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Nailing Your Customer Communications Strategy with Dotdigital's Gavin Laugenie
To achieve success in eCommerce in 2020 you’ve got to think about building a conversation, a relationship with your customer. Batch and blast just doesn’t cut it anymore. That means you’d need to get your data right, understand why you’re collecting it, sort out your preference centres and learn to understand the customers’ digital body language. In this third episode of the eCommerce Growth Show podcast series, our host’s Phill Kay from Segmentify and Chloe Thomas from eCommerce MasterPlan are joined by dotdigital’s Gavin Laugenie to discuss this crucial topic.
Welcome to the eCommerce Growth Show brought to you by Segmentify, the fast, lean learning machine. The fastest learning, most revenue generating personalisation platform for e-commerce.
Chloe Thomas:
Hello. Welcome to episode three of the eCommerce Growth Show. In this series, we’re focusing in on what you, as a retailer, need to know about to take your sales growth to the next level in 2020. There are six episodes in this series and each of them focuses on a different area that’s essential for e-commerce growth. Already live are our interviews with BigCommerce’s Head of Europe, Mark Adams, and Segmentify’s own Murat Soysal. In each of these, we took a high level look at what’s been happening in the e-commerce tech space, and more importantly, how you can use that knowledge to create a competitive advantage for your business.
Chloe Thomas:
After all, what creates growth more than a competitive advantage? Now in this episode, we’re shifting to the world of marketing, to the customer communications that bring the customer to the website to buy. Make sure you subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the rest of the series which is going to include payments reviews and the post-purchase experience. I’m Chloe Thomas, the host of the eCommerce MasterPlan podcast, the bestselling author of multiple books on e-commerce, and of course co-host of this show. I am joined on every episode of the series by Phill Kay from Segmentify. Hello Phill.
Phill Kay:
Hello Chloe.
Chloe Thomas:
How are you doing?
Phill Kay:
I’m good, I’m good. How are you?
Chloe Thomas:
I am good too. I am looking forward to getting into a topic which is something I’ve been involved with for over a decade now. So this is like my safe space, but it’s an area you don’t know so much about. So why did you want to include dotdigital in this series?
Phill Kay:
Absolutely, well, this is a very, very important partner for Segmentify, and obviously my role has been in partnerships for a long while. I’ve known dotdigital for a long time, and what’s really happened, particularly with Segmentify in partnering with dotdigital, has been that we had a very exciting joint project for Select Fashion, which are basically [crosstalk 00:02:17], yeah, it’s fascinating. They were basically looking for the next level in terms of on site personalisation for their brand and we had to do quite a rigorous proof of concept and A/B split test with their incumbent provider.
Phill Kay:
And Segmentify not being what we’d call an ESP, or an email services provider, or engagement cloud or however you want to word that, we obviously needed to partner with ESP platforms or engagement cloud platforms to deliver that side of things, along with the rest of our proposition, which is around personalised recommendations, push notifications, personalised search and so on. So when we did that test, we decided, because we have a seamless integration with dotdigital, to partner with them for the end to end solution for Select Fashion over their incumbent provider, and the results were fantastic. I mean we saw, basically, a 14% uplift in revenue contribution on top of, in addition to, their current provider.
Chloe Thomas:
This is a company who were already doing some of the strategies, but by putting in place your tech combined with dotdigital, it lifted it by 14%?
Phill Kay:
Yeah. Simply due to the power of our machine learning and the strength of the integration with dotdigital. So they are our Tier 1 engagement cloud partner, and the combination of the integration and the quality of the technology of dotdigital, just wiped the floor with the incumbent provider and gave, more importantly, the customer that extra uplift in gains from personalisation and email marketing. The service that dotdigital provided, effectively, for that customer to the next level. So we were super excited about that. So I thought it’s absolutely no brainer to welcome them onto this particular broadcast to tell the lessons all about that, in more detail.
Chloe Thomas:
Okay. Well, lovely listeners, what we’ve now got coming up is a deep dive into some of the more complex parts of shifting your business from the good old send out an email, hope some cash comes in, to a proper communication strategy. And we’re going to be talking about preference centres, about legacy data, about new data, different channels, personalisation. There’s a whole load of good stuff coming your way that’s going to really help you grow in 2020.
Chloe Thomas:
It’s time to welcome our guest, Gavin Laugenie is the Head of Strategy and Insight at dotdigital. He spent his whole career helping businesses improve their online customer communications, and yes, that means email, SMS, social, mobile, and more. If you’re not familiar with dotdigital, well quite frankly, where have you been? Because they help over 4,000 brands in over 150 countries to be successful. And they’ve won so many awards we could fill the whole episode by listing them all, but don’t worry, we’re not going to do that today. Hello Gavin.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Hello.
Chloe Thomas:
How are you doing?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I’m very good, thank you. I was taken aback by that. That lovely intro from you.
Chloe Thomas:
Well, we try. We try, don’t we Phill?
Phill Kay:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chloe Thomas:
Sometimes we succeed as well.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah. I was just thinking to myself, oh, this is a really good podcast and then realised I’m on it.
Phill Kay:
That’s probably why. How are you doing, Gavin?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I’m very good. I’m very good, thanks. I’m trying not to say those words, which are, new year, new me. But I’m trying to work on bettering myself.
Phill Kay:
Yeah. Yeah. All the time.
Chloe Thomas:
That is the point of the whole podcast. This is what we’re doing is to try and give retailers that step to make their 2020 ever more brilliant.
Phill Kay:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Gavin, somebody told me on the grapevine that you are pretty famous. Do you want to tell us more about that before I come down to your office for your autograph?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Famous? I wouldn’t say famous, but I have been on TV. I don’t think anyone that’s been on Channel Five can say that they’re famous.
Phill Kay:
Wow.
Chloe Thomas:
I don’t know, it’s better than some of the channels these days. It’s one of the top five isn’t it?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Basically. Do you remember Justin Lee Collins?
Chloe Thomas:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
There was a show called Good Times with Justin Lee Collins and a friend of mine knew the production person and said that, we were some idiots that would sing on TV. And the whole premise was, there was a girl who’s blindfolded and I had to sing to her, the three guys had to sing to her, and she had to choose one of the guys with the best voice, I guess.
Phill Kay:
Oh, so a singer as well?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I’m not conforming to that one.
Chloe Thomas:
Blind Date meets The Voice is always [inaudible 00:07:25].
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
[inaudible 00:07:28], and I know what you’re going to ask me, I didn’t win.
