interest based because again, you already know people’s preferences based on what they actually buy.

10:59 – Engagment Through Loyalty Programs

Francesca Silvestre Cruz – Okay, so loyalty. Our loyalty program works in two ways, so we have a B2C business that has Go rewards, which I shared with you, and we have a B2B business. So by letting people earn points and by giving them customized offers, we are also learning more about their transactions and purchase behavior and this allows us to mind shopper analytics.

And we’re also able to do precision marketing which is good for brands, very efficient, and at the same time good for our members because they don’t get bombarded with different kinds of offers that are not relevant to them and as a result, we actually have 16 shopper personas in Davi because again our network of stores, merchants and partners span different industries.

So in social media, again such segments is akin to interest based targeting but since loyalty program use actual purchase behavior, targeting these shoppers and running campaigns with them result in actual sales and higher conversion rate. So just to give you like a few, you have the home providers, they actually constitute the biggest segment in our program.

But you can also hyper-target like feel good shoppers if you’re a business that would appeal to very indulgent people who like enjoying chips, chocolate, sweets, et cetera. And then if you’re in the health healthcare business you can target health. And then say, for Ed Mama, you can also target our parent teams or adults who are purchasing kids items in our stores at the same time, if you’re in the DIY and building business, you can target our home builders. If you’re in pet care, you can target their fur parents and so on.

13:08 – Different Types of Shoppers

Francesca Silvestre Cruz – Okay, so what I’m sharing with you is again supermarket pandemic-recovery shopper trends, and really, such research would typically cost like a brand or a company like millions to commission such, or even to access Nielsen’s shopper shopper chain support.

So we’re giving this today for free as a way of introducing Davi. So first thing we discovered from our loyalty, big data is and we tracked over 340,000 shoppers transactions with 120 million data points. So here we compared Q2 this year, 2022, when the market opened to Q1 2021 when the country was still on lockdown and starting to roll out vaccines.
So four Shopper pro profiles continue to evolve in 2022, and we segmented our member shoppers based on how much they spend and how much they consume or their basket sizes in terms of number of SKUs. So the first segment is thriving shoppers 34%. In Q2 2022 versus Q Q2 2021, they’ve actually been increasing their spend. They’re also increasing the quantity of items purchased. So even amidst inflation today, prices are going up, there is this segment now. The Filipinos in the room will relate hashtag Santa, that brands and businesses need to win with. Okay? So it’s very important to understand what products they’re actually buying so that you can angle, you can see how you can learn from this and win with such a segment.

Next is coping shoppers. So coping shoppers, their spend, this increasing but the volume, they’re actively managing their budgets and therefore their volume is decreasing in supermarkets. Next is the surviving shopper. So this is a very important segment because they’re almost half of the market. Surviving shoppers are spending less and also consuming less.

So smaller baskets and really brands and businesses today need to, like, we need to challenge ourselves to help them because they’re such a sizable segment and at the same time, if we help them like get access to our goods and services in today’s, you know, challenging. We think that we can build loyalty with them.

And then lastly, thrifty shoppers, they’re spending less but also buying more items per chip. So maybe these are shoppers that are downgrading from bigger pack sizes to smaller pack sizes, just so they can stretch their consumption. We’ve also been able to classify products based on how they’ve been moving in Q2 2022 versus Q2 2021.

So the green box represents indispensable or essentials, and basically they’ve, these are product categories that have maintained or even grew in terms of both volume and spend. The yellow box represents the flexibles or product categories whose volume had to be actively managed due to, um, increasing prices. And the red box represents constraining, or these are products that people are reducing in quantity and spending in the supermarket. And the next is, I’ll share how you know, the baskets off the two shop shopper segments, thriving shoppers and surviving shoppers look like presenting the different product categories.

So for thriving shoppers, these are people with stable jobs or maybe even, you know, increase their income during the pandemic. We’ve seen that they continue to maintain or even increase their spending in supermarkets and again, also increase their quantity per trip. So they actually consume even non-essential products such as cookies and juice and specifically you can see that they’ve been splurging on non-perishable food, like savory snacks or chips, seasonings and mixes and coffee. So I guess the question is for brands and businesses here, how can you win with these shoppers by maybe providing more delightful offerings, like if you’re in food, like more delightful flavors, more delightful formats.

18:20 – Surviving Shoppers

Francesca Silvestre Cruz – Okay, now the next for surviving shoppers. So again, they’ve been badly hit by the pandemic, maybe lost their job or maybe now just a single income household. I know a few personally and really they’ve reduced, again, they’ve reduced spending, reduced also their consumption for most supermarket product categories, especially savory snacks, instant noodles, and liquid milk.

Only breads make it, yeah, only breads there at the top left, uh, actually maintain, but in terms of spending, but the client volume, like all the rest. So how can brands help them maintain or even grow consumption? So I worked as a consultant before with McCormick Philippines, and, you know, McCormick, they sell spices and small glass bottles, right?

But those are quite expensive. So when they were seeing that, you know, consumption was going down and their prices were going up, they decided to sell these spices in packets or sas, but in multi-packs so that, you know, it was their way of helping the budget constraint shoppers to still afford buying their product, so maybe can explore more bite sized and affordable offerings for your business.

And what Davi can do to help brands and businesses also is do deep dives on specific product categories or consumption patterns. So for example, this is a case study for savory snacks, and if you purchase such data, you’re a savory snacks brand. Maybe you should look at what brand G is doing because Brand G, clearly, unlike the market trend, is growing in revenue, double digit, it’s stable quantity versus the rest that are declining really fast.

And then average spend is also increasing double digit and therefore, maybe like if you get access to such data for your category, learn from them and like look at what products they have, what flavors they have, and offer the same thing or something even better to win against, uh, to win amongst this shoppers first.

So next I’m going to talk about our core business which is actually customer lifecycle precision marketing and here we actually allow brands to do more effective marketing, and when we say more effective marketing, it’s because you can hyper target shoppers based on what they’re buying and offer and even customize your pro promotions and communications to make sure that you drive up conversions. So traditionally, like whenever we do promotions and for people here who are in supermarkets or in retail, we would have uniform mechanics open to all say when you put a discount or a bundle on the shelf, right?

And you target all of the shoppers who pass your category aisle. Now what precision marketing does is we actually enable brands to do objectives driven brand promo customized for different shopper segments and this enables more effective and efficient marketing. So to like give you a better case study for example, if you’re a Coca-Cola and you wish to run a precision marketing campaign with us, what we can help you do is actually segment all of our member shoppers.

So for your current brand buyers, your objective is to upsell. So maybe knowing each shopper’s average spend, you can, we actually introduce like 20% higher minimum spend to unlock an incentive or a promo for lapses or an infrequent buyers, you can actually reactivate them, like look at what they bought in the past.

Give an offer and talk about the benefits of that product to get them back into your brand. And then if you want to target competitor buyers then to make them switch or add coke to their basket, then maybe you can also communicate why you are better and offer a discount because it’s a business that you don’t have anyway, right?

So just get them into your brand if you believe in your product then go and promote it and then lastly, we can also target non-buyers of say, carbonated objects, but they buy associated categories like chips, so perfect with Coke or Jack Daniels for Jack Coke, right? And get them to add Coke to their basket.

So here we actually use AI. For market basket analysis to understand what are these associated categories that actually, um, have the same lift and association with the brand. And then again, we do one-to-one communications. So we reach our members through Viber with SMS fallback if they don’t have viber.

So Viber was discussed earlier. Our open rate is I think at 10 to 20%. So quite high for viber, unlike sms that can’t be measured. So we also do emails, but mostly we use viber and then we have a Go Rewards app. So again, please download the Go Rewards app when you shop in the marketplace. Shop Wise Robinson Supermarket, once you.

Are able to make transactions and we get that data. We give you very personalized offers and you can view this in your app. So turn it. So we learn that our members, upon arriving at the store, turn on their app. They look at the just for you section, for all the targeted offers to them.

So with precision marketing, we actually help brands and businesses sustain customer life cycles and grow customer lifetime value. So we again, So just a simple case study. So we segment existing brand buyers versus non-brand buyers, and then we can look at this different spend tiers or spend bands of current buyers and pack sizes that they buy, purchase frequency.

So we do like analytics even before running a campaign and then the goal when we target existing brand buyers to make sure that we grow the business of our partners incrementally, is to upsell them. So keep up selling them and then at the same time, we do target non-brand buyers to really grow the base of our brands, of our partners’ users.

Right? And we target labs, competitors are high propensity non buyers and once they’re on board, they slide now into the existing brand buyers, cycles or campaigns. So, we track this like how much your, what your current customer lifetime value is and then how we are helping you grow it over and customer life cycle precision marketing delivers real business impact. So we’re seeing revenue growth of up to 40 to 65%, 40% versus the same period last year, 65% versus pre-cycle. Our conversion rates before I joined Davi were only at 2.1% and average for all 2022 campaigns because of our constant IT and optimization is now up to 6.3%.

And in terms of penetration or number of buyers relative to the total member base, like our campaigns have been able to grow. Penetration by 1.2% for a brand and this is if you’re in, um, FMCG and you purchase like consumer panel data, you know how hard it is to move penetration. So again precision marketing works.

We also now purchase propensity models. We’ve been piloting this with our bank partners, so Union Bank for financial products and for FMCGs. So using machine learning and big data, you can discover the attributes of high potential users that brands can use to effectively recruit users and then even understand their path to purchase which I’ll talk about in the next slide.

27:51 – Case Study

Francesca Silvestre Cruz – So, case study. So we have an anti-dandruff shampoo brand partner and they wanted to recruit more users into the anti-dandruff category. So our purchase propensity model discovered that the high potential audience would typically be younger shoppers who are shopping frequently. They have higher spending on chocolate, coffee, and backyard perishables.

I don’t know if that causes the standard to go off and then higher. This is higher spend on beauty shampoo, baby shampoo and conditioner. It lowers the propensity. That’s why it’s at the bottom. So it simply means that, you know, the more specialized the shampoo products that the more specialized hair products that they buy, then the lower chances for them to actually buy any shampoo.

And this model has a 76.7% propensity score. We constantly, our, our data scientists look at different models to find the really high propensity one that we can activate in a campaign. We can also look at, path and learn from path to purchase conversion models. So this is an example for liquid laundry buyers.

So who here uses liquid laundry already? Okay, so really this is a low penetration or low usage category, and we recommend studying path to conversion models for categories like liquid laundry, liquid soap. So basically, once you know the path to purchase, like what products these shoppers were buying related or substitute products to liquid laundry prior to the switch, to the first time that they converted to liquid laundry, you can probably find these prime shoppers that again, have a higher propensity to convert to liquid laundry or to your brand, and you can also sort of recreate the conditions meaning get them to start buying this basket, a certain basket of good so that the logical next step, of course, with marketing comes intervention and offers is to now buy the product that you’re promoting. In this case, liquid laundry. You know just a short anecdote here. Also, I used to work in the deodorant category in Unilever, so handling re accent dove.

And it took us years to crack repeatable market development models and get people to start new habits like using a deodorant after taking a bath. But with machine learning, with AI and with big data such as these, Propensity models that we have, we’ve been able to, you know, shortcut this for the different brand partners that we work with.

So again, if you’re interested, we’d love to work with you and help you out. So that’s it. Uh, thank you so much for listening. I hope you picked up something and again, thank you so much to MoEngage for inviting Davi, and we wish everyone all the best, so take care.

Yeah. So, quick question. Do we have trends on switching from e-commerce to brick and mortar purchasing? Yeah, not yet. That would be great. Yeah. Not yet, but yes, that would be great. We have things in the pipeline that would probably give us that maybe next year.

Okay. Thank you Francesca for joining us on stage. Thank you. Really appreciate you coming on board.

