2020 has seen a sea change in the digital landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled brands – of all sizes – across industries and geographies to embrace digital transformation with a strong focus on customer experience and retention. With customers seeking personalized experiences at all touchpoints of the customer lifecycle, the onus now lies firmly on brands to evolve and serve up great experiences to fuel customer acquisition, engagement and retention.
‘Customer Retention is the new acquisition’ is the new reality of the new normal. And, with a firm pulse on customer expectations and business priorities, we at Netcore Solutions, put-together the second edition of Asia’s largest martech-focused online event – the Virtual Martech Mashup 2.0, 2020 on December 3rd. The theme revolved around “Personalization in the Era of Retention Marketing”. A theme that covered:
- Omnichannel Personalization
- App User Engagement and Retention
- Product and User Experience Growth Hacks…
…for all e-commerce and mobile-first businesses across the globe. Consequently, the event included discussions across two separate tracks – e-commerce and mobile app.
With a galaxy of top industry experts from leading brands in India, Southeast Asia, and the APAC region – as part of our esteemed speakers and panelists – we brought to our attendees a wide array of impactful and actionable insights.
The event, co-powered by AWS and Branch, had over 300 attendees over the course of 150 power-packed minutes. With diverse insights emerging through hard-hitting and specially curated content in the offing, the stage was all set.
Missed out on the event? No worries! Here’s where you can get a full glimpse of the event.
Our host for the day, Pradyut Hande, Product Marketing Lead, Netcore Solutions set the tone for the event by highlighting key customer experience, product, and marketing trends over the last 8 months. After walking the eager audience over the agenda, he handed over the virtual dias to our Keynote Speaker.
Keynote Address: Growth Hacks for Lifetime Customer Loyalty and App Retention
Speaker: Achint Setia, VP – Marketing, Myntra
Achint’s perspective on identifying your brand’s most valuable users – or power users – to build a strategy towards delighting them at scale. His insights on how to analyze data to transform first-time or infrequent customers into power users was also an eye-opener. He ended the session by giving a few successful use cases to illustrate how Myntra has grown into one of India’s largest fashion e-commerce brands. Especially in terms of ring-fencing power users and driving cross-channel personalization as a catalyst to increase CLTV.
E-Commerce Track Session: Omnichannel Personalization as an E-Commerce Growth Lever
Speaker: Alessio Romeni, Chief Revenue Officer, Zalora
With the tone set around e-commerce growth, the following session focused on how omnichannel personalization acts as an e-commerce growth and retention lever. Alessio provided useful insights on the e-commerce trends that are reshaping the Southeast Asia market.
He also presented impactful marketing strategies that Zalora has adopted to deliver personalized customer experiences as they have grown to become one of Southeast Asia’s largest fashion e-commerce brands. Alessio’s unique insights on how Zalora’s cashback programs for their customers helped increase customer loyalty and also led to a subsequent decrease in acquisition costs.
E-Commerce Track Panel Discussion: The Future of E-commerce and Retail – Customer Experience
Speakers:
- Neha Malhan, Director- Retention, Purplle
- Annabel Nguyen, Growth Marketing Lead, Cho Tot
- Sreekanth Chetlur, Head of Digital, Matahari
Moderator: Pradyut Hande, Product Marketing Lead, Netcore Solutions
This was followed by the first panel discussion of the day with speakers from leading e-commerce brands across Southeast Asia and India. They provided us their thoughts on the future of personalized customer experiences in the e-commerce and retail space.
Neha Malhan, Director – Retention, Purplle – a top cosmetics and beauty e-commerce platform in India – shared her thoughts on how to deliver personalization across offline and online channels by building a unified customer view.
Annabel Nguyen, Growth Marketing Lead at Cho Tot – the leading e-commerce marketplace in Vietnam – stressed on the importance of data, AI/ML in the contemporary world. She highlighted how brands need to leverage smart data to provide the right recommendations based on customer behavior.
Sreekanth Chetlur, Head of Digital at Matahari highlighted the importance of mobile penetration and having loyalty programs in place for customers using the mobile app. He also reiterated the fact that apps are not just for transaction, but are also an important medium of customer engagement.
