Latest / The Retail Podcast / Is Email Dead? Debunking the Myth with Ben Jackson, Klaviyo MD EMEA

Transcript

Is Email Dead? Debunking the Myth with Ben Jackson, Klaviyo MD EMEA · The Retail Podcast

• 0:00
  And, you know, consumers are becoming much more data savvy,
• 0:04
  you know, when they share their data, you know, and a lot of
• 0:07
  these brands, you're you're asking for more and more data of
• 0:10
  a consumer. And what's the value exchange?
• 0:12
  Yeah, the consumer is expecting something in the term.
• 0:27
  Hello and welcome to the Retail Podcast.
• 0:29
  Now, as you know, I go to most of the conferences around the
• 0:32
  world and I've seen the Clavio booth, probably most of the
• 0:35
  conferences I've been around the world, around the world.
• 0:38
  And when I had an opportunity to speak to Ben Jackson, the MD for
• 0:42
  EMEA, I think what a great opportunity to unpack one of the
• 0:46
  topical problematic, one of the issues that still in retail can
• 0:51
  be divisive in marketing departments in how they address
• 0:54
  and communicate with their customers.
• 0:57
  And so, Ben, hello. How are you?
• 0:59
  Yeah, really good. Thank.
• 1:01
  Thanks, Alex, for inviting me on.
• 1:02
  Really, it's an absolute. Pleasure where?
• 1:04
  I presume you're in the UK? Where in the world are you?
• 1:06
  I'm. Yeah.
• 1:07
  I'm in, I'm in London at the moment.
• 1:09
  OK, where? Whereabouts are the Clay Beer
• 1:11
  offices? They are on Leadenhall St Very
• 1:15
  close. All.
• 1:16
  All gay, Yeah. So, yeah, very nice, nice part
• 1:18
  of the city. So listen live.
• 1:19
  I'm going to get straight into this, Ben, because I think
• 1:23
  there's a lot of people who feel that they've made their mind up,
• 1:26
  minds up on e-mail and are still treating e-mail like it's 2015.
• 1:31
  But you via your own channels, Clavio's own channels that
• 1:36
  you've shown that they're just not alive, they're sort of
• 1:39
  outperforming. And so there's this whole
• 1:40
  perception versus reality. I think.
• 1:43
  I, I mean, I'm not an expert in this.
• 1:45
  I have the caveat, I am not an expert, but I'm just curious on
• 1:48
  your thoughts on where the smart retailers are putting their
• 1:51
  energy when it comes to customer connections.
• 1:53
  Yeah, I, you know, there's there's some people out there in
• 1:56
  the market they're saying emails dead as a channel.
• 1:59
  I would disagree with that. What we're seeing with our
• 2:02
  clients, if it's if it's done right, you know they're driving
• 2:05
  a lot of revenue through the channel.
• 2:07
  What are the things that is really important.
• 2:10
  It's not the only channel, yeah. And So what we're seeing is that
• 2:14
  the ones that are doing their communications well are actually
• 2:19
  firstly, they're asking their consumers what channels they
• 2:23
  prefer. So could it be, you know,
• 2:25
  e-mail? Could it be SMS?
• 2:27
  Could it be WhatsApp? Yeah.
• 2:28
  And so there's a consumer preference out there that you
• 2:31
  need to think about. And then using the data that
• 2:35
  they're collecting to actually personalise.
• 2:37
  And. And that's not a new thing.
• 2:39
  Yeah, we've been talking about personalization and e-mail for
• 2:42
  probably, you know, for the last 10 years.
• 2:44
  Yeah. And a lot of companies out there
• 2:46
  are promising or a lot of technology companies are
• 2:49
  promising that they can do these things.
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  But often you see organisations, you know, they bring on a new
• 2:54
  piece of technology, the promise that they can personalise and
• 2:58
  get better ROI through an e-mail channel.
• 3:00
  Yeah, you look at what they're doing five years later and
• 3:02
  they're still doing the same thing.