Holiday Marketing: Driving Customer Engagement During and Post Holiday Season

Moderated By – Sweta Duseja, Director, Customer Success – META, MoEngage

Speakers:

Deepak Kumar – Manager – Digital Marketing, CRM & Analytics – Jazeera Airways
Selvin K – Growth Manager – Tamanna
Moalla Alfadil – Director eCommerce and Customer Success – Alsaif Gallery

00:42 – What Makes A Good Holiday Campaign

Moderator – So you know, the first question is, what goes into making for a good holiday campaign? We’re coming up against the November, December timeframe. Everybody’s in a good mood. The summer is gone. Is their travel in everyone’s future? What makes for a good holiday campaign?

Selvin K – I think this is really hard to say right now. After hearing all those speakers right now, giving all the strategies, so I would actually say, what would they have said? Just follow that along with, I think one thing which is more important is, and it is probably the biggest mistake, which a lot of companies do, especially when I say holiday.

Everyone knows that it’s Black Friday plus December onwards. So the biggest mistake, which everyone does, is they create strategies. They create ideas to start on the Black Friday month, on the holiday month. That is something which I would say everyone should avoid. When you have an idea for something, any plans, start early.

Learn early right now. When you have less competition, when you have less, I think it was already mentioned, the biggest I, you have eyeballs in them. Start early, learn from it. And then that’s when, when you have all these learnings, go execute these ideas on a bigger scale rather than you trying to test and learn in the month, which is already gonna be expensive and every market, every retailer, every company is actually promoting and doing the strategies at the same time.

Moderator – You know Deepak, we were talking about this very topic about holiday marketing and I’ll extend. Selvin has said, you asked us to add this question. What mistakes would you avoid around the holiday marketing opportunity?

Deepak Kumar – Just adding to what SEL mentioned over here, it’s really important that you should be planning for the campaign. You should be starting as early as possible for your holiday campaigns. So ideal time would be maybe one and 100, one and a half months before.

If you start late, the strategy which you will be following, will be copying your competitors, which is a recipe for failure. So what helps in starting early is that you should be able to make your creative strategy, you should be able to plan your creative strategy better, should be able to come out with the right set of ideas, should be able to build the right set of personas after doing all the analytics on your customer’s data.

And then we’ll reach out to them with the right message at the right time on the right. And which will ex, which will further help you to get the ample benefit out of your holiday campaign. Another mistake which you might want to avoid is just using one or two channels to reach out to all those, uh, all your customers, all your users.

So in this way, not all the customers are present on one channel or another channel, which you are planning to go ahead with. So you should be making a multichannel strategy for your holiday marketing campaign. You can focus upon one or two channels the most, but overall strategy should be including all your channels, here is an ample opportunity to reach out to the customers, including push notifications.

Email is a very important tool, your sms campaign. Your search paid, search paid, social, all of these combine to mix up a good holiday marketing campaign. Another holiday marketing mistake which you might want to avoid is not focusing much upon building the customer persona.

So your customers are really important. You are building the right persona for different kinds of customers. As an airline, we have a different set of audience, different set of people, different kinds of people, living in this region. So we operate from Kuwait, so we have a Kuwaiti audience, we have an expat audience.

We have different kinds of segments living over there. So it’s important that you should be able to identify these segments in the right order and be able to build a persona of what their interest and activities are, what they’re interested in, and then build your campaigns around those affinities, around those interests with the right set of messages.

You can’t reach out to Kuwaitis with a Travel to India message. Of course not because during the holiday season, they might prefer to travel to the leisure destinations, but when you look at the expat segments, they’re more interested in traveling to their home countries during the holiday. So it’s important that you should be able to identify your audience better, to reach out with the right message during this time.

5:41 – Purchasing Patterns During Holiday Season

Moderator – Moalla, could I ask you, last couple of years dominated by Covid, so people moved a lot of purchasing online. What do you think this holiday season is going to look like for all sets?

Moalla Alfadil – Actually compared to last two years because the last two years were different than this year because it was Covid 19 and most brands think that after Covid 19, the online marketing or online shopping will go down and people will go back to the normal as before. But I think digital, digital shopping is coming to stay. It’s not coming to go because we don’t see any drop in sales after Covid 19. On the other side we see even growth after Covid because people learn how to use a smartphone, learn how to shop online and they see that the online is even more convenient than shopping.

Of course many of them or some of them see that it’s like sitting at home ordering what I need and this is delivered to my home without going outside, without even going to here and there it is. It’s more convenient. It’s better for them because they have more time with their family. They have more time with their children or even. They have more time for entertainment because as we see now in Saudi Arabia, yet the season we have entertainment, we have cinema, we have this one, and they don’t have time to go shopping. So they go for entertainment and they order online. But what I think now is digital shopping is here to stay and even grow more.

Moderator – Very interesting, right? We all think that, you know, maybe football in stores will increase, but looks like digital is here to stay. Selvin, here’s a question. Once you do pre-Black Friday and Black Friday and then White Wednesday and then Christmas and New Years, we expect to see a dip in online traffic and sales.

Do you have any guidance for brands that can continue at least if you know, not have a severe dip, right? Maybe the trough is not so deep. Maybe it’s just a little bit, any sort of you know, tips for brands to enable, you know that dip to not be as deep if you will.

Selvin K– So I wouldn’t say this is a tip because every industry is different, but what’s most important is to actually look at your data and try to understand that yes, maybe something worked well during the month of November, but during the month of December, what is gonna work well, like for example, right? Coming from a retail background, maybe it could be gifting products you are gonna pick up because you have the times of Christmas, you have New Year’s, you have multiple occasions.

It could even be the wedding season, I don’t know. I’m just kind of assuming the right things right now. But try, it’s really good to first thing, understand the market you are in, and then try to understand what kind of products should we be pushing to our customer at that time that would eventually work for them and kind of yes, there will be a dropdown, right?

Like you mentioned, you cannot make sure that from November, from your singles day to Black Friday, you’re gonna have the same momentum. There will be a drop. But to avoid a massive drop is to try to understand the market, try to understand from your data as well what mistakes or like, you know, you probably made from last year as well, that you need to, you know, recover and kind of adjust and make sure that tip is not gonna be that bad. And at the same time is to make sure that whatever service you do, this is the one thing which when you do a lot of promotions, right, and coming again from a retail background, a lot of companies, what they do is they run promotions of Black Friday.

But what happens is they kind of sacrifice on some other things, right? For example, I do 50% off, but my delivery takes a really long time. Try to avoid these mistakes when you know that, okay, fine, in December, the first thing that should be in the customer’s head. Let’s say I did, I got 50% of the product. It got delivered on the same day, for example. Let me make sure that, okay, fine. When I come back, I wanna go to this company because if I order, I’ll get the gift today that I can actually give to my friend by tomorrow or something like that. So, just to learn from those things and just, I think data is first, right?

Just look at your data, look at the market, and try to see what you can. Okay.

Deepak Kumar – Just adding to what Selvin mentioned. For us to drive the sales post holiday season, it’s also very important that we should be focusing upon building long-term relationships with our customers. So for us as an airline, the holiday season is not really about offering discounts and promotions because the demand usually remains high during the holiday season, so we don’t need to offer those kinds of discounts.

But still, the holiday season presents to us an opportunity to build that kind of relationship with the customer, what they are expecting from us. It follows the vibe of what the holiday season is around. For example, during the National Liberation daytime in Kuwait, the patriotic feeling really remains high among the Kuwaiti audience living over there.

So we try to build our content. We try to change our landing pages, our social media pages to capture that vibe so that customers should feel the same when they visit all of these other pages. In this way, your customer remembers how you are able to make them feel. So in this way, they will remember when they’re going to purchase from when they’re going to make a next purchase decision next time.

So they will remember that there was a brand who was able to convince them at that time and who was able to justify them at that time. Second important point that I want to mention over here for driving the sales post holiday season is adding some kind of social cause or societal perspective to your marketing efforts.

Not just your marketing efforts, even in your sales strategy, if you can add it. In Jazeera, for example, we allow our users to reduce their carbon footprint by buying some carbon credits when they make a booking. So in this way, the customer feels accomplished when purchasing a ticket.

So in this way they feel they are contributing something valuable to the society. We use that purchase amount, we use that purchase value to fund the renewable energy projects around the world. I’m not saying that some climate cause to your campaign or in your sales strategy is going to be the right fit for you.

You need to identify it from the customer data, you have to analyze what kind of communities your customers are part of, what kind of values they align with, what kind of their interests or affinities or areas are and accordingly you can decide to partner with a non-profit or a social college organization and drive your strategy around it.

Moderator – Great. Just want to add, please go ahead.

Moalla Alfadil – Want to add, just want advice here for e-commerce especially offering a gift trapping option at checkout for a holiday is also a very good option that can be used here because this is stressful for some of the consumers. If they want to search for a gift themselves and then they want to buy a wrapping paper and the order to make it look good, this is a little bit stressful for them. If e-commerce provides gift wrapping during the checkout option then this will help them a lot.

Moderator – So you’re talking about all sorts of value ads, right? That is thoughtful and relevant for the season, for example.

Selvin K – Yeah. And it could also mean that maybe partnering up with the company, like for example. If it’s December, it’s travel season, partner with maybe a travel company that you can actually promote your products with, right?

Partner with a travel company saying that okay, find people who buy tickets. They can probably promote and say that you can buy all the things that you need for the trip from this website. It could be something like that. But again, like I said, it could be a factor that you could actually pick up and it’s more important to start partnering with whatever it is based on the timeline you’re at.

14:18 – Campaigns on Relevant Channels During Holiday Season

Moderator – I’d like to turn the questions over to the audience as well in case you do have something to ask around holiday season marketing as well, right? It’s coming, it’s here almost. How prepared do you feel today based on what your company offers in terms of what your marketing campaigns and what channels are going to be relevant for you?

Questioner – I think for us, holidays and special events go hand in hand. So for example, this particular holiday, I think that the World Cup is the biggest event happening in our region. And, within the markets that we operate, actually, three of those countries are actually a part of the World Cup team.

So that is a big one. And for the last three months we have been preparing for a regional campaign and the whole 360 degree media plan around it. So, for us there is a holiday, but there is something called season which is the World Cup and we are preparing for that.

Moderator – I’ll finish up around this topic. Can you provide the audience with a couple of ideas or just even one campaign idea that you think is going to be novel in your industry over the next two or three months?

Selvin K – So I think you just mentioned the thing which I don’t know why ust kind of missed my mind as well. Like this is the first Black Friday, or let’s say holiday season which is actually in combination with not just the football World Cup, but if I’m not mistaken, there’s also the Cricket World Cup which kind of tailors you know for multiple audiences. And at the same time, it’s important to note that anyone who’s traveling to Qatar for the World Cup is actually going to be staying in Saudi, they could be staying in Kuwait, they could be staying in Dubai as well.
And these are also potential customers that you could target, right? And that’s one thing which we are also starting to look at. We are trying though, we kind of cater to, let’s say Kuwait and Saudi market, right? We are also trying to see how we can expand the marketing or the kind of activities we do a bit more globally as well.

So in the way that, okay fine, when they actually come to the region, we’ll be the first thing in their mind to know that, fine, this is the company that can go, because I’ve probably seen their ads somewhere else. I probably saw communication from them somewhere else, but again the World Cup is one of the factors, but I’m not sure what else is happening.

But at the same time, it’s trying to be agile to understand that, okay, at this time, let’s say it’s not about just planning things in advance and just executing it. It’s about seeing that, okay, fine, right now, something will change, let’s say tomorrow. What can I do to make sure it changes, right? I know it’s very difficult for a big company to be like, okay, fine.