Phill Kay:
No? No? And your career didn’t obviously go to the moon as an actor or singer?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
No, it’s gone from strength to strengths because dotdigital are going from strength to strength. I think it coincided with me not actually making it on a show, and I’ve pushed everything into making my day job a lot better.
Phill Kay:
So it was destiny. Clearly.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Did you buy any of that?
Phill Kay:
Absolutely, yeah.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah, okay.
Chloe Thomas:
Convincing.
Phill Kay:
Great. Well, so what we’re going to talk about is customer communications. I’m keen to hear, what do you think are the most important things that we need to be focusing on in 2020 to maximise that area of the business?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Well, I sound like a broken record whenever I speak, really, because I tend to always bang on about data. And that is definitely one of the things I’ll say people should be looking at because without the right data you can’t really do anything. There’s a whole bunch of techniques and tips and tricks that I think, we speak about quite a lot over here at dotdigital, but without the right data, you’re barking up the wrong tree, effectively. I mean you’re not going to get the results you want. So at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think getting your data in the right state is definitely a key thing to go forward. But I think in 2020, ‘Lifecycle Marketing’ and definitely ‘Omnichannel Marketing’ are a couple of things that people should be really looking at and focusing on.
Phill Kay:
Interesting to hear more about that, for sure.
Chloe Thomas:
So should we dive into getting the data in the right state first off? Because I guess, Gavin, there’s kind of two sides to this isn’t there? We’ve got the side, which is the data you’ve already got, and then there’s the new data that’s being fed into the system. So where should someone who’s already up and running, where do they start? Do you start by what’s coming in or do you start with what’s already there?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I would start with what’s already there because otherwise, you’re going to be adding on a mess on top of a mess that’s already there. So clean up what you’ve currently got, have an understanding of what you got, there’s so many … I won’t name names, some clients I’ve spoken to that don’t really have an idea of what it is they have currently. So have a really good look at what data you currently have and have an understanding of what you’re trying to do with it as well. Because in the same vein, you might have a ton of data, but it’s not useful for anything.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
So it’s getting your head around that, what’s currently sitting in your database and hopefully, that’s not a spreadsheet [inaudible 00:00:10:29]. A tool to actually manage your data properly, but have a look at what you have. Is it fit for purpose? Which means you’re going to have to start looking at what you’re trying to do with your data. You’re going to want to run specific programs, automated programs, and that’s the sort of thing you want to look at first. So I’d say definitely take stock of what you currently have.
Chloe Thomas:
And I would guess a lot of people are going to find they’ve got different data in different places, which can be quite a challenge, can’t it?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yes. And again, this is one of the things, when you say something like that, it rings true for a number of people I’ve spoken to. So if you’re listening to this and you think to yourself, oh, that’s me and I’m never going to be able to get anywhere, so many people have the same issues and you’re able to get over those. You just have to sit down and figure out a plan, really have an understanding of … As I keep telling you, what it is you’re trying to achieve.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
And then it makes it easy for you to clear through and sift through and look at where your data sits in different pools, in different tools, and then one tool to … Sounds like Lord of the Rings, one tool to rule them all. You want that all-encompassing tool to manage all of your data in one place, or at least have different tools feeding into one place. Because then you can have a really holistic view of everything that you have. It’s that 360-degree view of your data that everyone’s trying to get. But, yeah, having one tool to funnel everything into, that’s probably what you’re looking for.
Chloe Thomas:
And you’ve mentioned a couple of times in there about knowing why you want the data. And I, like you, I speak to a lot of people who have no idea what data they’ve got or they want to do something and they discover they did have the data but someone deleted it last week or something else. But it is the bit which often people dive straight into collection or dive straight into cleaning before they’ve actually gone, why do we actually want data and what do we actually want to do with it? So do you find that’s where you start with a lot of people? Is actually, hold on, let’s take a step back from the detail and go, why?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah, 100%, and it’s often not the clients that are asking themselves this. When I get into a session with a client, because I do these deep-dive sessions with our clients if they want it and need it. And I do ask those questions, and it’s often the awkward question because it will be the things that people want to ask because they’re going to have to deal with it. Someone is going to have to do that piece of work. But it is a case of, why are you doing this? You’re collecting, for example, you’re collecting date of birth but you never will send out a birthday campaign and you guys aren’t thinking of doing it, so why are you collecting that piece of information? You’re wasting people’s time, one, collecting it and then you’re wasting your time because it’s just sitting there. So it is yeah, as you said, yes, think about why you’re doing it.
Chloe Thomas:
I often find that the date of birth one, in particular, is one where someone’s … They get a new tool and they’re setting up a new email signup or something and they go, oh we can ask for date of birth, let’s ask for date of birth. That would be good, wouldn’t it? It’s like we’re going to be kleptomaniac about data. Oh, we could ask for favorite toy as well. Let’s do that. And it’s like, really? You’ve got to step back. But I think the other thing you made the point of there was the bit where you say, well why do you want this data? And people struggle to answer it. I think it’s partly because it’s a bit embarrassing. I think as marketers we feel we always have to have the answer, and so sometimes being asked, why do we need this data and what do we want to do with? Can actually be quite a difficult question to ask internally. Sometimes you need a third party to come in and say, why?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Exactly. It’s the amount of times I’ve had people in a room, and often, if it’s a large marketing team and the right hand doesn’t speak to left time all the time and you get people in the room and you ask that question, why, and you see blank faces. Some people have quoted things like, “Well you guys wanted it.” “No, we thought you wanted it.” “Oh, right, so we don’t need that?” “No, no.” “Okay, well then what are we try to do?” And it’s those types of questions, and I think also when we’re trying to communicate with our customers as individuals and hopefully, we want them to trust us as well. Collecting the right parts of information to execute exactly what it is they need is so vital. So all of these questions come into play. But it does start, as we said, with what is it we’re actually trying to do in the first place?
Chloe Thomas:
And we’ve strayed there into the part we haven’t quite talked about, which is collecting the data in the first place. And that, certainly when I started off 15 years ago, we collected data and then we assumed it was set in stone. The customer couldn’t change anything. We’d never change anything. And it was, that was it forever. And it’s not really that case anymore, is it?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Not at all. No. And the power should really lie in your customer’s hands, and it’s their prerogative to make changes. We’ve seen a massive rise here in dotdigital with clients wanting to not just have a preference centre, but build one that’s specific for them. It takes us to their needs and their client’s needs, their customer’s needs, and those are … This is going to sound really sad, but those are all the rage. Having a custom preference centre, because that’s exactly what you want. You want to be able to speak to your clients, your customers, in the way they want to be spoken to. Frequency can be difficult to manage, but definitely the types of comms that you want to speak to people about. Whether it’s promotional bits and pieces, whether it’s just news about yourselves. Giving them the option to chop and change and understand what that could look like as a complete comms plan for you guys, but also channels as well.
