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Science-first Customer Marketing Basics with Amit Bivas, Head of Marketing at Optimove

Amit suggests tips for brands to maximize customer lifetime value through meaningful and emotionally intelligent communications. He explains why marketers should embrace AI to help uncover what’s most relevant to their customers and stresses on the need for unified communications across channels for today’s omnichannel customer. Amit enjoys going to food markets to learn marketing 101 from the merchants. When he is not busy executing B2B and B2C marketing strategies from the ground up, Amit binges on bow ties. Amit believes that marketers should be more Don Drapers than Albert Einsteins

Ginger Conlon:

Hello and welcome to MarTech Advisor’s Executive Interview Series. I'm Ginger Conlon, a Contributing Editor to MarTech Advisor and joining us today is Amit Bivas who is Head of Marketing at Optimove. Welcome Amit!

Amit Bivas:

Thanks for having me, hi, how’s everything going Ginger?

Q- Ginger Conlon:

Great, we’re so glad to have you here to talk about trends and opportunities with marketing automation, especially, on the customer retention side which is a favorite topic of mine. So, Amit, let's briefly introduce Optimove and tell what makes it unique to kick us off.

A- Amit Bivas:

Sure. So, thanks for having me today, I'm more than honored to be with you. Optimove is a science first customer marketing hub and what it does it helps brands communicate with emotionally intelligent with their customers. So, the idea is to maximize customer value by creating very meaningful and emotional intelligent communications with them.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

Love that, it's so important to understand your customers and interact with them in that way. So, let's talk about marking automation and customer retention and how that emotional intelligence aspect gets in. So, if you think about it, when it comes to marketing budget there seems to be a never-ending battle between acquisition and retention, both are essential but retention efforts can really lead to added benefits like maximizing spend and increasing lifetime value. So, how can marketers get the most from their retention efforts today, what’s some advice you have?

A- Amit Bivas:

That's a really good question. We're all familiar with research from Bain and Company from ages ago that the smallest increase in customer retention can bring to huge increases in profit, the number is 25 to 75 percent. I think that it's just not intuitive to invest in retention because who is going to invest in an existing asset that they have, it’s just not intuitive. With that being said, we all know that today the entrance barriers are very low into the digital market.

So, if you want to be a retailer and enter the market, it's fairly easy and then what this leads to is the very first competition in that space and when it comes to competition, in the age of Amazon where you can find anything there,

you do need to justify your existence and one of the main ways to justify that existence is having a very unique standpoint or a very different or standing out brand

The way our customers see it, one of the ways to create that differentiation is fostering those types of conversations that are meaningful and that are in context, it's almost like intimate type of conversations with the customers.

The problem is, doing that at scale and that's where technology comes into play but I think that for most brands it's not intuitive to invest in existing customers. However, we do see that it's a game changer once you decide to invest in it strategically.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

Absolutely. It's interesting that you said that technology can help because that reminds me of how much of a hot topic AI has become and I think part of it is for that reason, it can really help you do that personalization at scale. So, where can marketers use it today in their analytics, their segmentation and personalization efforts?

A- Amit Bivas:

Probably if you search Google Trends for AI, I think in the past year it's booming. Interesting to say it's a term that exists I think since the late 90's and back then it was a big no no to say that because it used to relate to the Terminator type of movie, so people would fear it and then something happened in the last year or two where it became a huge buzzword. The thing with buzzwords is that sometimes they're overused.

So, I think, that today it's overused but let me try to sort out the big hype around it and I think that today if I'm looking at it from an analytic standpoint, AI could help marketers because there's just too much data out there and today you must know how to curate and over analysis leads to paralysis and all that stuff. So, I think that AI could just help you better understand what's relevant, what's less relevant and where to drill down into. So, instead of getting lost in that mess, it will just help you find the valuable points and where to drill down into.

From another standpoint, let's look at segmentation personalization. So, Rome wasn't built in one day, so, when a marketer starts understanding different segments, usually, they won't start with hundreds of segments, they will start with a few segments and then

the idea is to try to understand and fit the best message for that segment or the best method of communication with that segment, AI can help doing that at scale, to help understand exactly which subgroups exist within each segment and which communication will work best for each sub-segment

Am I making sense?

Ginger Conlon:

Yeah, absolutely.

Amit Bivas:

So, I think that generally it is a big buzzword but in marketing terms it's an enabler, it helps do the marketers job much more easily, understanding which data is insightful and take those insights and translate them into actions and how to further segment and treat your segments better and more accurately.

Ginger Conlon:

Right. So, it sounds like it's important to get past the shiny object syndrome and look at what it actually means in marketing and what it can do for you in terms of better understanding and reaching out to your customers.

Amit Bivas:

100%.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

Excellent. So, another hot topic in marketing is customer experience and I feel like that's quite the buzzword as well, but I also feel like marketers can use marketing automation to positively impact the customer experience, even from the point where customers are still prospects. So, what's some advice you have in terms of using marketing automation to make a positive impact on customer experience?

A- Amit Bivas:

I think that's a really good question. As you said, CX, customer experience is another big buzzword. I think that in terms of marketing automation impacting the customer experience more than anything it's creating a unified communication across multiple channels. So, everyone's talking about that big problem today, customers are omnichannel, they're everywhere and I think that

if a brand is able to engage a unified conversation across multiple channels that's a huge advantage and obviously technology is a key enabler here

I think that also another very important aspect is the speed, customers change very quickly and marketers must move at the speed of their customers. So, in that sense they have to be agile and obviously technology is an enabler for that agility and

I think that more than anything it's minimizing the time frame between ideation to execution

Usually a marketer thinks about a campaign, it takes him or her a week or two to execute, so, we’re trying to minimize that gap because once it's smaller, marketers are much more agile and they are able to move at the speed of their customers and obviously, automation technology is key for that.