Today I made a campaign plan. I planted one month in. But what can I do? How can I change it? Today we have to just be agile, look at the numbers, look at the data, and just change it, test it out, and see if it works. If it doesn’t work again, make sure that you always are in a situation that I tested something tomorrow, it didn’t work.

Let me test something else the day after tomorrow. Everything backed with the help of data.

Thank you. That’s really insightful. Any last thoughts in terms of holiday marketing, in terms of just a cool novel idea?

Moalla Alfadil – Actually, especially for us, our campaigns start after the holiday. After people come from holiday, we start our campaign but for the holiday, holiday marketing is not just making a discount. Once in a while, you have to be creative. You have to think about segmentations. There is a segment. Especially for this type of season, this type of event, segmentation and even creating a product related to this segment for this special season or a special holiday.

This will help a lot. Also one of the mistakes when he speaks about is to send people to the main page in the websites. We have to create a landing page with a selected product, especially for this season or this holiday, and then promote this page to the customers, to the right segment.

So segmentation for the customer and also selecting the right products, creating the right page and promoting it in the right ways. This will help a lot in the holiday marketing.

Moderator – Yeah, good idea. Send them to one place where everything is. Relevancy, personalization.

Selvin K – So I think just to add to what he said as well, and this is one thing which I really, really promote heavily to everyone else following this thing, which I like to follow, is AARRR Framework, which is your acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and referral.

So anything that you do to always make sure that you have plans around all these five aspects is to acquire a customer in Black Friday which is acquisition. How can I activate them? How can I make sure that I retain them? How can I make sure that I get more revenue out of them? And once they become loyal, which is through maybe a loyalty program or something, when I get more revenue out of them, how can I make sure that these guys or these people go and share their awards about the company with everyone else and get everyone else there. So this kind of framework is so important for every business to follow.

Moderator – So AARRR. We’ll make sure that we, we coin that. We won’t take credit for it. We’ll let it be yours, but thank you.

Selvin K – I mean it’s a public thing, so there’s no way you can take credit for it. Sorry.

Moderator – Any, any last thoughts for me Deepak?

Deepak Kumar – So the holiday marketing as Moalla rightly mentioned is not just about the promotions and discounts that businesses should be following. It’s more about building long lasting relationships with the customer and making your content engaging enough to touch the emotional appeal and capturing the vibe of the season. That really becomes important during the holiday season.

And at the same time, the importance of a marketing automation tool comes into the picture that when the customers are interacting with you, they are engaging with all your channels. You should be able to create a proper journey for these kinds of futures. So that you should be able to reach out to them with the right kind of messaging at the right place and at the right time.

So the holiday marketing is an opportunity to capture the customer value and then use that customer value throughout the year to drive sales for your business and the brand.

Leveraging Technology to Scale Personalised Customer Engagement

Moderator – Sweta Duseja, Director, Customer Success – META, MoEngage

Speakers:

Nitish Jalan, Director of Growth, Swvl
Rohan Kapoor, Digital Marketing Director, Careem
Abdulaziz Algain, Senior Growth Executive, Altibbi

03:09 – Role Of a Unified Engagement Platform In The Use of AI and ML

Moderator – Let me just kick it off with a question. I am going to ask all of you. What role does a unified engagement platform play in the use of AI and ML? What does it help you deliver?

Nitish Jalan – Okay so probably I will start on this and honestly in the current world how could companies talk to their customers easily, know more about their customers, and engage with their customers on a very regular basis? I think in that world, a unified platform such as MoEngage itself helps us a lot in terms of multiple factors like data-driven customer insights, automation, journeys to reach out to customers, and smart segmentation.

I think these are three things that play a very important role in defining how we actually talk to our customers, how we ensure that we are engaging with the customers on a regular basis, getting customers to know the kind of services that we are providing, and ensuring that they come back to the platform, they engage with us, their user service, and continue to be with us. I think that’s the most important thing that a unified platform like MoEngage helps us to deliver on a day-to-day basis.

4:43 – What Is Customer Engagement?

Moderator – What is customer engagement? Define that even for us.

Rohan Kapoor – For us, for Careem, customer experience is the top priority. To enhance customer experience at Careem, we know that we need to build best customer journeys. Along with that, our communication across channels needs to be personalized and it needs to happen in real-time, based on real-time customer data. This is where I say that a unified platform, a customer engagement platform really helps us do this and at Careem we have seen some great results when we have this customer-centric personalized journey planning strategy in place. It has really worked for us and we heavily invest into all the ML that goes behind and all the rules that go behind making the strategy work for us.

5:56 – Role Of AI and ML In Healthcare

Moderator – Mr. Algain, what do you think from a patient’s perspective? How much of a role do AI and ML play in healthcare as opposed to commercial activities?

Abdulaziz Algain – Yeah, definitely. One of the main advantages that Altibbi has is that we are exclusively an Arabic platform. Though we deal with different dialects, one of the challenges we have is that when it comes to consultations, they can come from Jordan, different parts of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or whatever. Without ML or AI, it is very difficult to have a unified diagnostic system the way we help doctors as well as give treatment.

So Altibbi has worked on something we call Altibbi Vec which is a way for us to vectorize different terms. In Arabic, we have different names. We use Altibbi Vec to help different doctors from different regions understand what the customer is saying so that from the earlier part already AI is playing a big role.

Moderator – And what about from an ongoing customer page because you definitely do want to necessarily mark it but how do you think it goes from a customer engagement. Is it primarily playing with the information provided to the doctors to have a better engagement with the patient?

Abdulaziz Algain – Yes, for sure. For example, when it comes to healthcare startups, especially telemedicine, we can’t just send push notifications, talk to a gynecologist today, or talk to an eye doctor today. It’s different than logistics or delivery apps. It’s mostly around following up with what happened with them and trying to give them something that makes sense based on what problem they have because it is not something that people consult on a periodic level. It is not something that people don’t want to talk to doctors about every week but we are trying to work on wellness programs, different things, and future integrations to make sure we can integrate that part and hopefully have MoEngage help us in that kind of thing.

Moderator – #ShamelessPlug Rohan, talk to us about two things. Explain to us what the super app is because I am sure when people start thinking about it. Gone are the days of acquiring brick-and-mortar to establish dominance across multiple industries or verticals. Now it’s being done via the app. Talk to us about what a super app means and how you think AI and ML can help supercharge multiple apps within the app. What beats that requirement?

Rohan Kapoor – So the first question is, what’s a super app? What we are trying to build at Careem is basically one big utility app that does it for you and is out of your way. We started off with ride-hailing and we did it very well. During COVID, we realized that we have a vision of becoming a super app which means we have multiple services, we want to help our users in more than one way and so now, in more than six-seven markets, we are a super app. What it means is that in Dubai, you see at least 15-20 services that you can avail within Careem.

That is, you have ride-hailing, you have food delivery, you have groceries, we also have a fintech product called Careem Pay and on top of that, we also have a subscription model which gives you value if you subscribe to this model. I am not going to talk much about that. I am not going to market this over here but how AI and ML are working for us is very interesting.

Careem has been in this region for the last ten years and we have millions of people who have installed Careem in this region and so we are sitting on big data, very rich, heavy data. As we are progressing and moving forward into our super app vision, launching it in new markets and most services in new markets, we are monitoring the behavior of our users in real-time and how they interact with these new services. For example, we understand how do they discover new services and when they discover these services. Based on that we have an engine which is our proprietary engine that is working on ML and spits out whether a user is going to graduate into something that we call a multi-service user and whether they do it or not, that insight instructs our marketing strategy.

Why do we need this multi-service user? It’s very simply put. When we were just ride-hailing, we just had only one service. Careem is a platform which has multiple services. One acquisition, you increase the customer’s lifetime value if you are able to sell them across different services.

12:26 – The Growth Experience of Leading Swvl

Moderator – I wanted to ask you based on what your experience has been leading Swvl with this kind of growth. Give us some use cases that you see, a clear play in terms of we have deployed this, it’s working and it’s powered by AI and ML.

Nitish Jalan – I’ll give you probably a very classic example. Just going before that I will give you more context about Swvl is. Swvl is exactly between what an Uber or a Careem is in the region and what our public transportation is, right? We are exactly between that. We are powering both sides of the world but at the very sweet spot of being appropriately priced for the users who are using public transportation and also for the users who are using Uber and Careem but also giving affordability at the same time to both the segments of the users at the same time.

Obviously, we are mass transportation and hence, not giving the same level of comfort that a private will give you but we are almost there in terms of giving comfort with the seven-seater, thirteen-seater, and fourteen-seater kind of bus. What we have done is to ensure that we are at the right price point because that is the most critical thing for us as we need to be very close to public transportation. What we have done is we have built an amazing demand-responsive pricing engine that is completely powered by AI and ML. We have a bunch of data points sitting behind empowering those tools.

What this is doing? This is something very complex in comparison to what the airline industry has in pricing but very simple from a customer-facing perspective, right? Customers see very simple pricing. If there’s a search they’ll see that this kind of a search exists. They’ll know that okay the search is there because there is only one seat left and so on and so forth. For a customer is very very simple but at the back end, we are even more complex than what the airline industry is in terms of pricing.

We have a proprietary app. It’s very complex. We have done a lot of research on our end. We have created a bunch of white papers against this type but it’s amazingly working for us. Giving customers the right pricing, and the right value; giving us the right kind of monetization opportunity wherever there is high demand, and then helping us to serve multiple countries and multiple languages at the same time.

Customer behavior and pricing sensitivity are very different in different markets. I think that this kind of engine that we have developed is completely powered by AI and ML but is helping us enormously in terms of customer engagement and giving the right value to the customers.

15:16 – The Role of AI and ML in Patient Engagement

Moderator – Mr. Algain, we have watched the videos about robots operating us, it scares me a little bit and that’s where true AI ML is going. At some point, I am going to need botox for sure. But where is this going to go from a healthcare perspective? This patient engagement? Where do you see the future trend? Where do you see it leading to and where does it start, where does it stop?

Abdulaziz Algain – Honestly since we are talking about the prediction or the future, it’s very hard to think about the right way to approach something like this because we all in the previous sessions were talking about retention and acquisition. You can make some decisions that may be from a very short-term point of view, push notifications, etc. We get good clicks or get people to buy some stuff.

Altibbi is now starting a drug delivery service as well but since we are talking about the future and what I am very interested in from a personal point of view not as a professional is sequences of decisions. Say, reinforcement learning could play a big part in this and it’s still an area that is not very developed but let’s say that the multi-agent system and the multi-agent reinforcement learning could allow us to only promote things that make sense from a business point of view today but will also keep the customer engaged for a very long time because one of the problems in not just telemedicine but healthcare also is that there is an asymmetry in terms of information between the doctor and the patient.

Sometimes we could doctors over prescribing certain drugs or pushing people to maybe take diagnostic procedures like X-Rays, ultrasounds, whatever. So we could use AI to kind of not only support them in their decisions but also in monitoring and referencing. Where is the point where we are doing too much to the point where the customer feels guilty now. I did this but I don’t want to talk to this doctor or platform or whatever. So, let’s see.

18:02 – Future Of Careem In Terms of AI and ML

Moderator – What about Careem, Rohan? Where is the future of engagement with Careem? Let’s talk about it from a more organizational perspective. Like how is it going to change your team in terms of manpower, woman power?

Rohan Kapoor – Careem has always been very innovative in this area. From very early on, we had this destination prediction model that users find to book rides easier and faster because we already know their behavior, we already know their history. So we are able to bring that up very quickly so that’s really helped. Apart from that in food and groceries, for example, we have a powered recommendation engine for your favorite items or you know similar to your favorite items.