Chloe Thomas:
I was going to say when it also comes to, well yeah, we’ll definitely pick on that channels point in a second, but when it comes to custom preference centres, do people provide customers with different preference centres or capture methods at different points in the customer journey? Because it strikes me that the options you should give someone when they sign up are different to the options you give them when they send an inquiry, which will be different to the options you give them if they bought from you five times.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
100%, you said you’ve been around in the industry 15 years and, yeah I’ve seen those sort of changes, people bombarding customers right in the beginning. That’s something you change. You won’t be able to have this progressive profile in which, I think, really, has been the tactic that’s been around forever. And it is like that. Initially, you just want to capture at least the email address, now that’s the key to everything. So at least capturing an email address. If you want to start moving down into different channels and maybe a mobile phone number as well, but once you have that email address, you can kick off into that initial welcome program, and then nurture and build up and collect more and more information [inaudible 00:18:15], as and when you see fit.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Because you’re not going to want everything right up front, because people are just going to think, I haven’t got time to do that. If slowly you build up, it makes sense. It’s like, we have new relationships all the time and you wouldn’t think about 10 people, about everything that’s happened in your lives … Even though I just tell most people that I’ve been on TV. You wouldn’t think about telling every single minute detail about yourself to someone straight away. You’d want to build up to that. And it’s exactly the same sort of thing we’re trying to do here with this digital thing that we’re all working. It’s gradually build up that relationship because it is a relationship that you have with the customer. So that’s what we’re trying to do.
Chloe Thomas:
And we mentioned we’re going to talk about channels there, and if you start off with the email address then you’re going to want to start getting some other marketing channels. So you get to go behind the scenes and see what people are doing in many different e-commerce businesses of all sizes. And I know the whole multichannel, Omnichannel thing is something people are struggling with. So of those who you’re seeing be successful, because we don’t expect you to name any names here, but what are they doing that’s creating big benefits without massive upheaval?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I think they’re opening themselves up to the different channels that there are available. That’s one thing. The second thing is asking your database. Isn’t that a novel thing? Is asking the people that you’re selling to and interacting with whether or not they’d want to connect with you on other channels. And it’s a generational thing as well, I’m seeing a number of people want to communicate maybe on chat, on your website. A lot of people might want a WhatsApp message or an SMS message. You’ve got other people as well who are quite happy to stick with the staple, which is email.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But unless you’re asking that question, which goes back to what you’re saying about preference centres, but unless you’re asking those questions you won’t value whether or not different channels, multiple channels, omnichannel is going to work for you. So I would definitely say open yourselves up to those channels and then give your customer base a chance to tell you exactly whether or not they want to converse with you on those channels. Because the worst thing is to start getting SMS’s from someone’s and you just think to yourself, no I didn’t really request that. Well, this is far too many, switch off, and then you lose them. So you need to ask that question.
Chloe Thomas:
And from the business perspective as well, go to all the effort of building a new channel to then find it’s tumbleweed because the customer didn’t actually want it after all.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But then you have to figure out what the actual use of it is. Because SMS is probably not going to be that mass promotional type channel. It’s probably more for notifications, and definitely WhatsApp will be that as well. So notifications, letting people know that you’ve made that purchase. This is your little receipt if you like. What’s great in the world of travel, to get your boarding passes in bits and pieces in SMS and then you can save to your wallet. Those types of things. And it’s opening up the horizon to build in a … It’s almost like a narrative you have, you start talking on email. You get them excited, get them looped in, get them to purchase after receiving an email.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But then notifications happen on SMS, in WhatsApp, and if you start to lose them, then maybe you can tie into social. And if you really wanted to, you’ve got snail-mail and post to get people back into the fold, or maybe if they’re a really high ticket, high-value customer, that’s when snail-mail or post can come in quite nicely. So it’s building up that picture, that … I guess if you want to say, lifecycle marketing. Building up to that journey that people are taking with you and understanding where those different channels enter.
Phill Kay:
Yeah, I find it’s interesting, actually, you mentioned it around really, it’s a relationship. And I haven’t, obviously from not directly in your space, suddenly realising that’s what you’re actually doing. You’re cultivating a relationship, aren’t you? Or at least you’re assisting with it or adding a layer. Of course, yeah, penny drops.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
It’s one of those things, you do forget really that when you send out a mass message to all of your people in your database, you forget that there is someone on the other side of that computer screen. There is that actual person. And I’m looking more and more into, not just sustain the sustainability, but ethics when it comes to what we do in the business world. And I found a stat the other day, it was saying I think something like 84% of consumers say that they would consider working with a company, buying from the company, based on the ethics and their values. And treating someone as an individual comes back into all of that. So it’s something that companies are really going to have to start understanding. You see it more and more with e-commerce businesses, you do make a decision now based on how people make their purchase. If they’re giving back and that sort of thing as well. So it’s definitely something to consider is, the person buying your wares, they’re actually an individual.
Chloe Thomas:
I like the fact you bring up the ethics because it’s … I think people often think ethics is about where the product is sourced or about the message they give out. And they sometimes don’t quite realise, actually no, it’s about the number of messages you send and the content of those messages as well. If you’re going to go down that sustainability, ethical positioning, then you have to consider it across the entire business. Not just the packaging your product leaves the warehouse in.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah, 100%. 100%.
Chloe Thomas:
And, Gavin, given this is the Segmentify podcast, we have to talk a little bit about … Because we’re talking about customer comms, we can’t not talk personalisation. So, one … We don’t have time to cover the whole of personalisation today, but one question I think kind of fits in with what we’ve been talking about is, do you find brands being successful basing the personalisation they’re doing on what the customer does or what the customer inputs in preference centres? So the old behaviour versus what they say they’ll do.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
You can’t have them mutually exclusive, you definitely can’t have one without the other. You have to fuse the two together, the implicit and explicit definitely need to work together to get, what I like to call, we refer to as, digital body language. And that’s … Do you like that?
