Tag: Customer Engagement

The Philippines –  Customer engagement platform MoEngage announced today the launch of four new solutions targeted at brands in the SEA region.  ‘MoEngage Inform’, ‘Web Personalisation’, ‘Google Ads Integration’, and ‘App Marketplace’ are now added to the platform’s product line-up. 

The MoEngage Inform aims to make brands’ transactional alert management seamless so they can focus more on delivering cohesive and time-sensitive messages to their consumers. Meanwhile, the personalisation suite is expected to help brands personalise their website with a visual, drag-and-drop builder, without a line of code by tapping into AI automation and actionable insights.

Moreover, the Google Ads Network Integration aims to enable marketers to acquire customers and re-engage existing customers on the world’s largest ad network, based on behaviour. This will also help brands reach out to selected cohorts and match their interests across Google Search, Google Shopping, Gmail, YouTube, and the extended Google Ad Network.

Lastly, MoEngage’s App Marketplace is for marketing, growth, and product teams to discover the right set of platforms and integrations that fits their needs. This aims to help brands build a modern tech stack and ramp up their customer engagement efforts.

“As organizations grow, their customer engagement needs become more complex. With the recent product launches, MoEngage aims to empower product, marketing, and growth teams to build memorable experiences and drive impact on LTV and customer retention,” said Raviteja Dodda, CEO and co-founder of MoEngage.

MoEngage has been in the customer engagement space since 2014, partnering with brands like WhatsApp, Microsoft, and theAsianparent.

Chicago, USA – Global digital experience tech Sitecore has unveiled a range of new and fully composable offerings and updates that aim to help brands deepen customer engagement and elevate customer experiences across all channels. 

The new solutions include Sitecore Search, an innovative AI-powered search and discovery function that provides marketers with a unified delivery system; Content Hub One, an agile, headless CMS that seamlessly combines content modelling, authoring and consumption into a single interface; and Sitecore Connect, a technology stack optimizer that allows brands to seamlessly connect Sitecore products to their existing infrastructure. All three were announced at the Sitecore Symposium 2022. 

Steve Tzikakis, CEO of Sitecore, said, “Symposium is an important event for Sitecore. It’s, of course, a time to gather, reflect and celebrate with our partners and customers; but it’s also [a] time to energize our efforts and put an intense focus on what’s next. As our digital world continues expanding, consumer behaviors continuously evolve, which challenges marketers to meet new expectations and demands. Our goal is to help brands navigate continued instability by ensuring the experiences they deliver to customers are positive, engaging and effective.”

In addition to unveiling the three new products, Sitecore has also announced further enhancements to Sitecore Experience Manager (XM) Cloud, the cloud-native, modern CMS that empowers brands to create, manage, and deliver content faster than ever. With the upcoming release, brands can expect XM Cloud updates and innovations such as new editing interfaces, native personalization, and testing capabilities.

Over the last year, Sitecore has made a number of acquisitions, where in April, it officially announced its revamped tech solutions activated by the said company buy-outs. Sitecore has since fully integrated core products from acquired Boxever, Four51, Moosend, and Reflektion into its Digital Experience Platform (DXP).

The Philippines – MARKETECH APAC‘s What’s NEXT returns this year with a stronger push to bring the industry together through a variety of knowledge-sharing activities. MARKETECH APAC will continue to feature thought-leadership articles written by renowned marketing leaders to cover various marketing areas, as it did last year.

With MARKETECH APAC‘s ongoing push to create relevant video content, we will gather the best in the industry this year and sit down with them to discuss how marketers can prepare for the upcoming year of marketing opportunities and challenges.

On November 3, 2022, What’s NEXT 2023 will kick off with a regional webinar, What’s NEXT: Events in Asia Pacific, in collaboration with event tech platform, Hubilo. On November 8, in partnership with influencer marketing platform Vamp, another regional webinar, What’s Next: Influencer Marketing in APAC, will be held.