Apart from that on the supply side of things, we have done some innovations which allow us to book riders. We call them captains. But knowing the probability of them accepting the job only to make sure that the customer gets their delivery on time. So these are some of the ways that we do this. In marketing it is core. Machine learning and AI is a core in marketing strategies. I mentioned about recommendation engine that also works for marketing but then again you have, creative targeting, customer lifetime forecasting, you have churn forecasting and all of that is dependent on ML.

We run queries ourselves and we have proprietary kinds of codes. I am not a Data Scientist myself but my team does a really good one. So all of this really helps us and then we use all these insights and put them back into our marketing strategies to optimize across marketing.

20:27 – One-to-One Personalization on Customer Engagement Platforms

Moderator – I have one last question. Nitish, talk to us about is one-to-one personalization actually achievable on MoEngage?

Nitish Jalan – That’s a very interesting question. There are a bunch of things that you can think of from a one-to-one personalization perspective. Nowadays, everyone wants one-on-one communication with customers, telling them what their need is, and so on and so forth. But, the challenges with on-to-one communication as well are that you don’t go to one-to-one communication on day one.

It needs a lot of learning, a lot of experiments at your end to ensure that you are actually communicating the right thing to the customer and you are doing one-on-one communication. You start with segmented communications with the customers. You try to understand what is working and what is not working.

Which type of customer is actually responding to the communication, messaging, the kind of marketing that you are doing for the customer, and then slowly moving towards one-on-one communication? And also, with one-on-one communication, there’s always a risk and fear that you can always over-communicate which can frustrate the customer a lot, can drive the customer away from the platform, and so on and so forth.

You need to be very very cautious when you think about one-on-one communication. You need to have a path towards one-on-one communication through your segmentation, through your initial quote and targeting, and so on and so forth.

When you’re talking about whether this can be achieved through a platform like MoEngage or any other engagement platform then it can definitely be achieved. It’s just that you need to very very cautious, you need to know what you want to communicate at what time, what language, and to which customer. You need to know that very well and that has to come with a lot of experiments, a lot of data analysis, and machine learning algorithms to understand that this is what I need to communicate, this is what the customer will want to listen to and this is if what if I communicate then the customer will go away from the platform.

Moderator – So basically, when you are looking for technology, you should look for things. You know, of course, I think AI and ML were add-ons, it would quite a bit of money for all this. It has almost become something that you cannot invest in without it adding its own flavor of AI and ML.

Unlocking the Future of Customer Engagement in a Digital-First World

Moderated by: Kunal Badiani, Sr Director & Head – Expansion – META at MoEngage
Speaker: Jad Hindy, SVP of Marketing at EXPO 2020

1:59 — Strategy of The Expo Marketing Team Post Covid

Kunal Badiani (Moderator): In a normal period, 20 to 25 million visitors sound audacious. However, when you throw in the curve balls, the big ones like Covid – the expectations stayed the same. Somehow, through managing safety and bringing people from all parts of the world, you guys handled it, which is impressive. How did the marketing team react to the daily pivots, the struggles, and the opportunities you took advantage of to make that happen?

Jad Hindy: If we take a step back and start when Dubai won the bid to host Expo 2020, part of that bid was a commitment to deliver 23 to 25 million visits to Expo 2020. Back then, in 2013, nobody thought about what would happen. As the team started putting their strategies in place, putting everything as planned – nobody expected the Covid-19 pandemic would happen and everything would change. When that happened, nobody had the heart to change the objective. The mantra or the entire belief we had while running through the Expo was that no matter what happens, we’ll take every challenge as it comes, and then we’ll deal with it. This was perhaps the biggest startup running across the last six months and behaved extremely agilely. Although it was a big organization, if you have the fundamentals in place and think that you will face every day as it comes, you’ll be able to do that. You put processes and structures in place and have the most important thing – people believing they can do everything as it comes.

We wake up in the morning, go through what we need to do today, and put our strategies in place. Then we start acting on them. The good thing is that we built our infrastructure correctly initially, which is very important. Without it, you will fail. Another beneficial thing is that we knew not everything would work, and then we didn’t have a fear of it not working. If it doesn’t work, we’ll need to make it work and put something in place. We will address it, and all those things we’ve had as a foundation for running the Expo helped us face everything daily. We had a marketing team that was one of the biggest, at least in my career, that I managed. Every day, one of them would have something that will happen. We’re all human beings in the end. We’re all people, and not every day do we wake up feeling healthy. Still, with all that happening, someone will pick it up whenever someone is not in their place. You don’t need to ask. This spirit made us all run until the end and deliver this masterpiece of an event.

Kunal Badiani (Moderator): I love that! It’s about the spirit at the end. That’s awesome. It was spectacular. Sometimes you think achieving those lofty goals compromises quality, there’s a trade-off, and I can say from someone who enjoyed my many visits.

Jad Hindy: I’m going to ask you how many visits?

Kunal Badiani (Moderator): I think there were six, but one of them was my favorite. It’s a proud parent moment. My daughter, who’s eight, participated in a story writing competition in her school, and three kids would get picked to visit the closing ceremony of the Expo. They said you could bring one parent and she said “Dad, will you come with me?” and I’m always going to remember the Expo, as this moment, when she took me to something at the age of eight that I would have never been able to take her to. When you think about growth, you think about the memories you guys have left. It’s been phenomenal.

6:21 — Scaling Customer Experience to a Global Audience

Kunal Badiani (Moderator): Changing parent stories aside and thinking about the experience — Expo is great. I love that you called it a startup that quickly went from zero to 100. You’ve consulted several brands, you’ve worked across multiple verticals, and you’ve also done it over time. So, you’ve seen things change traditional ATL/BTL as it was, now digital-first data-driven. How are you finding this change, and if you consult brands today, how do you take them on the journey to the future?

Jad Hindy: I have had several opportunities to be in the world whereby an entity was restructuring and wanted to embrace change – back then, digital. Whether it’s an agency, a creative house, or media – it was interesting to dabble with those problems.

Now, when we look back, we see what we’ve done in that line of field and how we’ve tackled what’s digital, what’s not digital, and what’s traditional. Today we realize that, ultimately, it’s all about customer experience. It’s about those touchpoints, and with the tech we have, we’re able to play the role that we’ve all wanted to play back then but couldn’t. We didn’t know why we couldn’t because nobody would see the future and say I am missing a piece of technology. Today we know that what we’re capable of is something we’ve all wanted ten years, 20 years, and 30 years ago. I look at what we’ve done at the Expo; we call it transformation at scale. We say transformation at scale because we didn’t only transform one business, the Expo business. However, we changed every industry that helped service that business so we could deliver the transformation we wanted, and that’s something massive. That’s why it becomes at scale – if you put at core how you provide a good visitor experience across all channels and deliver your messages to all your customers worldwide. We were catering to more than just Dubai or UAE. We reached out to India, Russia, Germany, the US, and Japan. How you ensure every individual who sees a message in a specific country in their language is extremely important. They pick up the message and go to the website to book a ticket. What’s their experience across our website? 

How it ends with them purchasing a ticket, how they move from that point to book an airplane ticket, and how that experience is for them. We have our messaging across Emirates, Flydubai, and Etihad — all the partner airlines we’ve worked with. So that the people will know what’s Expo as they’re boarding the plane landing at the airport. 

What happens in the airport, be it in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, or Sharjah, when you pick up your cab or go in an Uber or Careem? Since Careem was here before me, what’s in the car? What do you hear on the radio? Mapping all this until you come to the door is extremely important. We’ve all thought of as marketers before, but today we can do that – thanks to technology.

Today we know that if someone posts something about the Expo on Facebook, who is that person, when did he engage with us, how was their experience, and what was missing? How can we enhance it? Ultimately every day, something is missing, something is broken, and we need to fix it.

The biggest thing we set within that short time was the app. We had an app running at launch. Few know that that app was rebuilt three months later and launched again because we analyzed how users are using that app and what are the main functions in the app that they’re going through. When we launched it, we wanted to thin it down and make it faster, and there were lots of things in it that people needed to use. So we eliminated everything. We kept it to what is essential to everyone, and if we can do that, if it is six months in duration, everybody can do it for their app every day. so this is how we should all approach digital marketing today and tomorrow. There is no fear of how people will behave on your platforms. You shouldn’t be afraid, and you should expect everything. You should always be willing to change it; listen to them, see what they’re doing and how they’re interacting with you, and then fix it.

Six months of iterative approach daily — this is what this entire industry requires. We talk traditional, and we talk digital; that’s wrong. It isn’t any more traditional or digital. They’re all integrated, so you can follow someone across all channels. If an event like the Expo managed to do it in such a short time, businesses that have been doing what they do for the last century could do it better than us.

11:37 — Using Data & AI/ML Tools across Multiple Channels to Analyze Consumer Data

Kunal Badiani (Moderator): Well said! All channels, all aligned against the customers’ experience, and of course, iterate as you go because you get data back. That’s spot on. We’ve heard today in many sessions that there have been some common themes. Data is one, and single platforms using it to drive that customer experience is another. However, there’s been many conversations around AI/ML using data to be contextual across modern-day channels.

What are your thoughts on these concepts and their applicability? Is there a need for this region to embrace some of that quickly?

Jad Hindy: This region embraces quickly. It’s a good region, so that’s not an obstacle. What we want is more additional help in everything that we do. Applying a layer of AI or ML to anything I have been doing would have made my job much easier across any business I’ve been in.

Today, we can do that in any business if we know what we are doing for our customers. You can collect data across all touch points where you engage with customers. All you need to do is see what you want from those touch points, how you analyze that data, and how it helps you improve the experience. Selling your products more and increasing your bottom line. Where do AI and ML fit within that equation? It isn’t a massive investment, and people think it is scary, and they try to escape from it. That’s how you get efficiencies of scale and make decisions faster and correct what’s not working quicker. Then the result ultimately is a better customer experience and more sales. So it’s simple, and in Dubai, you have many companies experimenting with that. We have many companies within that field applying things that you think people are still taking a step back on in Europe and the US today. Dubai is an excellent playground for future technology. Any business can apply it because the market is well-educated and well-connected, and everyone who lands knows they’re landing in the city of the future. So they expect the best service and product; hence we’re all here to make it happen. Dubai has no fear of adopting ML and AI.

14:20 — Is it Possible to host The Expo in the Metaverse?

Kunal Badiani (Moderator): That’s good. A lot of the conversation today has been around “Does it make sense to use AI and ML as a business?”. You put it extremely wisely and try to make it happen because it’s all available now. We aren’t dispersed from the rest of the world. We’re doing things sometimes faster than the rest of the world. The other thing that’s come up, and I want to ask you this. You might have a view on this concept of the metaverse — the future of potential human interaction. You ever see a Dubai Expo happening in the metaverse? Is that something that could ever happen, and if yes, what would that look like?

Jad Hindy: Why not? This was the first Expo that went virtually. We had more than 230 million visitors to the virtual Expo and 24 million to the physical. So that’s 10x. Since it’s the first time an Expo has done that, this will continue, and it makes sense. If you build something as significant as what happened in Dubai, you would want the maximum number of people to be able to take advantage of it and experience it, which is what we’ve managed to do.

If we had the time, if we could add a layer of virtual to it, in the sense of a metaverse, why not? Today I think about another Expo having that ability I say people will enjoy it more.

I had experience with the Second Life. I used to sell real estate on the Second Life, so that’s my personal story. Now think of your experience on Quest 2 and imagine being able to walk across the entire Expo and interact with people on the ground to experience Al Wasl in 360 degrees by turning around and looking around. This is Expo’s next stage, whether fully virtual or immersive. It is just a metaverse experience; it’s up to the next Expo to take that on board.

Kunal Badiani (Moderator): That’s phenomenal, and it also then opens up so many different avenues because I’m sure virtual then gives you more data around what people are doing. You can then personalize that experience further and have them enjoy the product.