Chloe Thomas:
I like implicit and explicit, I was getting quite excited about in digital body language. I’m like … oh, that’s so cool.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But it’s that sort of thing, because when someone walks into a store, if you had a brick and mortar store, I go back to my old days, I used to work in the GAP, other clothing stores were available. Someone would walk in and you would see them make a beeline for either the jeans or something like that. And that would show you exactly what they’re looking for. But when you go up and speak to them and they say, “Well actually I’ve come in looking for the jumpers today,” and you can see how straight away you can be led down one route, but actually they’re looking for something else as well.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
So they fill out their preferences in preference centre, and you can stick to that. That can be the only thing you do. But if you ignore the other information that you’ve had from them, like their movement around the website, how long they’ve lingered on a page for, if they have something in their basket and they haven’t come back for it, all those types of things. You fuse that all together, because just having them tell you something alone is not enough. The age-old example I’ve always had is, you go to the doctor’s and the doctor asks you how many units of alcohol you consumed over any week. And because it’s a doctor, you probably lie.
Phill Kay:
Yeah.
Chloe Thomas:
One, one unit.
Phill Kay:
Tell me about it.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But then, if the doctor goes through your rubbish, your bins, and sees all the bottles of wine, that’s another thing. So, the customer’s telling you one thing, you can’t just take it. You need to look at their digital body language and make a proper decision on what it is they want. So using that data to segment and personalise based on that. And again, you can always ask them, word of the market, but it looks to us as though you’d be interested in X, Y and Z.
Chloe Thomas:
Very cool. I’m still loving digital body language that’s so … I’m going to be using that this year. Okay, so Gavin, we’ve been talking all about the marvellous world of preference centres and Omnichannel and all the rest of it, which of course is what you do day in, day out at dotdigital. So do you want to tell us a little bit about dotdigital and how the listeners can get in touch with you guys?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah, sure. Well we are obviously a massive platform, an engagement cloud is the platform that you can use if you did look at us, but all our clients connect and empower themselves with a range of tools. And as I was saying, Omnichannel marketing is the key thing for us. So not just looking at email, which is our bread and butter, but giving you a range of tools to communicate with your clients is what we’re offering. And if you do want to have a look at the platform, or at least get in touch with us and have someone speak to you about how we can help to bridge new horizons in terms of communications and reconnecting with your customers. You can go to our website, which is actually a particular link for a quick demo. So you can see a video and then if you want to see more of that, then you can dive a little bit deeper into that.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But if you go to https://dotdigital.com/demo/, it’s quite sad actually because you get to that page and you’re going to see my face, so I’m sort of promoting myself, but you go there and fill out the details and you can get a quick demo of the platform just to see an overview of what’s available. And if you want to see more, then we can have someone to design a demo for you. But as I said, we’re all about heightening communications with our clients and working really well with our partners as well. So Segmentify, really helping you get the best out of digital marketing. It’s not really about just using our platform it’s taking a step back and understanding the strategy. That’s the sort of thing, I’m a consumer as well, to really work out what it is you should be doing for your clients.
Phill Kay:
Nice one, Gavin. I’ve just got one little question which I’m quite keen because, again, I’m not directly in your world. We’re both in e-commerce, but what would you say, almost as in a nutshell, to somebody like me who doesn’t fully know ins and outs of the sector that you’re in. How would you say to them, this is why we’re different, this is why we have a unique proposition that is really powerful and that you need to speak to us because of how we can help you. How would you package that up in a couple of sentences?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I think I’m very carefully not saying that we’re a one-stop-shop because that’s definitely not the case. Although we offer you a number of the channels to communicate with your customers on. Via email, SMS, social, and even we’ve got a mail plugin tool that you can use as well. So a number of different channels, but on top of that, we’re really involved in how we can help you better yourselves with using the platform. So it’s the account management team and people like myself who really take an interest in your world, what it is you’re trying to achieve, and how we both can get there. I think that’s the key to that. And I’ve been here 10 years and in that whole time I’ve been here, it’s always been … We’ve got this really easy platform to use. Put that to one side, it’s how we can help you get the best out of that platform. And I think that’s always been the case with us, really.
Chloe Thomas:
Awesome answer. Okay, cool. Thanks, Gavin, so much for being on the show and for giving us so much great insight. I know we’ll have helped the listeners yet again to improve their business in 2020. So thank you very much.
Phill Kay:
Yeah, thanks, Gavin.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Cheers.
Phill Kay:
Appreciate it.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Thank you very much.
Phill Kay:
See you soon.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Really enjoyed it. Take care.
Phill Kay:
See you, bye bye.
Chloe Thomas:
So Phill, we got deep into the world of data and preference centres and communications and email marketing there. Left me with lots of ideas for very complicated stuff. How about you, what did you take?
Phill Kay:
I tell you what. I think I’ve mentioned it in chat with Gavin, the penny dropped for me when I suddenly realised this is all about complementing a relationship. I suddenly realised when I go about talking to our customers, or we’re talking to the marketplace, what are we actually trying to do? What are we actually even trying to do with our platform? The personalisation. We are trying to build a relationship with every single person that interacts with the website that we’re deployed on. And similarly, with dotdigital, it’s exactly the same. Well, what are you doing to cultivate a relationship, pre, post-sale and so on, with the customer? That was a really good thing for me to understand how to bring it all together in the sense of how it relates, really, to the relationship building element with your customers.
Chloe Thomas:
Hopefully, we’ve given a few of the listeners that penny drop as well because I think there’s a big shift in the industry, in the e-commerce marketing industry, from just send a big email out, see some money come in, send a big message out, see some money come in, to actually how do we embrace that with the customer journey? It’s not an easy change to make. It requires quite a lot of work, quite a lot of thinking, quite a lot of strategy and a big mindset shift.
Phill Kay:
Like in the old days of emails, certainly from my perspective, and even in a sales operation or whatever, it’s all about a volume game. But actually, it’s not about that anymore. It’s about how can we get granular with each and every interaction? And that’s why the combination of Segmentify and dotdigital, for example, is so powerful. Because when they’re talking about that relationship, if you have that granular control over what each and every customer is doing, and you can tell your message accordingly, then, of course, your value back and relevancy to the customer just goes up and up and up.