• 3:03
  They're still doing the same welcome programmes, they're
• 3:06
  still doing the same abandoned basket programmes and nothing's
• 3:09
  changed. And that's why it's important.
• 3:13
  And it's not that especially the technology that's holding them
• 3:16
  back. Often it's the process, the
• 3:17
  internal process, the internal users, the content that they
• 3:21
  need to drive personalization. But if you give tools that are
• 3:25
  easy to use for for the marketers or the CRM
• 3:27
  departments, that's when they can actually change what they're
• 3:30
  doing. Yeah.
• 3:31
  If it doesn't take them long to do a new segmentation, if it
• 3:34
  doesn't take them long to kind of bring in new content and they
• 3:36
  can execute innovative campaigns quickly, it means they can
• 3:40
  change the way they're using the channel.
• 3:42
  Yeah. I've.
• 3:43
  Got you. So the the next question is
• 3:45
  really curious. When I talk and when I speak to
• 3:47
  my US counterparts, it sometimes feels that there's a sort of a
• 3:52
  different culture. So you can't really cut and
• 3:54
  paste. The.
• 3:56
  What's working in the US to Europe and in terms of life
• 4:00
  cycle marketing? I'm just curious on your
• 4:02
  personal opinion, maybe who do you see getting it right in
• 4:05
  terms of the approaches that we have here in Europe or UK and
• 4:10
  Europe and in the US? Yeah.
• 4:12
  And I, I, I don't think you can even blanket Europe as the same
• 4:18
  market. So yeah, very, I don't think you
• 4:20
  can sit consider it as this is the way things are done in
• 4:23
  Europe. This is the way things are done
• 4:24
  in the US because what what we're finding is it, it, it
• 4:29
  varies. And so Flavio, we work with very
• 4:33
  small customers. So what we call entrepreneurs,
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  they're typically pure ecom brands that have great products
• 4:40
  are growing fast, but are like 2 to 10 people.
• 4:43
  Yeah, within the organisation all the way up to some, you
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  know, really big organisations, you know, global kind of
• 4:52
  enterprises. And the challenge that those
• 4:54
  global enterprises face is that, you know, they're they're
• 4:57
  they're marketing across many different countries within
• 4:59
  Europe. Yeah.
• 5:01
  And we we're seeing trends and again, it's we talked about
• 5:04
  channel preference, yeah, e-mail, SMS answers, WhatsApp,
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  and that varies country by country, yeah.
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  So you know, you would look at Germany 1, you know it's harder
• 5:14
  to collect data in somewhere. Like.
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  Germany you need double opt in and you know, the barrier to
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  kind of acquire data is, is is is much higher.
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  But they, they, they just don't use SMS as as a marketing
• 5:28
  channel. Yeah, it's e-mail.
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  And then more recently WhatsApp is, is, is a popular channel in,
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  in, in Germany, whereas in the Scandinavian countries SMS is
• 5:38
  actually driving a lot of revenue for for ecom brands.
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  So just the channel changes country by country, I would say.
• 5:47
  Yeah, I mean, for me it's it's always like with the US when I
• 5:49
  say let's send the WhatsApp and they're going, why do you want a
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  WhatsApp? Why can't we FaceTime or
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  something? And I'm like, yeah, OK, all
• 5:54
  right, OK. I mean.
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  Yeah, take that, take that to Asia back as well and then you
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  can become, you know, you get a bunch of, you know, different
• 6:02
  channels as well. Yeah.
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  Yeah. And I, and I think you make an
• 6:05
  interesting point that in, in, in, in terms of going back to
• 6:08
  the conversation, why e-mail isn't necessarily dead.
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  A lot of startups or young companies, young brands, the
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  reason why they excelled, the reason why they became so
• 6:19
  brilliant is because of their communities.
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  It's the engagement of the communities.
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  And I think, you know, those channels to talk to your
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  community as you grow is, is incredible.
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  And so it's a, it's a minefield as you then decide to expand
• 6:34
  across Europe or the world on which channel to use where.