Jad Hindy: You can move the experience from one space to another.

17:29 — Frameworks and Mental Models that Made The Expo Possible 

Kunal Badiani (Moderator): Yeah, absolutely. I don’t want you to leave this stage without sharing with us some frameworks, mental models, and things that you may have through your journey either incorporated in your work or you see should be incorporated today. As we end this, I’d love for you to share because this is a growth summit. There isn’t any bigger growth story right now than what Expo has been able to do in adversity through the challenges, and going at it without saying, you know we’ll compromise on either quality of goals. I’m sure there must have been frameworks or mental models. I’d love for you to share that with the audience.

Jad Hindy: I think I started with that. We’ve lived across the journey of the Expo with the mantra “have no fear”. Expect things to fall apart, expect things not to work but be ready to see that problem. Face it head-on, put the right resources in place to manage it, and work around it. What’s the solution that you want to get to? This is the model that today isn’t something that only if you’re running a startup or doing an Expo.

Fear is an obstacle, and the minute you fear some piece of technology not working, you will not end up using it or adopting it. Then you’re limiting that future experience your customers didn’t get, so this was a learning for everyone at the Expo. We’ve all faced things daily and come up with new ways of solving problems we’ve never had before. It helped us a lot. One big thing that we’ve done, and it is an innovation on its own, was the ability to face Covid and how airports close and open, facing how flight tunnels become bigger and smaller in real-time.

So our campaigns and programmatic media buying will work as all those changes happen. Whenever you look at a problem and take it head-on, you end up winning, and you don’t lose. You might not win 100, but you would be in a better place than where you were. That makes everything move forward, and this is what Dubai as a city is built on. We call it the city where the impossible is possible for the fact that everything here is happening because people, companies, and organizations – all face every problem with a problem-solving mindset. So this is extremely important for all of us moving forward – no fear of technology. We’ve had to work with people of all ages at the Expo. Some people had no idea what we were doing in the marketing function because we were talking about strange things. We told them we could buy an ad in Russia and change it five minutes later to another ad. They would ask us questions, but everyone of all ages embraced what we were doing. People of all ages can embrace everything as they remove their fear of adopting new technology. So I think these are the most important things that I’ve taken as a lesson from my experience here be agile, be nimble, be flexible don’t be afraid again.

How to Build and Leverage Customer 360° View to Hyper-personalize Engagement

Moderator: Sweta Duseja Director, Customer Success – META, MoEngage

Speakers: 

Ahmad Shahroor, Sr Ecommerce Manager, Alghanim Industries

Aaryan Kapur, Head of Digital Marketing, Aster DM

Aoun Raza, Head of Digital, Landmark Group

1:16 – 360° View of the Customer

Sweta Duseja (Moderator): The first question I want to ask you is “Why are we talking about the 360° view of the customer?” Why is it so important and what benefits do you think it drives? So we’ll start with Aoun.

Aoun Raza: Sure, thank you so much Sweta. It’s a pleasure being here. Thank you to everyone who’s listening. I think that the 360° single customer view is a topic in most organizations that have multiple brands under their wings. Today, it’s mostly what you need to learn about the customer. Just to drill it down – the focus should be on the customer, when he does it, and where he does it when it comes to transacting with your brand.

It has been a marketer’s dream to learn more and more about the patterns of customers. When the customer is transacting between different average order values, different times, and different journeys with your brand, you need to attack the customer at the right time. I think that’s the main goal and you need to be well-versed with that information about the customer so that you can relate through personalization and different models that the brands are running.

So I think that the main goal is as always to increase conversion rates. That’s mainly where we are and I think that the focus needs to be on the customer first. The customer is centric and the organization basically needs to be decked up toward that objective.

Moderator: What about from your point of view, Aaryan?

Aaryan Kapur: Sure, thank you Sweta, first of all, for having me here. Good afternoon everybody. So I wouldn’t want to answer this question directly. In fact, I have a question in mind. Why a 360° view, you ask me? I ask you, can you think of driving a car with one eye closed unless you want to follow the law and return back home alive? So, it’s the same thing. Until and unless you’re putting a blind eye to what your customers or users are doing, there’s very little you can do to add value.

Another perspective could be taking a healthcare example. Imagine if someone is suffering from a heart condition then you wouldn’t want to send them a message about a medication related to diabetes. That would spoil the customer experience. Hence, it is of utmost importance to have a 360° view of the customer; to realize what they want and what they are looking for. Imagine they are looking for a solution and you are selling them a product. So you must focus on bridging this gap because it is very essential.

Moderator: We’d love your perspective as well Ahmad.

Ahmad Shahroor: Well, first of all, good afternoon everyone! Sweta, thank you for having us all here today. So, my answer is more of the same actually. I will touch upon some similar examples.

You can’t advertise sugar with desserts to a person with diabetes. That’s not what you essentially want to do. As marketers, the main goal is to serve the right products and services to the right customers for evidently and ultimately increasing conversions. But then again, there is a massive difference when it comes to 360° customer profiles and customer personas. It’s very very different. One of them is that you’re actually looking at integral data. You’re making educated guesses based on data and what the next move of customers is going to be.

We’ll speak later about what success looks like in that regard but ultimately what you want to do in that regard is to make sure that you have sufficient data about your customers, what is it that your customers are interested in, where they are headed, and what products do you want to advertise.

5:13 – Bring Online and Offline Data Together

Moderator: Aoun, here is a question for you. The task of bringing together online and offline data is a big one. You’ve got to go through lots of people and processes. I wanted to ask you, what has been your experience in doing this because this isn’t the first time you are looking at this opportunity ahead of you? Is there a framework or are there benchmarks? Any tell-tale signs that people can look for? Where do you start?

Aoun Raza: Just for the audience, I was earlier working for E-Mart and I am with Landmark now. I have been focused on a single customer view for many organizations with a lot of large data. There’s basically a very simple and specific framework. First and foremost is that the company needs to transform. You have top-level people who are driving objectives, you have mid-tier people who are trying to achieve certain goals and then you have people who are the forefront people. They’re the ones connecting with the customers.

The main thing is that we need every single person on board with this objective in mind that we need to collect as much information as possible about the customer so that it can be repurposed. I think the framework consists of four main pillars. You have company transformation, then you have to make sure that all that data is properly collected, make a unique identifier so that you can reach out to whatever segment of that data we are working on and make the data accessible. I think those are the main pillars. It doesn’t matter what sort of data you have but you have to make sure that you attend to these four pillars from where you can then start translating them into better ROI, better customer experience, higher-end services, etc.

I mean earlier on, one of my experiences with The Dubai Mall was overwhelming. I mean Big Query is an understatement because the number of data sources that are being collected is huge. Now at Landmark, you have multiple brands, multiple territories, and different organizations touching the customer at hundreds of points. Collecting the data is the easy part but translating that data into useful information is what we want to look at. Eventually, you need to find a single source of proof which will define your success metric which in my case has mostly been loyalty to drive all objectives. I think those are the frameworks/pillars that I work on and have seen success through.

8:29 – Challenges of Working in Diverse Business Environments In Terms of Digitization

Moderator: Ahmad, here’s a question for you. You know from your experience, what have been the biggest challenges of working in an environment where the businesses are so diverse, in terms of different stages of digitization or a different set of mindsets altogether, regardless of whether their start was digital or brick-and-mortar?

Ahmad Shahroor: Data points or collection of data points at various touchpoints with the customer is massively challenging. What was very difficult to entail and then come out with data-driven insights was that the majority of business was happening in brick-and-mortar stores. What we decided to do was make contact with customers and stores to unify the data segmentation. You need to be able to tell that customer A, B, and C is the same customer that browsed online and then went into the store and made the transaction.

You need to focus on multi-channel cookies. You need to focus on finding a way to speak and collect data from your customers which, by the way, they realize how important it is now.

So can’t be getting data from your customers for free anymore. This is something of the past and everybody is aware of what is going on. They’ll give it to you but they want something in return. So your communication needs to be effective. The customers need to find something measurable and pleasurable about them giving data to this company and this data needs to be utilized properly.

In conclusion, I would say that while it is very very difficult to infuse both the digital realms and what happens in your stores, there’s always a way focused on multi-channel. Chances are that many of the customers that are transacting online are the same customers going to your stores, buying your items, and making use of your services. eally the most important thing is the accuracy of the data and to portray it directly in those customers’ profiles.

Moderator: I would request if anyone has a penchant for looking offline into online in the most non-traditional way, do have a chat with Ahmad. He has a very very amazing story about how it suddenly changed 180o during the first week of COVID lockdown. It is a fun story that allowed them to accelerate the process of bringing offline data online through their employees.

11:23 – Aster’s Journey and the Whole New Online Availability of Self-Serve

Moderator: Aaryan, do talk to us about how Aster’s journey has been because we are looking at hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, telemedicine and the whole new online availability of self-serve. How does that serve you? What’s been the journey for Aster?

Aaryan Kapur: This is a question that we’ve been trying to answer within Aster for quite a while now. Aster, with its sheer scale and size, spread across pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals are massive. Healthcare is one such niche that is most data-rich when it comes to customer profiling. For healthcare, they are not even customers but patients. We need to be very cognizant of the data that we are collecting, how we are collecting that data, and how we are using it.

For us, the journey has been and is still going on to capture that data across all our offline channels through various mediums. One of which is, of course, POS – the most relevant one when it comes to gathering offline data. Getting that into one specific source requires, as Aoun mentioned, a common identifier. So allocating that common identifier and getting all of that data across different properties into one single format and then making sure it comes into a single dump. You need to also identify where you are putting that data because, considering the criticality and regulations around healthcare, it becomes of utmost importance that the data is stored in the most secure way. So that is something that we are looking to address in the journey that we’re on currently.

Merging this with the online bit is what we are doing as the next step. We are now working on this app called One Aster app which is basically catering to the concept of telemedicine, teleconsultation, and online pharmacy. Here, another set of e-commerce is going there into the mix and then another set of data being generated. Now the task is how do you club that data because eventually, people are the same who are consuming your services offline and online. It comes to making sure that whoever we may be working to collect this online data is closely synced with frameworks and common identifiers we have set on the offline front. Making sure that the common dump that we have identified to get that in is also cohesive with both the partners and eventually is driving from there. So that is something that we are working on right now.

14:22 – Is All Data Equal?

Moderator: Aoun, I have a two-part question for you. One is that you brought loyalty as a centrepiece of that identifier to drive so much else. The 360° view is all about data but do you think that all data is equal? How do you go about identifying what is and what isn’t? Where do you even start?

Aoun Raza: True. Why did I mention loyalty? I’d like to answer that part first. Learnings I have seen in the industry are that when you start up, you have technology that can drive your business to a certain level of revenue. Then you have digital marketing because you start flowing in money, building that traffic, etc. Each one of these steps plateau.

So technology can only take you to a certain level. Digital marketing can only take you to a certain level. After that, the CPCs and CPOs become so high that you cannot manage it anymore or you cannot go any higher. What happens after that is the big talk about retention and there’s where you hit loyalty. Without loyalty that growth sphere is unachievable. You won’t be able to reduce your cost, you won’t be able to make sense out of your ROIs. So looking at that aspect, I mean if you look at your loyal database then there is always this discussion in every single high-level meeting where the 80-20 model is discussed. I think that’s a discussion of the past now. Now, it’s the 95-5 model. Most of your revenue is driven by the 5% of the massive chunk that’s coming to your side.

At Landmark, we’re servicing multiple industries. You’re talking about furniture, street fashion, hospitality, fitness, groceries, etc. So, it’s like a wide scope. Your average order goes from like 5 to 11, 000 Dirhams on average removing the outliers. These are different types of datasets you need to look at, but you need to make sure that every single one of these items is operationally available to all of us. You have these shops and malls, you have these shops online, you have these shops on all e-commerce platforms, etc. How do you make sure that you translate these users from one segment to the other but make revenue for the group?