Chloe Thomas:
Thank you, Phill. Now, if you want to get granular and make that shift away from the volume game to something much more lucrative, then you should probably head to segmentify.com/podcast where you can get your hands on all the links and resources mentioned in this episode and a full transcript. That’s a written version of this whole show. Via that link, you’ll also find details of the whole series. Don’t forget to subscribe in Apple podcast, Spotify, and so forth, because we wouldn’t want you to miss a single episode. Especially not the next one. In our next episode, Phill and I are swatting up on the latest payments, mobile and international expansion strategies with Brian Mapley of Adyen. Yes, we managed to fit what you need to know to grow about all three of those crucial subjects into just one episode. Do not miss it.
Hello. Welcome to episode three of the eCommerce Growth Show. In this series, we’re focusing in on what you, as a retailer, need to know about to take your sales growth to the next level in 2020. There are six episodes in this series and each of them focuses on a different area that’s essential for e-commerce growth. Already live are our interviews with BigCommerce’s Head of Europe, Mark Adams, and Segmentify’s own Murat Soysal. In each of these, we took a high level look at what’s been happening in the e-commerce tech space, and more importantly, how you can use that knowledge to create a competitive advantage for your business.
Chloe Thomas:
After all, what creates growth more than a competitive advantage? Now in this episode, we’re shifting to the world of marketing, to the customer communications that bring the customer to the website to buy. Make sure you subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast app of choice so you don’t miss the rest of the series which is going to include payments reviews and the post-purchase experience. I’m Chloe Thomas, the host of the eCommerce MasterPlan podcast, the bestselling author of multiple books on e-commerce, and of course co-host of this show. I am joined on every episode of the series by Phill Kay from Segmentify. Hello Phill.
Phill Kay:
Hello Chloe.
Chloe Thomas:
How are you doing?
Phill Kay:
I’m good, I’m good. How are you?
Chloe Thomas:
I am good too. I am looking forward to getting into a topic which is something I’ve been involved with for over a decade now. So this is like my safe space, but it’s an area you don’t know so much about. So why did you want to include dotdigital in this series?
Phill Kay:
Absolutely, well, this is a very, very important partner for Segmentify, and obviously my role has been in partnerships for a long while. I’ve known dotdigital for a long time, and what’s really happened, particularly with Segmentify in partnering with dotdigital, has been that we had a very exciting joint project for Select Fashion, which are basically [crosstalk 00:02:17], yeah, it’s fascinating. They were basically looking for the next level in terms of on site personalisation for their brand and we had to do quite a rigorous proof of concept and A/B split test with their incumbent provider.
Phill Kay:
And Segmentify not being what we’d call an ESP, or an email services provider, or engagement cloud or however you want to word that, we obviously needed to partner with ESP platforms or engagement cloud platforms to deliver that side of things, along with the rest of our proposition, which is around personalised recommendations, push notifications, personalised search and so on. So when we did that test, we decided, because we have a seamless integration with dotdigital, to partner with them for the end to end solution for Select Fashion over their incumbent provider, and the results were fantastic. I mean we saw, basically, a 14% uplift in revenue contribution on top of, in addition to, their current provider.
Chloe Thomas:
This is a company who were already doing some of the strategies, but by putting in place your tech combined with dotdigital, it lifted it by 14%?
Phill Kay:
Yeah. Simply due to the power of our machine learning and the strength of the integration with dotdigital. So they are our Tier 1 engagement cloud partner, and the combination of the integration and the quality of the technology of dotdigital, just wiped the floor with the incumbent provider and gave, more importantly, the customer that extra uplift in gains from personalisation and email marketing. The service that dotdigital provided, effectively, for that customer to the next level. So we were super excited about that. So I thought it’s absolutely no brainer to welcome them onto this particular broadcast to tell the lessons all about that, in more detail.
Chloe Thomas:
Okay. Well, lovely listeners, what we’ve now got coming up is a deep dive into some of the more complex parts of shifting your business from the good old send out an email, hope some cash comes in, to a proper communication strategy. And we’re going to be talking about preference centres, about legacy data, about new data, different channels, personalisation. There’s a whole load of good stuff coming your way that’s going to really help you grow in 2020.
Chloe Thomas:
It’s time to welcome our guest, Gavin Laugenie is the Head of Strategy and Insight at dotdigital. He spent his whole career helping businesses improve their online customer communications, and yes, that means email, SMS, social, mobile, and more. If you’re not familiar with dotdigital, well quite frankly, where have you been? Because they help over 4,000 brands in over 150 countries to be successful. And they’ve won so many awards we could fill the whole episode by listing them all, but don’t worry, we’re not going to do that today. Hello Gavin.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Hello.
Chloe Thomas:
How are you doing?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I’m very good, thank you. I was taken aback by that. That lovely intro from you.
Chloe Thomas:
Well, we try. We try, don’t we Phill?
Phill Kay:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chloe Thomas:
Sometimes we succeed as well.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah. I was just thinking to myself, oh, this is a really good podcast and then realised I’m on it.
Phill Kay:
That’s probably why. How are you doing, Gavin?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I’m very good. I’m very good, thanks. I’m trying not to say those words, which are, new year, new me. But I’m trying to work on bettering myself.
Phill Kay:
Yeah. Yeah. All the time.
Chloe Thomas:
That is the point of the whole podcast. This is what we’re doing is to try and give retailers that step to make their 2020 ever more brilliant.
Phill Kay:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Gavin, somebody told me on the grapevine that you are pretty famous. Do you want to tell us more about that before I come down to your office for your autograph?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Famous? I wouldn’t say famous, but I have been on TV. I don’t think anyone that’s been on Channel Five can say that they’re famous.
Phill Kay:
Wow.
Chloe Thomas:
I don’t know, it’s better than some of the channels these days. It’s one of the top five isn’t it?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Basically. Do you remember Justin Lee Collins?
Chloe Thomas:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
There was a show called Good Times with Justin Lee Collins and a friend of mine knew the production person and said that, we were some idiots that would sing on TV. And the whole premise was, there was a girl who’s blindfolded and I had to sing to her, the three guys had to sing to her, and she had to choose one of the guys with the best voice, I guess.
Phill Kay:
Oh, so a singer as well?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I’m not conforming to that one.
Chloe Thomas:
Blind Date meets The Voice is always [inaudible 00:07:25].
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
[inaudible 00:07:28], and I know what you’re going to ask me, I didn’t win.
Phill Kay:
No? No? And your career didn’t obviously go to the moon as an actor or singer?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
No, it’s gone from strength to strengths because dotdigital are going from strength to strength. I think it coincided with me not actually making it on a show, and I’ve pushed everything into making my day job a lot better.
Phill Kay:
So it was destiny. Clearly.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Did you buy any of that?