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  So everyone's talking about AI right now and most brands just
• 6:41
  using it to send some more, not necessarily send better,
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  although they would they would argue that they are, how are the
• 6:48
  best sort of game making automation systems AI's, I don't
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  know, whatever, whatever the term is in building
• 6:56
  relationships with with these communities and customers.
• 6:59
  And where do you draw the line? Because again, depending on who
• 7:04
  you talk to, some of the platform providers are saying,
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  you know, it's a scale thing. AI helps you with scale and it
• 7:11
  probably again, does both or AI helps you to be unique, right,
• 7:16
  in terms of sending that that relevant data point to to your
• 7:21
  customers. So what do you, what do you
• 7:23
  think? Where is where is the best place
• 7:24
  to use AI or how are you guys using AI within Clavio?
• 7:27
  Yeah. And some people come to me and
• 7:31
  say, well, what's your AI product?
• 7:32
  Yeah, there's no one, There's no one AI product.
• 7:36
  Yeah, Clavio really sees it as an opportunity to enhance what
• 7:42
  our customers are doing throughout the platform.
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  And so using, you know, there's, there's not an AI module within,
• 7:49
  within Clavio. We're starting to implement AI
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  throughout the platform. So whether that be, you know, we
• 7:55
  talked about channel, you know, preference or channel affinity,
• 7:58
  it's choosing the right channel at the right time with the right
• 8:01
  message to send to your, to your customers.
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  It's within our data platform as well.
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  So the models that we're building out for customers that
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  are automatically built out within the, the data platform,
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  the really interesting thing and, and, and one of our key
• 8:18
  advantages is because we have such a strong data platform and
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  it's not especially AI, but AI is driven by the data you give
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  it. And Clavio was started as a data
• 8:32
  company. Funnily enough, it wasn't
• 8:34
  started as a, as, as an e-mail company back in 2012, right.
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  We built this really strong data platform and then we started to
• 8:45
  build the channels on top of it. Yeah.
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  And one of the very early integrations was the Shopify
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  integration. So we're bringing in a lot of
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  the Shopify, a lot of the commerce data to it to the
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  platform, but another strength that it has is we have over 400
• 9:00
  integrations with other applications.
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  So we're bringing all of that data into the, the, the one
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  platform. And so, you know, using all of
• 9:09
  that data and having it all in one place really gives our
• 9:12
  customers the advantage to, to, to kind of build intelligence
• 9:16
  within every interaction that they have.
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  And then a lot of the customers that we come across or prospects
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  that we come across are using different technologies for each
• 9:27
  one of the channels they use. But that means the data's
• 9:29
  siloed. Yeah.
• 9:31
  And typically those channel vendors, they will, they will
• 9:35
  want to promote their channel. So it'll be like, well, you want
• 9:39
  to send more SMS or you want to send more e-mail.
• 9:42
  And that's not what we're trying to do with our customers or
• 9:45
  that's what not what consumers want.
• 9:47
  Yeah. And so to have it all in one
• 9:49
  place really allows you just to decide what is the best
• 9:53
  communication frequency or channel to use.
• 9:57
  And so it's not about sending more, it's about sending maybe
• 10:00
  even less. Yeah, but more relevant and in
• 10:05
  the way that consumers expect to have it.
• 10:08
  So. It's interesting.
• 10:10
  Is the by? Is it by proxy, the fact that
• 10:13
  I'm going through the Clavio system solution that my data
• 10:17
  then becomes in, in a, in a shape that I can, you know,
• 10:21
  extract data that's relevant to my campaigns?
• 10:24
  Is is it, it's like the, I don't know the data model that you say
• 10:28
  this is the data sources that we need or are you referring
• 10:31
  because obviously with the one complaint or the one thing I
• 10:34
  hear a lot at conferences, we're swimming in first party data.
• 10:39
  We have so much data that probably they're not extracting
• 10:44
  the the most from. So I, I guess 2 questions here.