I think that answer is coming from loyalty. So looking at industry-specific data then we are way above the industry threshold from a Shukran point of view but still, retention of those users is minute. If you look at the total number of people who are making revenue then you are only talking about a few here and there. The whole industry is gunning for that small database or that small segment. I think to reach to them, the answer is loyalty.

Answering your second question about whether all data is relevant then 95% is not. You have to make sure that 5% is tagged in your systems which I shouldn’t take any credit for because it’s all product and how they have built a fantastic environment at Landmark for getting that data in one place and making reasonable sense out of it. When you look at the real number of customers who are transacting all across your brands then that’s your goldmine and it’s a very tiny source. So I think 95% of data is what you need to filter and that’s where you need tools to help you as a marketer.

18:43 – 360° View on Customer Journey

Moderator: Ahmad, I have a question here in terms of where you go, to which teams within the organization? If you could answer that for us at the macro level? I’m building the 360° view because I want a deeper look into who my customer is. Who do you go to? Who do you involve in that journey with you as a digital marketer and an e-commerce leader for example?

Ahmad Shahroor: The first point is that the majority of the data that you are going to get is going to be very hard to find in your transactional data. That’s talking about the history and the transactions that are going to happen today and tomorrow. Evidently, right now especially with E-Commerce, the customers are giving you a lot more data than you actually need to market to them efficiently. The challenge presents itself more when you speak about the omnichannel journey because you can literally walk into a store, make a transaction, and walk out with a completely anonymous identity. So this goes back to the first question that I answered in terms of being able to speak to your customers at all touch points and all touch points are absolutely equal. This is just the choice of the customer where they want to transact.

If they want to transact through WhatsApp then you must let them transact through WhatsApp. If they want to walk into a store, they are more than welcome to. If they want to do it online, it is completely up to the customer. We are moving into a world right now where choices are everything and you need to be available at each and every single segment or each and every single pathway where the customer is there at the end. /They get to choose where they want to transact. So back to the question, which teams do we involve when we ask for that data? So first and foremost, you’ve got and we have a full data science team that takes care of data collection points and analytics for the entire group.

When we started the single customer view, we didn’t only look at our retail businesses. We looked at our automotive, FMCG, and engineering businesses because ultimately there is one market and all of these customers reside in this market. So whether they transact with you in your retail channel or whether they’re an engineering customer or whether they’re a home furniture customer, ultimately this will give you more information to make your predictions more accurate.

That’s one measure of success when you are talking about collecting the data. Another thing would be the operational sales team. You need to make sure that they continuously engage with customers and that they are collecting those data points that you need to be able to market effectively. Then, of course, you have your core marketing team and digital marketing team. I think these four teams are a recipe for success.

21:33 – A Centrepoint to Define a 360° View

Moderator: Aaryan, is there an allowance or a centrepoint to define a 360° view versus coming up to allow just the hospitals to have their golden customer record? How does that play? Who’s looking at what? Can we go into that a little bit? Alghanim is different but there will be a small overlap. How do we bridge that? Who’s looking at it? How much is too much?

Aaryan Kapur: No, that’s a very valid question. In fact, in my previous stint at Alshaya, this was still something that we were figuring out because obviously, there are multiple brands. Medcare is also a part of the Aster Group. That is also something which caters to a different set of people altogether compared to Aster Clinics or Pharmacies and Hospitals. It is very important to have a central team in place at least, to look at all of the customers combined and then understand what are the insights that we can take out from there. It could be as simple as some demographics, it could be region-specific, or it could be some patterns that you identify of people moving from a clinic, a pharmacy, and then moving to a hospital. This could be one pattern.

So in order to do that there should be a central team of data gathering, people who are taking in data from all of these touch points. And then there need to be different BUs (Business Units) that are also gathering their own respective data, taking insights, and taking actions based on that. There needs to be a governing mechanism for that. There has to be a conversation within the organization to have a win-win situation for both the business units as well as the central marketing team just so that you’re not spamming that user. Users are looking for solutions and not spamming. That is where the governance piece lies. If these three aspects are taken into consideration together and amalgamated then it will be the best user journey for any consumer walking into your store.

Moderator: Anything to add Ahmad?

Aaryan Kapur: Yeah ultimately, what it comes down to is business goals. So you can collect how much ever data you want because data is infinite. What happens is that as a business leader and a business head, you need to define the goals and improvements that you want to work upon and then you need to collate data to be able to tackle those points.

You build the goals, you define the strategy you need to achieve success. You define within the team or within the business, what does it mean to be successful when it comes to those particular goals. Data will help you achieve those goals and on that journey. Ultimately and effectively what happens is that you are collecting data points to ensure that pre-identified problems and improvements are getting collected to be able to build pre-identified goals. That’s the best we’re looking at.

I agree with Aaryan, there should be a team that focuses on a central repository of data. As Business Heads, you go ahead and tell them, I want to take a look at leads, my best customers, my active customers, and by that, you will be able to pull these different segments of data to turn into something measurable and actionable.

Moderator: Aoun, go ahead, please.

Aoun Raza: I think just to add on, both Aaryan and Ahmad hit the nail on the head. Just something to add-on here is that I have seen that whenever you have a talk with the territory head or any of the business heads, everyone wants to talk about revenues. There needs to be a central team that is holding the data in place but that team’s DNA should circulate around the customer. It shouldn’t be around the business, it shouldn’t be around the ROIs that are being driven or the revenues that need to be generated or targets. It needs to be around the customers.

Today we’re in a situation where iOS has taken back information from the marketers. We keep coming to these things like Facebook is struggling because of these insights, etc. We came to this situation because the data was abused by the marketers. You need to build a brand, a name that a customer wants to give information to.

If you want to buy a property, you are going to place your information on the market in order to bid for the best Villa in that community. If there’s a child being born in a customer’s family then you need to respect the journey of that child being delivered, or the process of buying gifts for that child, buying essentials, and building a room for that child while they are growing up.

So you need to make sure that the team that hosts this data centre is focused on the customer’s mind and not purely on business and revenue because if that’s not the case then you start losing there. You start losing on earnstalls, you start unsubscribing, and especially you are back to square one where you are paying more people to subscribe and install your apps. Across the board, seven different apps, and eight different brands may be hosting your data and feeding your funnel. That funnel governance, as Aaryan mentioned, should lie with somebody who has a focus on the customer.

28:07 – Changing the Mindset Around Data

Moderator: You said Aoun and please embellish as I have said this. In our prep session, we were very passionate about the whole idea of keeping the customer at the centre. I will let him expound on this and we will take a detour into why that becomes so seminal because the next big thing that’s facing all of us is “Hello, Cookieless!” So we will take a little diversion before we come back to a couple of more questions here. Can you speak to the audience about how important it is to change the mindset around our data as opposed to let’s start with the customer?

Aoun Raza: Definitely! I think most businesses and especially the brick-and-mortar businesses have reached a mindset of monthly growth and yearly KPIs. If you look at the whole chart then from the top line to the bottom, you will be talking about revenue, costs, overheads, etc., and then there will be one small line item which will be called the NPS. Is our business really focusing on NPS today or is it just that you have to post your financial numbers at the end of the year in a publicly listed company?

I think, today as marketers, we’re at a pace where we need to make a decision. We have that choice and we need to give the customer that choice. We need to make sure that we are responsible for that journey. The customer has a journey that he walks into your store or comes to your online e-commerce platform or downloads your app and moves in with your business. You need to pull their hands to a certain point and then let them be free. Your product needs to make sure that it brings them back.

I mean the likes of marketplaces today, the likes of Amazon and the rest of them in the world like Netflix – Idon’t mind giving my information to them because I want to know what they want to recommend to me. I want them to know where I live. I want them to know how much I spend on certain products, and which categories I want to look at. Building that within the organization is the key part. If somebody walks up to a home-centric cashier then does the cashier just ask them to just sign up to Shukran or scan their code and actually believe in letting the customer know what they’re looking at and how they can drive their next purchases through this loyalty program? I think that’s whom I want to circulate this conversation with. Is the customer the centre?

If we just go back and look through our data then how many times are we listening to that customer and how many times are we bringing that information back to people who are making decisions for them because their journey is the most important part? Average order values have helped in the past to define different customer segments, and different customer approaches but today the data that we look at, somebody who is spending 100 Dirhams with your organization can or has the capability to spend a thousand or a ten thousand. If you look at it from that aspect then you don’t just bombard them with messages with the same category value. The discussions that we have been having with MoEngage about user identification and user targeting instead of category listings or if there is more around the lines of user listing.

How do you bring that information back and start touching them at the right time, then that’s a cultural change. It needs to come to the whole organization. It’s not one team. It’s not a product or the data labs. It’s the whole organization. All the way to the front and the guy who is suggesting a product in the store. They need to believe that the customer is the centre and that cultural change needs to be at the front of their discussion. I am collecting information because we are building a 360° view of that person who just walked in and asked “How long is the store open for?” Once we touch that cycle from a company perspective is when we start achieving goals and the goals need to be verified across teams.

33:23 – Living in a Cookieless World and How That Affects the Importance of a 360° view

Moderator: I’d like to open the question around living in a Cookieless world and how much that switches the importance of having a 360° of current database. We won’t even say customer, we’ll say prospect. What are the ramifications that we are going to feel? Apple has done away with them. Safari has done away with them. We have a big proliferation of iOS in general in our region so could buy that as well. Now it’s Chrome’s turn. Now it’s Google’s turn and they pushed back the deadline but it’s coming in 2023. How important does that make data collection and orderly data collection on these opportunities for Aster and Alghanim?

Aaryan Kapur: We knew this was coming for quite some time and I think that is the reason that advertisers may have started prioritizing first-party data five years ago. It’s not like they don’t want to give you your data. They will give you the data provided what they’re getting in return. The idea of getting the data in the first place is that you retarget those users and also identify their actions and what they’re doing internally in a platform. That I think is a two-step approach.

Now I think in a cookieless world, we can break down this approach. If we’re looking to retarget a certain user, it need not be based on PIA information or a specific identifier. What Google is doing now moving forward is that it is clubbing people into different targets, different topics, and different segments through which you can target those users based on contextual targeting. So I think it totally makes sense because why not, you know? For example, if someone is interested in finance-related content then they will see those kind of people targeting them and it will not always be a mess like it is currently because of the data being abused.

Coming to the second part of using that identifier and tracking their activity internally. For that, you don’t need this kind of information anymore. For that, partners like MoEngage already have this functionality built in that they provide an identifier already to a certain user. That identifier can be used to drill down to understand consumer usage inside your platform. It could be merged with other aspects like time of doing something and there are multiple things to go about and adjust that data in today’s time. I always see the glass half-full and I think that is a perfect time for us to go cookieless as opposed to five years ago. I don’t see it as a challenge. I see it as an opportunity for the internet to go to the next step.

Moderator: And what about from a point of view in terms of budgets and attracting new customers? Alghanim requires acquisition proactively. How does that get affected? Without an identifier out there, who is it in the same person? What step do they take in their decision-making? Have they already heard from us? Have they already bought it and I just don’t know that? How does that affect the balance between known and unknown?

Ahmad Shahroor: First of all, let me start by saying that had you asked me that question last year, I would have been very scared to answer. This is an open question for everybody in the room. Take a look at the number of transactions right before when the change happens. Then what happened afterwards? You would have suffered two or three weeks because you would have reinvested your budgets elsewhere and you would get those transactions from somewhere else and that’s exactly going to happen in a cookieless world.