Phill Kay:
Absolutely, yeah.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah, okay.
Chloe Thomas:
Convincing.
Phill Kay:
Great. Well, so what we’re going to talk about is customer communications. I’m keen to hear, what do you think are the most important things that we need to be focusing on in 2020 to maximise that area of the business?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Well, I sound like a broken record whenever I speak, really, because I tend to always bang on about data. And that is definitely one of the things I’ll say people should be looking at because without the right data you can’t really do anything. There’s a whole bunch of techniques and tips and tricks that I think, we speak about quite a lot over here at dotdigital, but without the right data, you’re barking up the wrong tree, effectively. I mean you’re not going to get the results you want. So at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think getting your data in the right state is definitely a key thing to go forward. But I think in 2020, ‘Lifecycle Marketing’ and definitely ‘Omnichannel Marketing’ are a couple of things that people should be really looking at and focusing on.
Phill Kay:
Interesting to hear more about that, for sure.
Chloe Thomas:
So should we dive into getting the data in the right state first off? Because I guess, Gavin, there’s kind of two sides to this isn’t there? We’ve got the side, which is the data you’ve already got, and then there’s the new data that’s being fed into the system. So where should someone who’s already up and running, where do they start? Do you start by what’s coming in or do you start with what’s already there?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I would start with what’s already there because otherwise, you’re going to be adding on a mess on top of a mess that’s already there. So clean up what you’ve currently got, have an understanding of what you got, there’s so many … I won’t name names, some clients I’ve spoken to that don’t really have an idea of what it is they have currently. So have a really good look at what data you currently have and have an understanding of what you’re trying to do with it as well. Because in the same vein, you might have a ton of data, but it’s not useful for anything.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
So it’s getting your head around that, what’s currently sitting in your database and hopefully, that’s not a spreadsheet [inaudible 00:00:10:29]. A tool to actually manage your data properly, but have a look at what you have. Is it fit for purpose? Which means you’re going to have to start looking at what you’re trying to do with your data. You’re going to want to run specific programs, automated programs, and that’s the sort of thing you want to look at first. So I’d say definitely take stock of what you currently have.
Chloe Thomas:
And I would guess a lot of people are going to find they’ve got different data in different places, which can be quite a challenge, can’t it?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yes. And again, this is one of the things, when you say something like that, it rings true for a number of people I’ve spoken to. So if you’re listening to this and you think to yourself, oh, that’s me and I’m never going to be able to get anywhere, so many people have the same issues and you’re able to get over those. You just have to sit down and figure out a plan, really have an understanding of … As I keep telling you, what it is you’re trying to achieve.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
And then it makes it easy for you to clear through and sift through and look at where your data sits in different pools, in different tools, and then one tool to … Sounds like Lord of the Rings, one tool to rule them all. You want that all-encompassing tool to manage all of your data in one place, or at least have different tools feeding into one place. Because then you can have a really holistic view of everything that you have. It’s that 360-degree view of your data that everyone’s trying to get. But, yeah, having one tool to funnel everything into, that’s probably what you’re looking for.
Chloe Thomas:
And you’ve mentioned a couple of times in there about knowing why you want the data. And I, like you, I speak to a lot of people who have no idea what data they’ve got or they want to do something and they discover they did have the data but someone deleted it last week or something else. But it is the bit which often people dive straight into collection or dive straight into cleaning before they’ve actually gone, why do we actually want data and what do we actually want to do with it? So do you find that’s where you start with a lot of people? Is actually, hold on, let’s take a step back from the detail and go, why?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah, 100%, and it’s often not the clients that are asking themselves this. When I get into a session with a client, because I do these deep-dive sessions with our clients if they want it and need it. And I do ask those questions, and it’s often the awkward question because it will be the things that people want to ask because they’re going to have to deal with it. Someone is going to have to do that piece of work. But it is a case of, why are you doing this? You’re collecting, for example, you’re collecting date of birth but you never will send out a birthday campaign and you guys aren’t thinking of doing it, so why are you collecting that piece of information? You’re wasting people’s time, one, collecting it and then you’re wasting your time because it’s just sitting there. So it is yeah, as you said, yes, think about why you’re doing it.
Chloe Thomas:
I often find that the date of birth one, in particular, is one where someone’s … They get a new tool and they’re setting up a new email signup or something and they go, oh we can ask for date of birth, let’s ask for date of birth. That would be good, wouldn’t it? It’s like we’re going to be kleptomaniac about data. Oh, we could ask for favorite toy as well. Let’s do that. And it’s like, really? You’ve got to step back. But I think the other thing you made the point of there was the bit where you say, well why do you want this data? And people struggle to answer it. I think it’s partly because it’s a bit embarrassing. I think as marketers we feel we always have to have the answer, and so sometimes being asked, why do we need this data and what do we want to do with? Can actually be quite a difficult question to ask internally. Sometimes you need a third party to come in and say, why?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Exactly. It’s the amount of times I’ve had people in a room, and often, if it’s a large marketing team and the right hand doesn’t speak to left time all the time and you get people in the room and you ask that question, why, and you see blank faces. Some people have quoted things like, “Well you guys wanted it.” “No, we thought you wanted it.” “Oh, right, so we don’t need that?” “No, no.” “Okay, well then what are we try to do?” And it’s those types of questions, and I think also when we’re trying to communicate with our customers as individuals and hopefully, we want them to trust us as well. Collecting the right parts of information to execute exactly what it is they need is so vital. So all of these questions come into play. But it does start, as we said, with what is it we’re actually trying to do in the first place?
Chloe Thomas:
And we’ve strayed there into the part we haven’t quite talked about, which is collecting the data in the first place. And that, certainly when I started off 15 years ago, we collected data and then we assumed it was set in stone. The customer couldn’t change anything. We’d never change anything. And it was, that was it forever. And it’s not really that case anymore, is it?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Not at all. No. And the power should really lie in your customer’s hands, and it’s their prerogative to make changes. We’ve seen a massive rise here in dotdigital with clients wanting to not just have a preference centre, but build one that’s specific for them. It takes us to their needs and their client’s needs, their customer’s needs, and those are … This is going to sound really sad, but those are all the rage. Having a custom preference centre, because that’s exactly what you want. You want to be able to speak to your clients, your customers, in the way they want to be spoken to. Frequency can be difficult to manage, but definitely the types of comms that you want to speak to people about. Whether it’s promotional bits and pieces, whether it’s just news about yourselves. Giving them the option to chop and change and understand what that could look like as a complete comms plan for you guys, but also channels as well.