True to its mission of creating a well-connected marketing community in Asia Pacific, What’s NEXT 2023 concludes with a two-day hybrid conference, What’s NEXT 2023: Marketing in Asia Pacific, on February 21-22, with at least 120 physical attendees in Manila and 1,500 virtual attendees from various markets in Asia Pacific.

The conference will spark offline and online discussions about digital, e-commerce, customer engagement, CX, esports, research, B2B, metaverse, and other relevant topics that will help marketers future-proof marketing strategies.

MARKETECH APAC’s What’s NEXT 2023 will be a go-to platform for checking out the marketing industry’s new trends, opportunities, and challenges to be explored in the region through this holistic approach.

Keep an eye on our website and social media pages for updates on the hybrid conference.

Please contact Joven Barceñas at [email protected] if you are interested in becoming a partner.

Seattle, Washington – Barbara Spiering, Starbucks’ VP of marketing technology & quality engineering, reveals how a measured approach to technology adoption and implementation has led to deeper and more meaningful relationships with its customers.

This ‘human approach’ to the brand experience was outlined by Spiering in the latest instalment of Cheetah Digital’s ‘Signals Executive interview Series.’

In this interview, Spiering highlights four key elements critical to their success with Cheetah Digital’s relationship marketing platform:

1. Don’t Let Tech Take The Wheel

Prioritise technology that enhances customer relationships and enables greater personalisation. Tech should never interrupt the connection between a brand and its customers. Used properly, technology can strengthen relationships across formats, with personalisation as the foundation of all communications. 

“The goal of technology is to create that bridge between the physical and the digital.” Spiering said. “So customers feel as seen and known in all of our digital channels as when they walk into the store, and that it’s a seamless experience.”

2. Personalisation Is Everything

More than 60% of all Starbucks orders are customised to the individual customer. That highlights the need for useful technology that allows Starbucks to keep the personal connection authentic throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

“Customers (need to) feel as seen and known in all of our digital channels as when they walk into the store,” Spiering said. “Because that’s why people come in, they want to be seen and known from the digital, to the physical. We know who you are, and it’s throughout the entire lifecycle. And that is really our goal, to create that connection.”

3. Clean Data > Big Data

Data is only as good as its accuracy. Tech is great at collecting data, but it requires a guiding hand to ensure the data collected is accurate and useful. That means technology partners must share the same vision for executing relationship marketing at the highest level possible. 

“You need to have really strong data governance practices, machine learning at scale,” Spiering said. “If you don’t have clean data, you’re never going to send the right message.”

4. POV Matters

Brands need to stand for something when communicating with customers in order for the message to be authentic. That means developing a point-of-view and ensuring it’s reflected in all customer interactions.

“You need to understand the message that you want to send to your customers and why you want to have that dialogue”, Spiering said. “Because personalisation won’t be effective unless you understand what you want to say and what relationship you want to have. Bring the head with the heart, and that’s your message.”

Emphasising the importance of a well-functioning customer relationship and personalisation strategy, the most recent Cheetah Digital 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Index survey found that 74% of global consumers want brands to treat them as an individual (a 110% increase from 2021), and 71% have a favourite brand as it strives to develop a relationship with its customers. Both are critical factors for brands to consider as the economy points to more challenges ahead.

“As brands move to acquire zero-party data to future proof their advertising and relationship marketing efforts, they can look at Starbucks as the blueprint,” said Wendy Werve, Cheetah Digital’s CMO.

“Our clients are bracing for a potentially turbulent economic landscape ahead by reinforcing their investments in owned channels such as email and SMS. This is where zero-party data and personalisation can impact the bottom line, especially as cookies and third-party data continue to disintegrate,” Werve adds. 

Singapore – Manulife Singapore, a provider of insurance and financial planning solutions has partnered with Vonage a global cloud communications helping businesses accelerate their digital transformation, to enhance customer engagement in the Asia Pacific region.

As part of the partnership, Manulife Singapore will use Vonage’s SMS API to deliver automated and timely notifications for one-time passwords (OTPs), policy notifications and promotional messages to its customers in the region, including Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and China. 