Some of the other key learnings from the session were:
- Omnichannel personalization is the key to delight customer experiences at scale. But, brands need to employ an experimentation mindset to keep optimizing their experiences across their website, mobile site, and mobile app
- Customer segmentation is key to identify “Extremely Important People” or power users to engage with them differently. Other segments demand specific contextual engagement across channels that are most relevant to them
- Developing a unified customer view and establishing a Customer Data Platform (CDP) goes a long way in helping connect the dots – across both offline and online channels – while crafting seamless customer experiences
Mobile App Track Session 1: Scalable Mobile Marketing Strategies in the OTT Industry
Speaker: Shobhit Singhal, Associate Director – Product, Disney+Hotstar
We then moved to the mobile app track where our industry expert showcased the top in-app user experience and mobile marketing strategies they adopted to become one of the top players in the Indian OTT landscape. Over a crisp and insightful session, he engaged with the audience by illustrating how localizing language is an important aspect to connect and engage with users in culturally-diverse markets like India.
He also explained how tapping into the interest in sports proved to be a catalyst for growth and success in the live streaming space for OTT brands like Disney+Hotstar. Shobhit also shed light on how their tech, data, and analytics stack continues to cater to increasing demands and expanding content libraries.
Mobile App Track Session 2: Product Experience Hacks that Improve User Retention at Scale
Speaker: Avadhoot Revankar, Chief Growth Hacker & Business Head, Netcore Solutions
Avadhoot spoke about the key product experience hacks that can facilitate app user adoption and retention at scale. By emphasizing the importance of AI, he explained how Netcore’s very own AI engine, Raman, helps deliver a better customer experience by providing razor-sharp, real-time insights and 1:1 personalization. He also spoke about how the acquisition of Hansel.io will help Netcore consolidate further on their intelligent customer experience platform.
Mobile App Track Panel Discussion:The Future of Data-driven User Retention
Speakers:
- Satyadev Sarvaiya, Chief of Customer Engagement, Smartfren
- Rohit Sridhara, Senior Digital Marketing Manager- Growth, AirAsia
- Fatima Grace Javellana, Director, Globe Telecom
- Ankit Saxena, Director- Success, Services & Ops, Branch
Moderator: Pradyut Hande, Product Marketing Lead, Netcore Solutions
We then moved to our second panel discussion and the final session of the day. Speakers from leading mobile app brands from across Asia shared their thoughts and perspectives on the importance of data-driven user retention.
Satyadev Sarvaiya shared his thoughts on the key aspects that brands need to focus on to progress to achieve customer retention; especially from the perspective of the telecom industry. Some of the key drivers to create a good product experience for customers include user experience, relevant communication, and product hygiene in terms of memory, space and battery consumption. He also highlighted how Smartfren’s marketing channel mix has evolved over the last 7-8 months.
Rohit Sridhara explained how AirAsia tackled the challenges posed by COVID-19 to the travel and tourism industry through digital transformation, extensive testing and optimization.
Fatima Grace Javellana stressed on the importance of a data-centric approach to create use-cases that will lead to maximum impact. She outlined how Globe Telecom’s marketing channel mix and messaging in campaigns had to evolve almost overnight during the peak of the lockdown earlier this year.
Ankit Saxena provided great insights on how brands at both ends of the spectrum, whether they were struggling with user acquisition or getting a surplus of users onto their platforms, had to focus on engaging with them to facilitate retention.
In 2020, retention (58%) has overtaken conversion (55%) and acquisition (45%) as the key goal for website personalization. The panel discussion reiterated the importance of user retention as a key focus area for mobile-first app brands.
A Day to Remember and an Exciting Future Awaits!
All in all, the whole event was an enriching learning experience for the audience as our speakers and panelists shared on-ground insights on the future of e-commerce and mobile-first brands and how they can leverage the power of data-driven omnichannel personalization to deliver exceptional customer experiences. All with the objective to maximize customer engagement and retention.
The second edition of Netcore’s Virtual Martech Mashup was a resounding success with positive feedback streaming in post every session. Our objective was to help our audiences across regions get their revenue growth and customer retention strategy in place for 2021 and beyond.
And, we look forward to bringing more such content to help your digital and mobile business scale through unique events like this – in the future too!
To learn how Netcore is empowering leading e-commerce and mobile-first brands deliver differentiated personalized user experiences across devices and channels, get in touch with us today!