Chloe Thomas:
I was going to say when it also comes to, well yeah, we’ll definitely pick on that channels point in a second, but when it comes to custom preference centres, do people provide customers with different preference centres or capture methods at different points in the customer journey? Because it strikes me that the options you should give someone when they sign up are different to the options you give them when they send an inquiry, which will be different to the options you give them if they bought from you five times.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
100%, you said you’ve been around in the industry 15 years and, yeah I’ve seen those sort of changes, people bombarding customers right in the beginning. That’s something you change. You won’t be able to have this progressive profile in which, I think, really, has been the tactic that’s been around forever. And it is like that. Initially, you just want to capture at least the email address, now that’s the key to everything. So at least capturing an email address. If you want to start moving down into different channels and maybe a mobile phone number as well, but once you have that email address, you can kick off into that initial welcome program, and then nurture and build up and collect more and more information [inaudible 00:18:15], as and when you see fit.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Because you’re not going to want everything right up front, because people are just going to think, I haven’t got time to do that. If slowly you build up, it makes sense. It’s like, we have new relationships all the time and you wouldn’t think about 10 people, about everything that’s happened in your lives … Even though I just tell most people that I’ve been on TV. You wouldn’t think about telling every single minute detail about yourself to someone straight away. You’d want to build up to that. And it’s exactly the same sort of thing we’re trying to do here with this digital thing that we’re all working. It’s gradually build up that relationship because it is a relationship that you have with the customer. So that’s what we’re trying to do.
Chloe Thomas:
And we mentioned we’re going to talk about channels there, and if you start off with the email address then you’re going to want to start getting some other marketing channels. So you get to go behind the scenes and see what people are doing in many different e-commerce businesses of all sizes. And I know the whole multichannel, Omnichannel thing is something people are struggling with. So of those who you’re seeing be successful, because we don’t expect you to name any names here, but what are they doing that’s creating big benefits without massive upheaval?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I think they’re opening themselves up to the different channels that there are available. That’s one thing. The second thing is asking your database. Isn’t that a novel thing? Is asking the people that you’re selling to and interacting with whether or not they’d want to connect with you on other channels. And it’s a generational thing as well, I’m seeing a number of people want to communicate maybe on chat, on your website. A lot of people might want a WhatsApp message or an SMS message. You’ve got other people as well who are quite happy to stick with the staple, which is email.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But unless you’re asking that question, which goes back to what you’re saying about preference centres, but unless you’re asking those questions you won’t value whether or not different channels, multiple channels, omnichannel is going to work for you. So I would definitely say open yourselves up to those channels and then give your customer base a chance to tell you exactly whether or not they want to converse with you on those channels. Because the worst thing is to start getting SMS’s from someone’s and you just think to yourself, no I didn’t really request that. Well, this is far too many, switch off, and then you lose them. So you need to ask that question.
Chloe Thomas:
And from the business perspective as well, go to all the effort of building a new channel to then find it’s tumbleweed because the customer didn’t actually want it after all.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But then you have to figure out what the actual use of it is. Because SMS is probably not going to be that mass promotional type channel. It’s probably more for notifications, and definitely WhatsApp will be that as well. So notifications, letting people know that you’ve made that purchase. This is your little receipt if you like. What’s great in the world of travel, to get your boarding passes in bits and pieces in SMS and then you can save to your wallet. Those types of things. And it’s opening up the horizon to build in a … It’s almost like a narrative you have, you start talking on email. You get them excited, get them looped in, get them to purchase after receiving an email.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But then notifications happen on SMS, in WhatsApp, and if you start to lose them, then maybe you can tie into social. And if you really wanted to, you’ve got snail-mail and post to get people back into the fold, or maybe if they’re a really high ticket, high-value customer, that’s when snail-mail or post can come in quite nicely. So it’s building up that picture, that … I guess if you want to say, lifecycle marketing. Building up to that journey that people are taking with you and understanding where those different channels enter.
Phill Kay:
Yeah, I find it’s interesting, actually, you mentioned it around really, it’s a relationship. And I haven’t, obviously from not directly in your space, suddenly realising that’s what you’re actually doing. You’re cultivating a relationship, aren’t you? Or at least you’re assisting with it or adding a layer. Of course, yeah, penny drops.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
It’s one of those things, you do forget really that when you send out a mass message to all of your people in your database, you forget that there is someone on the other side of that computer screen. There is that actual person. And I’m looking more and more into, not just sustain the sustainability, but ethics when it comes to what we do in the business world. And I found a stat the other day, it was saying I think something like 84% of consumers say that they would consider working with a company, buying from the company, based on the ethics and their values. And treating someone as an individual comes back into all of that. So it’s something that companies are really going to have to start understanding. You see it more and more with e-commerce businesses, you do make a decision now based on how people make their purchase. If they’re giving back and that sort of thing as well. So it’s definitely something to consider is, the person buying your wares, they’re actually an individual.
Chloe Thomas:
I like the fact you bring up the ethics because it’s … I think people often think ethics is about where the product is sourced or about the message they give out. And they sometimes don’t quite realise, actually no, it’s about the number of messages you send and the content of those messages as well. If you’re going to go down that sustainability, ethical positioning, then you have to consider it across the entire business. Not just the packaging your product leaves the warehouse in.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah, 100%. 100%.
Chloe Thomas:
And, Gavin, given this is the Segmentify podcast, we have to talk a little bit about … Because we’re talking about customer comms, we can’t not talk personalisation. So, one … We don’t have time to cover the whole of personalisation today, but one question I think kind of fits in with what we’ve been talking about is, do you find brands being successful basing the personalisation they’re doing on what the customer does or what the customer inputs in preference centres? So the old behaviour versus what they say they’ll do.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
You can’t have them mutually exclusive, you definitely can’t have one without the other. You have to fuse the two together, the implicit and explicit definitely need to work together to get, what I like to call, we refer to as, digital body language. And that’s … Do you like that?