In addition, Vonage APIs enable businesses to easily build intelligent, intuitive customer experiences directly into their existing applications, systems and workflows, enabling communications across any channel and on any device for better customer engagement.

Sunny Rao, Senior Vice President, API Global Sales of Vonage, said adopting digital solutions and personalised customer experiences has become critical to meeting changing customer expectations and strengthening brand loyalty. In fact, 71% of Singaporean consumers were more likely to buy again from a brand that treated them like an individual. 66% only buy from brands that understand their preferences, such as communicating through their favourite channels1.

“SMS remains a vital communication format in the Asia Pacific region, where mobile penetration continues to rise, with 1.8 billion subscribers expected by 20252. Vonage’s solutions can help businesses create seamless customer journeys through automated communications solutions. This ensures that businesses are engaging with customers on their preferred channel in a continuous and timely manner,” Rao said.

Both the number of application-to-person (A2P) messages and their value are growing as brands add mobile and digital channels to interact with their existing customers and recruit new ones. 1.3 trillion A2P SMS messages were sent in 2020, in emerging Asia Pacific, accounting for 70% of all A2P messages worldwide. It is expected that the number of A2P SMS messages will reach 1.9 trillion by 2025.

As a Vonage API Services customer, Manulife Singapore’s developers also benefit from priority support via a designated support team contactable through all channels and access to an Enterprise Service Manager who can assist with on-boarding and ongoing project success.

Singapore – Global customer engagement platform MoEngage has partnered with tech giant Microsoft to allow enterprises to gather insights and run personalised, omnichannel campaigns for different customer segments to boost engagement, retention, and revenue.

Through the partnership, brands can now use Microsoft to bring together transactional, behavioural, and demographic data to create multi-dimensional customer profiles and export them to MoEngage to engage them with push notifications, emails, text messages (SMS), Whatsapp messages, mobile in-app messages, or website messages.

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, a consent-enabled CDP, helps brands deliver personalised customer experiences by providing 360-degree views of their customers and AI-driven insights based on unified customer profiles. 

Meanwhile, MoEngage’s Insights-led Engagement platform, a CEP, on the other hand, allows brands to reach their customers across their preferred communication channels at the right moment in their customer journey.

Raviteja Dodda, CEO and co-founder of MoEngage, said, “With our collaboration, enterprises can transform their business into customer-centric organisations by creating delightful and memorable experiences across multiple touchpoints. We’re happy to add Microsoft into our ever-growing partner ecosystem and are excited about co-creating the modern norms of customer engagement.”

Singapore – MARKETECH APAC, the digital media for the marketing and advertising industry in APAC, has partnered with Braze, the global customer engagement platform, to launch the industry report on consumer engagement, ‘2022 Customer Engagement Review’, an overarching review of the current state of consumer engagement. 

Combining data from the Braze platform, with the results from a survey of 1,500+ marketing decision-makers across 14 global markets, the report unveils macro trends within customer engagement that emerged in 2021, covers how customer engagement has evolved over the past year, and highlights opportunities for improvement and growth for 2022. 

This is the second instalment of the annual report, and the latest edition assesses shifts in customer engagement trends over the past year, together with actionable insights on what to expect next year, and how brands can address evolving consumer needs, channel preferences, and privacy concerns. Furthermore, to inform the report, data were analysed from three different sources.

“The events of the past two years have fundamentally altered the way customers approach brand relationships. The bar for consumer expectations is at an all-time high,” said Bill Magnuson, co-founder and CEO of Braze.

Today’s brands are embracing customer engagement and it’s paying off. But as the bar for marketing experiences rises, how can your company keep up? The report breaks down findings across five different industries—financial services, health and wellness, media and entertainment, QSR and delivery, and retail and eCommerce—as well as regional breakouts for APAC, EMEA, and the US. Each industry and regional breakout also features a case study from a leading Braze customer, including Linkaja, The Coffee Club, and Mercari.

Notable findings include insights regarding the continued shift toward zero-party (i.e. shared by users) and first-party (i.e. gathered with user consent) data, the emergence of data management as a top challenge for brands, and the growth of brand confidence in their customer engagement abilities. 