Generally speaking, I think, there are a lot of challenges in using marketing automation but then again, if a marketer embraces change and they're able to adopt new technologies and do it successfully, a good marketing technology is an enabler, so, choose the right technology and make sure to embrace change.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

Absolutely. So, one of the things that you said was that marketing automation has its challenges, as does any type of technology. But since you are an expert in marketing technology, what's some advice you could share on what's one challenge that you see coming up maybe a little bit too often in terms of using marketing automation and how can marketers overcome that challenge?

A- Amit Bivas:

My background is industrial engineering and somehow, I found myself in marketing. As an industrial engineer, what we do is streamline processes and optimize them and I think that when you take a new technology and implement it in an organization, number one is that usually you have to embrace change in order to successfully adopt the technology.

So,

I think that successful adoption, first of all embracing change and understanding that yes, this new technology is here to make my life easier and enable me to do my job better is the first stage

and usually, especially with a lot of AI, people fear of losing their jobs, people fear from a lot of different things that this technology would do to them and once you're able to make the point where this technology is here to help you do your job better then that's exactly the game changer because most of the integration projects fail on adoption, people don't believe in the technology, don't embrace change, don't want to take it and then it fails.

Another thing that I also want to address here is that Rome wasn't built in a day, and I already said this, but, I think that people sometimes expect when they take on a new technology it's going to be a miracle, it's going to generate miracles, it's not like that. Change starts from small steps and it's an iterative process. So, start small, don't expect miracles, work hard and the technology will work for you. People in technology work together for a greater meaning, so, just understand that relationship between yourself and the technology and it's like a very 30,000 feet statement, but, I think that having that paradigm shift would help utilize technology for your benefit.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

That's such great advice. Think about back 10 and 15 years ago when CRM technology was the hot topic and all the buzz and too many people thought that they could flip the switch and all of a sudden their customer relationships and their cells, processes, would be perfect and improved and like you said, it's not how it works, you've got to have your strategy first and then baby steps, start with one use case and then add and add as you get your successes. So, great advice.

So, speaking of processes, one of the great things about marketing automation is that it can bring all kinds of efficiencies to marketing processes. So, what opportunities do you see in terms of marketers using technology to improve maybe some specific processes, perhaps blending art and science more effectively and as a result increase their performance?

A- Amit Bivas:

That's a great question and I'll try to address this from two different angles. One angle is, and I touched this point, is shortening ideation to execution. Marketers have to move at the speed of their customers and once the process from ideation to execution is minimized you're able to be so much more creative, you’re able to offer your customers such a much better experience, we’re talking about orders of magnitude, we're talking about initiating of campaigns in a few hours, so, think about how much more agile and quick the marketers are or that brand is. So, that's one point.

Another point which takes me to the end of the 90’s and the 1990’s was where digital marketing was born. Email was presented for the first time as something that the people started using and then email marketing started and the whole era of digital marketing started to ramp up. Up until that point, a marketer was a Don Draper, a creative freak, they used that right hand side of their brain much more than the left hand side and then at some point when digital was presented, so, the definition of the marketer or the role of the marketer shifted towards an Albert Einstein and marketers are expected to be somehow scientists or artists like hipster scientists, god knows what, and that doesn't necessarily work and I think that streamlining that process of ideation to execution helps the marketer become a Don Draper again.

The natural marketer is a Don Draper, it's a creative freak, let the technology take care of the science and the marketer be able to shine with his creativity

So, I think that processes that are streamlined correctly and that shortened ideation to execution enabled the marketer to flourish from the right side of his brain which they're probably more talented in using.

Q- Ginger Conlon:

That’s excellent, thank you. So, let's wrap up with a look forward, what's coming up that you're excited about in two areas. One is, is there a trend or a tool that's coming out that you’re really excited about and on the other side, anything within Optimove, any new features or upgrades we should know about?

A- Amit Bivas:

Future, a prophecy is always something nice to deal with. I think that what we're seeing mostly now, and we already spoke about this earlier, is that more and more companies and more and more brands are understanding the importance of investing in retention and customer marketing, CRM, it's not intuitive because why would you invest in your existing assets, they're already there, they're already generating revenues, so, why would you invest in them, but more and more brands are understanding why this is so important.

I think that in terms of the future we're going to see more and more budgets taken from acquisition or acquisition and retention ratio will balance out. So, the competition is fierce, more and more brands are out, Amazon and Apple and Google are swallowing all the small fish and then the brands that will exist this big World War III, if you will, will be the ones that are able to be unique and create meaningful interactions with their customers and with emphasis on their customers we're talking about technologies that will be able to create those type of communications, that’s from a market standpoint.

From Optimove, we're definitely going that way, that's our belief on how the market will look moving forward and that's what we're going towards. I think that more than anything, in terms of Optimove, we look at fostering those emotionally intelligent communications with customers, but, the focus on the customer is something that's debatable and the definition of customer is something debatable. When does a customer start to be a customer, so, when does CRM even start and our future plans or future releases, without being too specific because this is still undercover in a sense or still under the radar, is redefining the term customer, when does a customer start being a customer and when do you start treating him with your CRM strategies.

Ginger Conlon:

I like that, my interest is piqued to see how you're going to define or redefine customer coming up. So, Amit, thank you so much for all the great information and insight and advice and I want to thank everyone who joined us on the video today and say that Amit and I had another great conversation about the skills that you need to succeed in marketing today, so, be sure to check out that video and also check out MarTech Advisor’s YouTube channel for more Executive Interviews and thank you so much for being here.

Amit Bivas:

Thanks Ginger.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

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