Chloe Thomas:
I like implicit and explicit, I was getting quite excited about in digital body language. I’m like … oh, that’s so cool.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But it’s that sort of thing, because when someone walks into a store, if you had a brick and mortar store, I go back to my old days, I used to work in the GAP, other clothing stores were available. Someone would walk in and you would see them make a beeline for either the jeans or something like that. And that would show you exactly what they’re looking for. But when you go up and speak to them and they say, “Well actually I’ve come in looking for the jumpers today,” and you can see how straight away you can be led down one route, but actually they’re looking for something else as well.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
So they fill out their preferences in preference centre, and you can stick to that. That can be the only thing you do. But if you ignore the other information that you’ve had from them, like their movement around the website, how long they’ve lingered on a page for, if they have something in their basket and they haven’t come back for it, all those types of things. You fuse that all together, because just having them tell you something alone is not enough. The age-old example I’ve always had is, you go to the doctor’s and the doctor asks you how many units of alcohol you consumed over any week. And because it’s a doctor, you probably lie.
Phill Kay:
Yeah.
Chloe Thomas:
One, one unit.
Phill Kay:
Tell me about it.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But then, if the doctor goes through your rubbish, your bins, and sees all the bottles of wine, that’s another thing. So, the customer’s telling you one thing, you can’t just take it. You need to look at their digital body language and make a proper decision on what it is they want. So using that data to segment and personalise based on that. And again, you can always ask them, word of the market, but it looks to us as though you’d be interested in X, Y and Z.
Chloe Thomas:
Very cool. I’m still loving digital body language that’s so … I’m going to be using that this year. Okay, so Gavin, we’ve been talking all about the marvellous world of preference centres and Omnichannel and all the rest of it, which of course is what you do day in, day out at dotdigital. So do you want to tell us a little bit about dotdigital and how the listeners can get in touch with you guys?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Yeah, sure. Well we are obviously a massive platform, an engagement cloud is the platform that you can use if you did look at us, but all our clients connect and empower themselves with a range of tools. And as I was saying, Omnichannel marketing is the key thing for us. So not just looking at email, which is our bread and butter, but giving you a range of tools to communicate with your clients is what we’re offering. And if you do want to have a look at the platform, or at least get in touch with us and have someone speak to you about how we can help to bridge new horizons in terms of communications and reconnecting with your customers. You can go to our website, which is actually a particular link for a quick demo. So you can see a video and then if you want to see more of that, then you can dive a little bit deeper into that.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
But if you go to https://dotdigital.com/demo/, it’s quite sad actually because you get to that page and you’re going to see my face, so I’m sort of promoting myself, but you go there and fill out the details and you can get a quick demo of the platform just to see an overview of what’s available. And if you want to see more, then we can have someone to design a demo for you. But as I said, we’re all about heightening communications with our clients and working really well with our partners as well. So Segmentify, really helping you get the best out of digital marketing. It’s not really about just using our platform it’s taking a step back and understanding the strategy. That’s the sort of thing, I’m a consumer as well, to really work out what it is you should be doing for your clients.
Phill Kay:
Nice one, Gavin. I’ve just got one little question which I’m quite keen because, again, I’m not directly in your world. We’re both in e-commerce, but what would you say, almost as in a nutshell, to somebody like me who doesn’t fully know ins and outs of the sector that you’re in. How would you say to them, this is why we’re different, this is why we have a unique proposition that is really powerful and that you need to speak to us because of how we can help you. How would you package that up in a couple of sentences?
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
I think I’m very carefully not saying that we’re a one-stop-shop because that’s definitely not the case. Although we offer you a number of the channels to communicate with your customers on. Via email, SMS, social, and even we’ve got a mail plugin tool that you can use as well. So a number of different channels, but on top of that, we’re really involved in how we can help you better yourselves with using the platform. So it’s the account management team and people like myself who really take an interest in your world, what it is you’re trying to achieve, and how we both can get there. I think that’s the key to that. And I’ve been here 10 years and in that whole time I’ve been here, it’s always been … We’ve got this really easy platform to use. Put that to one side, it’s how we can help you get the best out of that platform. And I think that’s always been the case with us, really.
Chloe Thomas:
Awesome answer. Okay, cool. Thanks, Gavin, so much for being on the show and for giving us so much great insight. I know we’ll have helped the listeners yet again to improve their business in 2020. So thank you very much.
Phill Kay:
Yeah, thanks, Gavin.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Cheers.
Phill Kay:
Appreciate it.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Thank you very much.
Phill Kay:
See you soon.
dotdigital – Gavin Laugenie:
Really enjoyed it. Take care.
Phill Kay:
See you, bye bye.
Chloe Thomas:
So Phill, we got deep into the world of data and preference centres and communications and email marketing there. Left me with lots of ideas for very complicated stuff. How about you, what did you take?
Phill Kay:
I tell you what. I think I’ve mentioned it in chat with Gavin, the penny dropped for me when I suddenly realised this is all about complementing a relationship. I suddenly realised when I go about talking to our customers, or we’re talking to the marketplace, what are we actually trying to do? What are we actually even trying to do with our platform? The personalisation. We are trying to build a relationship with every single person that interacts with the website that we’re deployed on. And similarly, with dotdigital, it’s exactly the same. Well, what are you doing to cultivate a relationship, pre, post-sale and so on, with the customer? That was a really good thing for me to understand how to bring it all together in the sense of how it relates, really, to the relationship building element with your customers.
Chloe Thomas:
Hopefully, we’ve given a few of the listeners that penny drop as well because I think there’s a big shift in the industry, in the e-commerce marketing industry, from just send a big email out, see some money come in, send a big message out, see some money come in, to actually how do we embrace that with the customer journey? It’s not an easy change to make. It requires quite a lot of work, quite a lot of thinking, quite a lot of strategy and a big mindset shift.
Phill Kay:
Like in the old days of emails, certainly from my perspective, and even in a sales operation or whatever, it’s all about a volume game. But actually, it’s not about that anymore. It’s about how can we get granular with each and every interaction? And that’s why the combination of Segmentify and dotdigital, for example, is so powerful. Because when they’re talking about that relationship, if you have that granular control over what each and every customer is doing, and you can tell your message accordingly, then, of course, your value back and relevancy to the customer just goes up and up and up.
Chloe Thomas:
Thank you, Phill. Now, if you want to get granular and make that shift away from the volume game to something much more lucrative, then you should probably head to segmentify.com/podcast where you can get your hands on all the links and resources mentioned in this episode and a full transcript. That’s a written version of this whole show. Via that link, you’ll also find details of the whole series. Don’t forget to subscribe in Apple podcast, Spotify, and so forth, because we wouldn’t want you to miss a single episode. Especially not the next one. In our next episode, Phill and I are swatting up on the latest payments, mobile and international expansion strategies with Brian Mapley of Adyen. Yes, we managed to fit what you need to know to grow about all three of those crucial subjects into just one episode. Do not miss it.
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