You have a set of specific budgets, you have specific channels, you look at the ROIs based on those channels, and tomorrow, as Aaryan said, there are going to be so many new opportunities that we probably still don’t even know about today. You will find a way to invest to acquire new customers and the moment that those customers are on your side, you want to make sure that sign up very, very quickly because then you can start tracking them everywhere. So the cookieless world doesn’t scare me so much. Not at this stage. One year ago definitely everybody in this room would have been thinking the same thing but we live and learn. We have had this experience.

Moderator: It’s a good practice for what’s to come

Ahmad Shahroor: 100%. Especially with iOS in this region. We are ready for it. Bring it on!

38:41 – What is Achieving that 360° View Going to Look Like?

Moderator: One last question for all of you in turn is to define what achieving that 360° view is going to look like. Just a couple of success metrics that you are looking for, that you would like to share with the audience.

Ahmad Shahroor: Success is how you define it really because, as a head of business and as a marketer, what you look at again are the goals that you define. So data is there to help you achieve those goals. So for example, if I set one of my goals for the year that I take a look at the churn and decrease my churn percentage or I want to decrease the number of inactive users or I want to increase the number of top-line spenders. These are all different goals that you can use to utilize data to measure success but data on its own, you can never measure success with. It’s insights that are very, very important and data will help you drive those insights.

So ultimately what it comes down to is what are your business goals, and your customer goals, and you need to make sure that you are aware of the changes that are coming ahead. The way that you collect data today isn’t going to be the same way that you collect the data tomorrow. What you’re going to be doing with that data today depends on what your goals are for the business and how exactly you want to grow it. Once you have more customers taking part in the happy journey versus less customers taking part in the sad journey or the unhappy journey, then you know that whatever you are doing is working but only for a specific time because our world is ever-changing.

Aaryan Kapur: To add on to what Ahmad said, I think definitely we need to merge those two goals – the organizational goals with customer goals and I also think that some of the success metrics that I personally think should come in the future and will do considering the experience is pivotal right now. Before it was only customer lifetime value. I think it will now move to customer relationship value. How much do you value that relationship? It’s not what the customer is bringing in but how much as a business are we valuing that relationship? The difference between those two numbers would give out a new number that you will be willing to spend on acquiring and retaining the customer. That’s where the power of the experience will come in. So I think in a 360° view, who will benefit overall is definitely the customer first and eventually the business.

Aoun Raza: Yeah, I think Ahmad and Aaryan covered most of the points but yeah, just something to add on is a follow-up on the relationship part. What does the customer think about your brand? I think that’s your final conclusion and added to those metrics you would be looking at an advanced version of time on-site or CLV where revenue discussion will forever go on. In any business but specifically under marketing I think, we have seen it over the last decade. I think platforms became lazy.

For a choice of better words when we got the email information of customers and when we got to retarget customers just by their email addresses and telephone numbers, but I think once we set up different lines of communication then eventually it becomes about what the customer thinks about your brand and how likely he/she will transact with your brand. That would translate into what’s that brand identity? How deep is that into the life of the customer eventually we will obviously be calculating revenue on top of that?

Moderator: I really urge everybody to make the acquaintance of Aoun, Aaryan, and Ahmad. I think combined they have got 15-20 years of experience under their belt. So if you do get a chance, definitely go say Hi and ask them about that.

Thank you very much for your time today. Thank you for spending the day with us. Thank you!

How Telcos are Engaging Customers Using Data and Digital Channels

Moderator: Mangesh Chaudhari, Director of Growth, MEA, MoEngage

Speakers:

Sumit Srivastava, Chief Digital Officer, Virgin Mobile

Shafika Houcine, Group Director, Digital Channels, Etisalat

Bilal Adham, Chief Marketing Officer, Batelco

2:52 – Digital Enablement in the Retail and Telecom Industry

Mangesh Chaudhari (Moderator): Nice to have you all. So, the first question I have is that everyone is talking digital and today, it has become okay to sleep with your phone or watch a tab and spend more time on the phone than your family. So digital is already here. I’d like to know your view on digital enablement.

What’s interesting is, Shafika you have so much experience in Telcos but these gentlemen bring the Retail + Telco experience. So I want to know how do you compare in contrast to each other. Sumit, what are your views?

Sumit Srivastava: I think that today digital has become a buzzword. But from the perspective of digital enablement, you have to think from many aspects. The first is the consumer’s aspect which focuses on convenience, personalization, and the wide level of service. The other end of the spectrum is from the merchant/telco/retail perspective where you have to think about what is consumer usage or purchase behavior telling me that then helps me build a better experience for the customer.

Moderator: Shafika, would you agree?

Shafika Houcine: Oh, yes! I cannot deny that for sure. I didn’t mention, I have twenty years of experience in the telecom industry and that’s pretty much all I know. I am very keen to understand your world in the retail industry but what I’d say for me is that I have to work with different organizations, different cultures, different people, different markets, and different regulations. For me, digital enablement is about making sure that we offer the best experience to our customers on our digital channels which include websites, applications, chatbots, etc. We have a whole ecosystem of apps including the self-care apps, payment apps, content apps. So how do we make that happen? For me, it starts with understanding what our customers want. We understand the pain points on a regular basis while also gaining more clarity on what they are happy with and what they are not happy with. We look at data. We have a lot of data. So beyond data what’s interesting is to make sense of that data.

So what are the insights or the story that the data tells us?

Once we know what the customer pain points are, we have our people build the right processes and technologies. For me though, technology comes last because it is more about what do we want to do, what are customers saying, what experience do we want to deliver, etc. We are also investing heavily on user experience and design.

The other important thing we try to figure out is organizational culture and its processes while making sure that we have the right people with the right skills sets who understand their jobs. This is another big pain point for us that we are trying to figure out.

We are trying to find the best people who can work on building a great digital experience and also know how to innovate, how to challenge the status quo, and how to change the way we work. We are working on how to change the way we work and building the right ecosystem of vendors and partners.

Moderator: Well, that’s a lot. You clearly are calling out the need of the hour. It is not just about having a fast car, you need a driver, a highway because otherwise it is not going to happen. That’s a great point of view. Bilal, would you want to add something to this?

Bilal Adham: Yeah, I mean. One point that you mentioned, Shafika, that stands out for me is that technology comes last. I think that accessibility, allowing your customers and employees to engage with digital differentiation is important too. Digital enablement also means diversification of portfolio for us.

As a business and an industry in Telco, you guys are probably calling your families back home not using international minutes but your data. So that becomes a bit more saturated. So what we are trying to do is diversify the new portfolio. One is accessibility, the next is building app revenue streams and the other thing is looking at your capability whether it is your intel team or your customers. Self-service is a huge thing with digital enablement as well.

It is really important for us to make sure that we have a good customer journey but also we have a good employee journey. That is equally important for us. We have discovered that there are some things that are a bit more holistic and we can take a lot from that being in the telecom industry.

What’s the point of having a slick and smooth E-commerce checkout when your back-end team is processing an invoice, right? Why should I be on a holiday and my team should request me to approve a PO and I am talking about ten minutes ago, right?

So, we all face these challenges but if you kind of focus on simple values then you can extrapolate that and take that back in our industry for our benefit.

Sumit Srivastava: Just a play on that analogy. Telcos sit on massive amounts of data. They can build a Ferrari, they want to drive that Ferrari but they are treated like a Punto which is terrible and I think that’s where we need to take this.

8:38 – Role of Retail in Digital Enablement

Moderator: I am going to take that as the other facet of this discussion. Not so much of a question for you Sumit, but I want to ask you two, Shafika and Bilal. Everyone is out and about, they are going back to the mall and it is clear that retail is still important because people are happy to go to a physical location and they are still happy to go and talk to a real person.

So I want to know how do you look at retail and physical contact? Does that play into your omni channel strategy? I’d love Sumit to give his views on this but I think his job is kind of sexy because you know it is like “digitally enabled.”

Bilal Adham: Look, we have talked about digital enablement at length. Similarly, there’s retail enablement too. We all know that it works both ways, right? So it is kind of naive to think otherwise. Our stalls play an important role in the omni channel journey but also, if you take a step back and think about your business holistically then as Telcos you can have things like cold stalls or CP markets issuing vouchers for pre-paid and top up services.

So I think this is where you can start applying digital enablement, right? So our omni-channel ecosystem spreads more than just a retail store. It affects business partners, the way we operate and also if you look at the omni channel aspect as well then I would go far to extend this outright to our marketing team.

Particularly, in the day we have got brand ambassadors, tik-tokers play such an influence on our state. I think that is a well rounded piece in the omni channel strategy but when it comes to the stores then I think as organisations, we need to reflect on the omni channel strategies as a primary thing.

I think that is where we need to hang our hats. If we are calling ourselves an omni channel business then why aren’t we reflecting on the way we operate. So that’s one thing in my opinion and if it is about incentivisation then as retailers we all know that if you give yourself a number then you always hit the next number.

When you give yourself a number, you are going to hit the number and you always drive to the next number. To incentivize digital means, retail plays a massive role at least for our business because it facilitates frequency of transactions within the business.

So, if I sell my guest a package in the store then the next best thing for me will be to get the guest to download the app. The data that we then get from our guest plays a really meaningful role for us because it helps us in digital enablement.

Shafika Houcine: I think as far as I am concerned, delivering a good omni-channel experience for our customers is very important. So we have a number of people coming and complaining about billing disputes and things like how they can fix their problems with broadband service providers.

We have so many different channels for our customers to either seek support or complain and it is also important for us to make sure that we have a 360 degree view of all the interactions.

I think that as Telcos, we have been good at building these omni-channel capabilities for our customers where we know from one platform what they do through our chatbots, social media, customer care channels, self care applications, etc. So we are good with that. But I think where we are struggling and our need to improve has got more to do with sales.

We need to make sure that we are able to identify a prospect so that when that prospect goes to a store or our digital channels, or interacts with our indirect partners then we are able to facilitate the selection of the right product and service.

This is something where we need to balance investment and benefits. Building an omni-channel capability comes at a cost and we need to whirl it out across retail channels, digital channels, direct sales channels, etc. It is something where we have room for improvement but it is much needed as well.

13:13 – Footprint of Physical Connection Between Telcos and Customers

Moderator: Sumit, I made that comment but you know it is not all digital because you still have a guy delivering a sim card to the user. You have to agree that there is still some footprint in the physical world, right?

Sumit Srivastava: There’s actually quite a bit, right? So yeah, we are digital-first but we have a very strong view on omni-channel and how we connect it. I will give a couple of use cases or examples. So when you think of digital commerce, you have basically downloaded the app, you have chosen your plan and have ordered online. The moment you make your payment, you have now been converted as a customer and we call that digital commerce. But you can also choose to get it delivered at your home or you can also choose to go and pick it up from a store.

This is typical of how you would shop retail e-commerce in general. That’s why I think omni-channel to me is more around being where the customer is and being omni-present and being able to serve the customers in the channels they need to be serviced on makes all the difference.

The other use case to this is that we build conversational AI models where all of the chat threads that go through, we are trying to reduce the number of call volumes, trying to get the bots to answer the questions asked by the customers. However, you can do the same if someone goes to the Kiosk because you can still have the customers problems solved either with the AI engines or transfer the problem to an actual person.

So I think there are other ways of cross-selling and giving the customers the right experiences. There are so many times when we have noticed data and understood that somebody basically says that I have chosen a plan, paid for it and I am going to be an active customer now.

There have also been times when the customer has seen a kiosk in the mall and has been converted right there and then. I think there are multiple use cases to that. But at the end of the day, whether it is online or offline, it is shopping.

15:18 – Telcos Working With the Likes of Google and Facebook

Moderator: Awesome! I think I am going to turn the conversation in a different direction now. This is your core business and experience and things but I really want to know what is on the horizon. By that I mean that in the last ten years media houses have been focused on advertising revenue.