“For brands to rise to the occasion, they must focus on establishing a personal connection through customer engagement, and provide seamless communication across their preferred channels and platforms. Companies that fail to provide coordinated, cross-channel customer engagement strategies risk falling behind on business outcomes and revenue goals,” added Magnuson. 

Shaina Teope, MARKETECH APAC’s regional editor, commented, “We’ve seen so many changes in the past two years since the pandemic began, and now that the ‘new normal’ has actually become our ‘norm’, we need to prepare ourselves on the challenges and opportunities arising from this new brand-consumer dimension. Overarching industry reports like the ‘2022 Customer Engagement Review’ are definitely a boon. Through this report, we will be better equipped on how to move forward in 2022, since the insights comprehensively look into the past, present, and future landscape of consumer engagement.“

Also included in ‘2022 Customer Engagement Review’ is the Braze Customer Engagement Index, a framework assessing brands in 12 competencies across two key axes—technology and teams—to put forward a model for best-in-class customer engagement. Each brand is then indexed on these factors and distributed across three maturity stages – Activate (least mature), Accelerate, and Ace (most mature). The index revealed overall positive momentum from last year, with many companies increasing their maturity and sophistication across all 12 customer engagement competencies.

Download your own copy of the report HERE.

Australia – Purebaby, Australia’s largest independent babywear brand has announced it is transforming its customer loyalty strategy with the power of cross-channel customer engagement solution Cheetah Digital.

Purebaby was on the hunt for a software solution that would enable them to send personalised email messages to their existing and prospective customer base and allow them to move away from ‘batch-and-blast’ customer emails. 

“You have a database, you’re sending them one electronic direct marketing campaign (EDM), and that was it.” Sanjay Gill, CEO at Purebaby, says, “With the old platform, we were not getting what we needed in terms of segmentation and personalisation. It felt as if we were not using our database to its fullest potential, so we decided we needed a change.”

Another issue Purebaby had with their old platform was their support team was based in the U.S, which meant the Purebaby staff never had face-to-face meetings and seldom spoke with their provider. Purebaby wanted a locally based team to liaise with to offer more custom and real-time support.

“One of our conditions we had when we were onboarding with Cheetah Digital was for the teams to talk on a regular basis. There was an endless number of sessions that happened between our teams where we mapped out critical journeys for our customers,” Sanjay explains. 

A transformative solution

In July 2018, Purebaby turned to Cheetah Digital, sat down and mapped out an entire customer journey to decide at exactly which touchpoints the retailer wished to interact with their customers. 

“During those sessions, we mapped out the entire journey. such as which touchpoints were especially sensitive and important to our customers, such as when they announce they’re having a baby, to having the baby,” Sanjay says. 

From those sessions, Cheetah Digital helped create a bespoke number of “series,” which were personalised EDMs aimed at their customers’ experience at each critical touchpoint:

  • Milestone series: For a baby’s first birthday, for example 
  • Welcome series: Welcoming a new customer
  • Size-up series: When the baby needs a bigger size of clothing
  • Due date series: For mothers about to give birth

Purebaby also tries to incorporate highly personalised EDMs for milestones such as a first birthday or a baby shower when parents give that specific information. 

“As an example, we mapped out the birthday journey,” Sanjay explains. “When the customer is having a birthday or the baby’s first birthday — there’s a whole journey regarding those milestones. A whole journey was mapped out by Purebaby and Cheetah Digital. There were specific campaigns built around it and those campaigns were triggered at different times.” 

Additionally, Cheetah Digital and Purebaby worked on a “welcome series,” so when a customer signs up to the loyalty program called “Pure Love,” there are a series of personalised emails sent to them. These aren’t marketing emails, they are beautiful, introductory, experiential messages, introducing the parent to the brand, and showing them why Purebaby is special and what products they offer. 

“Our loyalty program is data-driven, as you come into the store, you sign up and it’s offline and online. This means a customer could walk into our store or could go to the website, sign up, and the journey will be the same,” Sanjay adds. 