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  Is it the fact that if I come to Clavio that it's like I have to
• 10:50
  tidy up my house before I turn up and give you my data to be
• 10:56
  able to do the campaigns in some shape?
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  Or is it the fact that you make it easy?
• 11:01
  I don't, I don't know, just talk, talk me through that.
• 11:03
  If you don't mind, Yeah. And, and again, you know, I
• 11:06
  mentioned the, the, you know, the, the size of companies we're
• 11:09
  dealing with. And so at the, at the smaller
• 11:12
  end, you know, the platform is very much out-of-the-box.
• 11:17
  So let's say I'm a Shopify commerce user, I'm a smaller
• 11:23
  company. It's literally, you know, a, a,
• 11:26
  a very simple integration to get that data over.
• 11:30
  And it's quite structured because we we really understand
• 11:33
  those platforms and we understand what data you need
• 11:37
  for your CRM as well. But the advantage is, is we can
• 11:40
  bring a lot of that data over. Yeah.
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  But the flexibility of the platform, let's say, you know,
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  we're dealing with a bigger organisation that actually has a
• 11:50
  custom commerce store. Yeah, we can integrate that data
• 11:53
  in there as well. Where are people getting it
• 11:57
  wrong? Where do you feel, where do you
• 11:59
  feel retailers are making or what are the mistakes you've
• 12:02
  observed them making when it comes to their their data?
• 12:05
  Yeah. I think it's, I think it's the
• 12:07
  ability to act on it internally a lot of the time.
• 12:11
  Yeah. A really good example was a
• 12:16
  footwear manufacturer that we're doing with, Unfortunately I
• 12:20
  can't give you the name, but we've given them great tools,
• 12:24
  We've got great data coming into the platform.
• 12:29
  But you need, if you won't really want to start
• 12:32
  personalising your communications, you need other
• 12:37
  aspects like content to actually drive that personalisation.
• 12:41
  If you can't get the rest of the organisation to be dynamic, it
• 12:45
  becomes very hard to be able to do that.
• 12:47
  Yeah, because you don't have, you don't have the relevant
• 12:49
  content to ship out or, or to communicate to your customers.
• 12:53
  So the the rest of the organisation has to come along
• 12:56
  with it as well. Yeah.
• 12:57
  I got you. If we zoom out now, obviously
• 13:01
  time's flying by as I knew it would do.
• 13:04
  I'm I'm ACMO of power. I'm I'm, I'm ACMO of, let's say
• 13:13
  one of your typical type customers.
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  So not necessarily a small company, a mid size enterprise,
• 13:19
  a healthy retailer. I'm ACMO of a healthy retailer.
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  What do you see or what are the signals that you're seeing?
• 13:26
  Are the shifts that are coming in CRM that you think will catch
• 13:30
  people off guard? Because obviously you do this
• 13:32
  day in, day out, you must be seeing these sort of echoes of
• 13:36
  trends coming in. What do you think are going to
• 13:38
  catch most people out? Yeah, I think and and this isn't
• 13:41
  a especially a today thing. It's been going on for for a
• 13:45
  while now. It's the consumer expectation.
• 13:48
  Yeah. And, you know, consumers
• 13:51
  becoming much more data savvy, you know, when they share their
• 13:56
  data, you know, and a lot of these brands, you're, you're
• 13:59
  asking for more and more data of a consumer.
• 14:01
  And what's the value exchange? Yeah, the consumer is expecting
• 14:05
  something in return. It could be a loyalty programme
• 14:08
  or it could be that they just expect a, a better service, a
• 14:11
  better personalization. Yeah.
• 14:14
  And so if I'm a consumer and I've shared those preferences or
• 14:17
  details about myself or details about what products I'm
• 14:21
  interested in, and you're collecting that data, but then
• 14:24
  you're not doing anything about it and you're not changing the
• 14:27
  consumer experience, that really turns consumers off.
• 14:31
  Yeah. So if you're collecting the data
• 14:33
  and you're not using it, and that's across the board, Yeah.