But in the last 18 months we also saw that privacy laws have changed. Apple has come up with privacy changes, Google is saying that third party cookies are going to vanish. Do you think it is your time now?

You have all the data and you know what people are doing. Do you see yourself sitting next to Google and Facebook? Are you trying to compete with them? Are you trying to work with them? What’s your view on that because that is the horizon to me. You have already spoken about what you are improving, but what are you looking at now?

Shafika Houcine: Can I ask the audience? Do you think that it is our time now? Raise your hands if you think this is our time. But if I can answer that very briefly then I think that we all need to think and build our first party data strategy.

The difference between first party and third party is that you have the consent ready, it is more individual, and accurate so it is a no-brainer. How do we do that effectively? For that we need to see the different systems we have and the types of data that we are collecting so that the journey can be accelerated but I agree with the general sentiment that the Telco industry is there.

I wouldn’t say that it can compete with the likes of Google and Facebook but I think that the Telcos can complement and cooperate with them. We have signed a partnership with Meta to drive more innovation and digital experience. I think it is important to understand the ecosystem and work with different partners for growth.

Moderator: Bilal, would you add?

Bilal Adham: I think that it is our time to play the part for sure. Would we compete with the likes of Google and Facebook is something I am not sure about. But we have seen early signs in the industry. We collect a wealth of data across individuals. It could be an SMS that you receive from your local delivery person to a customer data record saying so and so has browsed these websites.

We collect all this information which then allows the advertisers to go ahead and connect with customers based on demographics and behavioral insights. We could start to play a bigger role when it comes to data science along with analysis and segmentation. We can really start to jazz up in that area and also we can start to feed a bit more in terms of accuracy within the target that the market is in.

We can try to feed in a bit more in terms of accuracy because the marketers are no longer privileged to do what they did earlier due to a reduction in the number of cookies. Something that is really interesting to me are the data clean rooms. I think that they have really changed and that is the next frontier for us.

This is where the Telcos can play a part. That’s where I feel that the environment can move towards data clean rooms with an ecosystem that gives a good idea of research and the population that you can go ahead and contact and activate by some of your immediate partners. So it is very much complementary.

Sumit Srivastava: Yes, absolutely. I think that this is a hybrid approach. So there’s different components that have more tech capabilities over third party data? Yes, absolutely. But as part of the ecosystem, I don’t think that we have the tech stack or the enablement or capacity to do that and go ahead with a Google or Facebook, right?

There are real life examples of this. If you look at media houses and news channels then they have got their own telco different services. They have got media and content and they have also built their own ad exchange and Google ad network to get ahead of Google and Facebook. Now the thing is that they have built that out on the advertiser or publisher model but even then they need back end or the ad engine to connect to through a Google and a Facebook.

So I think we do not go head to head with them but we can partner with them for growth. I am a big believer in partnerships because there is no way that one company alone can build an entire tech stack in the time required to go to market to actually be disruptive and innovative.

 20:35 – How is the Telecom Industry Creating Value?

Moderator: Absolutely. I think the reason to put that as a controversial question was because I really want to establish a foundation for my next question. Let’s talk about values now. So when you are talking about this. This is just one segment of where you could drive value but when you think of value holistically, there are OTT platforms, buy-now pay-later wallets, be it any other Fintech applications and whatnot.

So I want to know where exactly do you see the telecom industry creating value? The reason I ask you this question is because all three of you have acknowledged that you have the data. You have been for a long time. You are the contributor to how technology works. You have the resources and the budget to make it happen most importantly. So let us talk about values. Where are you going with that?

Sumit Srivastava: I think all of it. The amount of users, data and subscribers we have enables us to build a multi vertical recording revenue segment. This is the whole point about moving away from just products like just a sim card and building out a platform. So it is not about giving a sim card in someone’s hand.

It is about giving a part of the internet to that someone. There is a ton of usage in real life on a day-to-day basis. Yes, gaming is one of them, OTT is one of them and there are many more.

Those are the normal standard ones that you hear. Financial services are massive. So I would say that there is a lot happening. For example, there are many Telcos focusing on how they can add more value with financial services. Insurance is one. Payment cards is another. In UAE, we have just launched a buy-now pay-later fintech solution on a prepaid card which nobody else has done.

We are trying to figure out how you take that usage and add on bundled services so that you lower the barrier to entry on multiple recording revenue subscriptions. So there is a lot that you can play with.

E-health is another one. If I put an e-sim in your smartwatch and that watch is tracking everything, then how do I use that watch to solve your healthcare needs? So we are focused on finding an answer to real and in-life solutions.

23:20 – Offering Services Across Regional Boundaries

Moderator: That’s quite a lot. I mean I am contemplating on my next question in my mind but I would like to hear Shafika’s thoughts. You just spoke about some very cool stuff on what your team is doing and it is not just related to one geography and is spread across the board. You are very well versed with the regional boundaries and you are still making it work. So, where are you finding value on what’s on the horizon while taking in regional barriers into consideration when you go with investing in such a service.

Shafika Houcine: Historically, what the telecom operators do is invest heavily on the network that makes sure that you guys have great speed and great quality. We saw that during the Covid crisis when people had to remote work and remote learn. That’s when Etisalat invested to make our network the fastest in the world.

Other than that, it has always been very important to deliver the best experience through all of our touch points whether it is retail or digital. We are looking to bring more services and better services for our customers and some verticals are very critical as we do that. Education and healthcare are very critical for us.

Making sure that you have payment facilitated is important. We operate in countries where we have big receiving populations when it comes to international remittances. We have receivers and we have senders, so we are focussed on leveraging this demographic across our geographies and investing in mobile financial services is definitely an opportunity. I am putting Pakistan as a big receiver country.

It goes without saying that gaming, entertainment, music, and TV are important. I think that Meta is on everybody’s mouth these days. I just overheard a conversation about metaverse before I came on the stage. I don’t know how many of you are meeting your friends in the metaverse but I hear that joke all the time. I definitely think that gaming, metaverse and all other verticals are definitely worth exploring.

Bilal Adham: For us, value is customer experience. What do we add to the customer’s life and how can we benefit them? For us, Disney+, Netflix, etc. Why do want I pay individual bills with the amount of stuff that is going on? Things like that come under one central ecosystem and again we come back to diversification of portfolio.

We can now begin to understand behaviors and trends and this is when data starts to take precedence and you can start building different verticals. In December, we launched our Fintech play which is very much in the open banking area now. Various things can go on from there, but for us it is more about why you created a business and what value can you provide? For us that means doing something meaningful for the customer.

If we can play in that space then why not? Somebody is going to so we should be focused on making an impact there. I think we have the readiness to do so. Talent widely available in the market, the infrastructure is quite clearly there. So there is no reason not to.

Moderator: Absolutely, you own the highways in a way and it is also interesting to see that you are now helping to build the cars that we will drive on tomorrow. So it is very exciting.

Sumit Srivastava: We were just talking about metaverse and hitting gaming communities because that is massive for us. So we are launching in Kuwait. We have bought a virgin mobile store in Kuwait on Sandbox in the meta verse.

We are going after the enthusiast gaming community. So it is also a way of how you communicate with the customers and how you make sense of that.

28:23 – Using Data to Understand Customers

Moderator: Yeah, that’s awesome. I also think that puzzles me because I have worked on data for the last 16 years. This is fantastic but when you go off the stage and go back to work, what are the current things that play on your mind? How do you plan to use this fantastic opportunity because there is so much leeway to play and bring people together to understand the data?

I think what I hear as a common sentiment from all three of you is that you want to understand the customer better, be where the customer is, cater to them in a medium where they understand things and pass on the right message.

So how do you plan to do that today? I am sure that there are challenges pertaining to people, just like Shafika mentioned earlier, but it will be interesting to get your opinion on what plays on your mind when you think of that.

Sumit Srivastava: So the part that you mentioned about understanding customers, I would like to add one more thing to it and that is to predict what customers are going to do next. So it is important to understand the amount of data you have, collate all of it and figure out the different patterns and behaviours that are helpful in cross-selling and up-selling.

In the end, it is also important to predict what will happen next. This is where the whole AI and ML piece is important, where we go through millions and millions of patterns, collate them and use them for your core subscriber base and also third party audiences. You keep adding more data and analysing it to understand customers more and more. It is cyclical.

Moderator: So do you think you are prepared for the challenge that is coming or does it keep you up at night?

Sumit Srivastava: We are preparing every day. I don’t think we will ever be completely prepared because even after this conversation, we will still be talking about what we can do better on the basis of what we learned today.

Moderator: The reason I put you on the spot there is that that is the reality we live in. It is never done and you have got to keep going back to the same problem and keep moving. A lot of us face this challenge day in and day out. But you do not get that validation until you are sitting in a room full of practitioners. Bilal, what’s your view on this?

Bilal Adham: I mean we go back and face every possible business challenge that I am sure everyone here faces. At least for the immediate business revenue and sales and how could we grow with that? There could be multiple means as sophisticated as AI or we could have people handing over sim cards. That’s the reality, I think.

But for us, what we want to understand better is the customer. Building on your last question, I think we should really value our partners that we work with. So sometimes we can wish for the world and want to build everything by ourselves including proprietary technology, but there’s a lot of cost-benefit analysis that you want to do beforehand.

There are times you get the right skills on board and implement the technology while getting the marketing tech stack right. But usually by this time, others have already moved who are dedicated to that environment. So you have built this ecosystem that allows you to plug and play because that is very important.

This is where you can get many learnings and establish data clean rooms and work with partners to grow things right. So for me, that is what we do. We try to work with great people in the space as far as possible and we really just try to understand the customer in simplicity because otherwise you can be spinning all day long. So l think it is important to go back to basics.

We can try and demystify all of this sophisticated analysis but if you are not doing the fundamentals right then it is the whole garbage in and garbage out thing and you are never going to evolve.

You have to rely on making good partnerships, get core ethics and values in place. We have principles behind decisions which are led by KPIs and we go ahead and deliver. We can build product roadmaps but if the team has not done what they said they would yesterday, then why not?

33:05 – Importance of People in Solving the Telcos Challenges

Moderator: Shafika, I would like to know your opinion on not just the technology but the people, process, and governance challenge that comes along with this because it is not easy. There is so much to deal with and you need help for that. How do you look at that?

Shafika Houcine: As far as I am concerned, I think that we should have a very clear understanding of what we want the digital channels to do for us? These channels can do so many things. Like a website can do so many things. It can be an HR tool, a PR tool, and a sales tool. So defining what we want the channel to do for us is very important.

We have our apps that we use for digital support and care while driving more sales. So for sales, our websites are easy to connect if you are a prospect and do not want to download any app.

It all starts with defining the vision, being clear on the KPI you want to achieve and from there having the right team and processes. I think we keep talking about being lean but there is often a gap between the words and the reality. We need to work on that so that we can ensure that people understand a lean UX process.

For example, making sure that we have the right skill sets because we do have gaps. It is very hard for us to find the right solution architect, to find the right QA people because sometimes we overlook the QA and testing phase. We do not do enough usability testing with our users.

So there are many gaps that we are trying to fill. So for me, it is important to have the right people who understand the frameworks and also push the agenda forward while understanding what the strategy is and how to execute it. So, people are essential.

Sumit Srivastava: Yeah, I think people’s infrastructure is one piece, but the thing that I am constantly pushing is the “Why?”. You start with the customer and you end with the customer. Everything that comes in between is the experience, but you have to challenge your teams and yourself as well.

It is important to ask yourself why you want to build this product and why do you want to add value to the customer’s life everyday? So that is extremely important. Having a vision is okay but connecting the dots for its execution is even more important.