Purebaby also has a “size-up” trigger for parents with newborn babies informing them it may be time to buy the next size-up for the newborn’s clothes. 

“Receiving that email knowing the parents are busy and they may not have time to go to the shop, receiving that email is very helpful from the feedback we hear. It also gives them time to plan if they’ve placed the order, it will be delivered in 24-hours, it does help the parents,” Sanjay explains. 

The “due date series” is sent to mothers who tell Purebaby their due date and they are sent helpful content pre- and post-birth, such as hospital checklists. 

“We realised a lot of people were entering the parenting journey underprepared. The due date series is about helping parents be prepared, we send them the hospital checklist, we send them the first wardrobe checklist. If someone has done that work for you and it is a matter of purchasing it, it makes it easier. It goes back to making parenthood easier for customers and make the journey easier,” Sanjay says. 

Supporting revenue growth and adaptability during the pandemic

Since implementing Cheetah Digital, Purebaby’s revenue has grown 47% compared to the prior year. Its email channel has become Purebaby’s second-highest revenue-driving channel. 

Through engaging with Cheetah Digital, the “welcome series” EDM has a 50% engagement rate; the “due date” EDM campaign has a 70% open rate and 14% unique click rate and the “size-up program” is performing on par with the “welcome series” at a 50% engagement rate. 

Between November 2020 and October 2021, email accounted for 21% of Purebaby’s total revenue and 16% of its total traffic, in the same period a year prior, its email accounted for 19.5% of its total revenue and 15.8% of its total traffic. 

Like many brands, Purebaby was concerned about the pandemic when it first hit Australian shores in March. Their retail sales halted and their digital sales took off. Sanjay says Purebaby was slowly undergoing digital transformation and COVID accelerated it for them. 

“Within weeks, 90% of our sales were coming from digital, whereas previously only 10% of sales came from online retail,” Sanjay says. “Our retail versus online sales has now balanced to 50/50, the digital sales have not gone backwards, they are much higher but the retail is standing on its own,” Sanjay says.

“Having a good platform, especially a good engagement platform like Cheetah Digital where we were able to ramp up our engagement with the customer was important for us.”

Cheetah’s VP, Go to Market APAC, Billy Loizou, says it’s exciting to partner with innovative brands like Purebaby that are leveraging innovative loyalty programs to transform customer experience at scale.

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with such a global retail leader that is revolutionising how brands unlock the value of their data to help build meaningful, long-term relationships with their customers. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with Purebaby and are excited to see how the brand continues to evolve and grow.”

Purebay sits has been running for more than 20 years and began as a wholesale brand selling to the likes of Myer and David Jones. Its founders, husband and wife team Sanjay Gill and Mirabai Winford, wanted to create a timeless, quality brand that was functional and fashionable to the market.

In 2010, the business started its transition into retail. The company now has 23 stores in Australia and distributes to more than seven countries worldwide, including the U.S., U.K., and the Middle East.

Cheetah Digital is a cross-channel customer engagement solution provider that enables marketers to create personalized experiences, cross-channel messaging, and loyalty strategies.

Jakarta, Indonesia – Customer engagement platform MoEngage has announced the launch of its new strategic customer advisory board that taps marketing experts of some of its clients to aid them in their endeavor in product development, including innovations around AI-powered technology to transform the future of customer engagement and experience management.

The advisory board members are namely Rajan Bansal, head of growth Marketing at Airtel; Parasar Sharma, Ex-CMO at Wakefit; Maha Iyer, SVP for marketing at Landmark; Yatish Jain, chief growth officer at OYO; Minal Thukral, SVP for marketing at CoinDCX; Aseem Sharma, head of growth at Navi; Saurabh Goel, head of digital at HT Media; Anand Bhaskaran, head of digital marketing and marketing communications at Bigbasket; Bhargav Errangi, head of retention marketing at Flipkart; and Vikraman Sridharan, director of products at Sharechat.