• 14:36
  It's not only on the site, but it's also the service element.
• 14:40
  If I'm not getting the same experiences.
• 14:43
  And if I'm, you know, it's like, you know, you call out the call
• 14:46
  centre and you're asked for your details.
• 14:49
  But this happens with the bank often.
• 14:50
  Yeah, you're asked for the details and then you say, well,
• 14:53
  you're in the wrong department, let me put you through to
• 14:54
  somebody else. You're asked for those details
• 14:57
  again. Yeah, online experience, you
• 15:00
  know, the online expectation is, is even even more extreme than
• 15:04
  that. Yeah.
• 15:05
  I'm not expecting to have to share my details more than once.
• 15:09
  Yeah. But then if, you know, if I have
• 15:11
  a problem and I, you know, go to the service centre and, and my
• 15:15
  ask for my details again and you know, and then the next day I
• 15:19
  get a promotion, you know, that consumer experience is really
• 15:23
  bad. And that's because the, you
• 15:25
  know, the, the CMO or the, the organisation is not joining up
• 15:28
  the experiences. And that's one of the reasons
• 15:31
  why Clavio very recently launched the service aspect.
• 15:35
  So we launched a product called customer hub, which is like a
• 15:38
  self-service application that our customers can layer on top
• 15:42
  of their, their commerce experiences.
• 15:44
  And then we just got into beta with an AI by agent that will
• 15:48
  automate that for brands small and large.
• 15:50
  Yeah. OK, I got you.
• 15:52
  I know you said it's a final question, but I'm always curious
• 15:55
  because I'm not an expert in this field.
• 15:57
  Is there a question that I should have asked you and I
• 16:00
  didn't? Or is there a question that
• 16:01
  people normally ask and that I have just totally sort of not
• 16:05
  asked? Yeah.
• 16:06
  I think I, I think a, a, a question that we often ask
• 16:11
  ourselves, You asked, you nearly asked it I think is, is what is
• 16:15
  holding? What, what, what, what, what?
• 16:19
  What if I'm ACMO, What is holding me back from actually
• 16:23
  delivering those experiences? OK.
• 16:28
  Are you going to ask it? What is it?
• 16:30
  Well, what's the thing? I'm like, you've got me.
• 16:34
  I'm I'm, I'm stoked in what is that one thing?
• 16:37
  Well, and I think, you know, everybody knows that consumers
• 16:41
  expect this experience. Yeah.
• 16:43
  And so, you know, you might ask yourself, well, why can't you
• 16:46
  know, why can't, why can't every brand that I'm dealing with
• 16:50
  deliver the same experience? And, and I truly believe it's
• 16:54
  actually the, the technology that's been available up until
• 16:59
  recently just hasn't been able to offer that experience.
• 17:02
  And, and there's a, there's a whole bunch of very large
• 17:06
  marketing platforms out there. And what these large companies
• 17:10
  tend to do is they build the, their customer experience
• 17:14
  platforms through acquisition. And so they're not actually
• 17:17
  solving the problem. They're, they're, they're,
• 17:20
  they're, they're perpetuating the problem in a way.
• 17:22
  They're creating data silos across the organisation and I
• 17:27
  think that that's what's holding a lot of these brands back.
• 17:30
  And so, you know, if you can create that seamless experience
• 17:34
  across the different channels, not only the CRM channels, but
• 17:38
  the commerce channels, and get all of those systems talking
• 17:41
  really well together, I think that that is the key that
• 17:45
  unlocks the experience that people are expecting.
• 17:48
  Fantastic note to finish on Ben. Thank you so much for giving up
• 17:52
  your time. I really opened my eyes
• 17:54
  obviously, and I almost got it right, so.
• 17:57
  I'll take the. I don't know.
• 17:59
  Four out of five stars, you'll leave us.
• 18:01
  Feedback. On my questions, thank you very
• 18:03
  much. Thank you so much.
• 18:06
  Really enjoyed it, thank you.