The board will have representation from MoEngage‘s top enterprise customers cutting across various industries such as banking, telecom, hospitality, retail, education, media and entertainment. MoEngage has seen rapid growth over the past year, including substantial expansion of over 80% in its customer base.

Raviteja Dodda, co-founder and CEO at MoEngage, said, “The customer advisory board is an invaluable resource for MoEngage, and we are grateful for the support from a group of outstanding industry leaders. This is a key initiative that will be instrumental in accelerating our customers’ success. It will also help determine how we can best serve our customers and co-create the product innovation roadmap. I am excited to pioneer the future of customer engagement alongside our customers.”

The board will meet at regular intervals to deliberate and offer counsel on customer challenges and emerging technology trends. These insights will help MoEngage align its product innovation roadmap with the strategic requirements of consumer brands and build the right solutions for the market. MoEngage’s key enterprise customers will also be able to gain an early view of the advanced capabilities to be introduced to the company’s platform.

During the inaugural meeting to welcome the new members, Atma Gunupudi, VP for global customer success at MoEngage said, “We are grateful to our customer executives who took time out of their busy schedule to be a part of our customer advisory board for the year 2022. We believe that the board members would enjoy learning from each other and guide our strategy and vision at MoEngage.”

Gunupudi added, “It is a privilege for us to be able to collaborate with some of the brightest minds in the region to co-create the future of the insights-led customer engagement.”

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Retail data platform Aimazing and customer engagement and loyalty super-app HyperQB have integrated their solutions to provide a complete mall intelligence and first-of-its-kind loyalty solution in the form of a mall super-app for Malaysia and the region.

Through the partnership, Aimazing will deliver a mobile solution that is easily accessible, allowing retail malls to achieve more omnichannel personalization to power their marketing and loyalty efforts. This in turn allows malls to look forward to having the infrastructure that allows them to have the same data-driven ability similar to e-commerce marketplaces, where every consumer’s purchasing journey is taken into context when crafting marketing campaigns.

Retailers will be able to use the dashboard to see foot traffic data and customise new retail strategies in real-time according to their customers’ journey. This was previously impossible, if not extremely costly and time-consuming, due to the fragmentation that exists in the current point of sale (POS) market.

“The strategic partnership provides a singular, unified view for mall managers to deliver experiences that are powered by modern technology platforms. In a post-pandemic world, it is increasingly important for malls to adapt and understand the importance of an insights-driven omnichannel approach. The partnership between Aimazing and HyperQB helps to give mall managers the infrastructure they need in order to enable this,” said Jun Ting, chief executive officer at Aimazing.

In addition, the mall super-app improves loyalty programs for customers by allowing mall management teams to understand shopping patterns and consumer habits, presenting the opportunity to offer various rewards in the form of discounts and perks to incentivize shoppers to conduct repeat purchases. 

HyperQB believes that customer loyalty programs are key assets that can be leveraged by mall managers on Aimazing’s mall super-app to run campaigns, understand which merchants they should work with and have data of shoppers preferred merchant brands allowing them to find creative ways to retain those customers, further increasing their lifetime value.

“The era of online is already here, and will continue staying with us. There is no other best answer to retail automation and transformation to use omni-channel to shape the entire customer journey So what is your strategy? Those questions should always come from the top management of the retailers and mall operators,” said Stephen Lim, co-founder and managing director at HyperQB.

Aimazing and HyperQB’s joint offerings are aimed at powering all malls in Malaysia to sustain their business by increasing foot traffic, increasing sales through effective promotions, and customer retention by providing the smartest and most seamless unified shopping and customer experience. 

Malls will be able to improve their returns on mall marketing by unlocking advertising dollars from brands and FMCG deals and forming multiple partnerships that could generate insights for the expansion of their products and services, by utilizing mall intelligence.

“Within the current retail market, malls do not have real-time sales data to inform business decisions, due to the technical difficulties involved in its collection processes. With an all-in-one integrated retail data and loyalty platform, the retail industry can look forward to infrastructure and solutions that can help supercharge their business operations and omni-channel strategies,” Aimazing said in a press statement.