Dennis Dayman
Hello everyone. And welcome to another brand new episode of the email unplugged podcast. I’m Dennis Damon, your host of these podcasts and the Netcore team has been working very hard over these last few months to bring us some great stories and advice from different, different experts around the world. And this week, to be honest, is no different for us this week. We’re actually kicking off with a very special and innovative series on something called velvet rope marketing, and really more specifically what velvet marketing means to email itself. You know, this is an innovative concept for, you know, for the audience and something in which you know, and, you know, the time that we’re in right now, right? This is helping companies focus on profits and growth even during a crisis. Like what we’re seeing right now here in 2020, when it comes to the pandemic and to really kick off this series, right?
We have a very special guest and the brainchild behind this concept project. He is the Founder of Netcore Solution and has been a big serial technology entrepreneur. Um, he has been the founder and managing director of Netcore solutions, Rajesh Jain, and I even big thought leader in that marketing or that MarTech space, I should say. Um, he has really successfully, you know, led and driven the Netcore team for more than two decades with his visions and passions for MarTech products. And these are really backed by the innovative ideas and business solutions from him and that team there. So really he’s a true pioneer in Asia’s dot com revolution when he created India’s first internet portals back in the late 1990s. And I can tell you, you know, Rajesh, you know, I come from the nineties as well, um, in terms of seeing technology and seeing the internet grows.
So this is going to be kind of exciting for me because, uh, you know, you, you have been there as a lot of us. So, you know, folks for this episode, we’ll get to know, you know, what Josh himself, um, we’re also again, be talking about, you know, his different experiences and things again, around that Velvet Rope Marketing and things. And, you know, it’s interesting that you know, you, you, you have used the term, uh, profit corns rather than unicorns, which are the concepts that companies can adopt right. In these difficult and uncertain times to ensure that companies can continue to be profitable businesses. So, um, I’m, I’m really excited to have you here. Um, but before we sort of getting into the velvet rope marketing, I thought it would be kind of neat, you know, last year you flew in, uh, well actually you were flying around the world actually at the time, if I recall, right.
And I got a call one afternoon around one o’clock and said, can you be in New York tonight? And I jumped on a plane immediately to be able to get out there and come see you. Um, and so I wanted to thank you for that time period, because it was a great time that you and I had, uh, especially in the morning sitting down, uh, in your New York office. So, you know, over coffee, but it got, it got me a chance to sort of understand who you are as an individual. And, you know, again, with those experiences, since the early nineties around internet technologies, while you’re in the space. So I thought we kind of start there a little bit and, and let everyone kind of understand exactly sort of how you got in the space. I mean, you know, again, you have created Netcore and there’s, and this has been going on for a couple of decades, but, but how did you get here? Like what was exciting to you about internet technologies and what more specifically, even around email.
Rajesh Jain
So if I go back to the mid-nineties, by the way, great chatting with you, Dennis. Great to see you again. Uh, so if I go back to the nineties, I, uh, returned back to India from the US in 92, spending four years there, education plus working. And for the first two and a half years in India, I tried multiple entrepreneurial ventures and everything failed. So I thought I was God’s gift to the country. And here I was, uh, uh, you know, with a US education from a great Indian college and so on and nothing was working. So then I went set it to sort of going back to the US spend a couple of months looking at new ideas. And that was late 1994, the internet sort of forced the early days. If you remember, there was this, um, I think it was called net grooves that or something, maybe two that’s right.
Dennis Dayman:
That’s right. Um, so I got one of those things. And at the back of my mind, there was this problem that needed to get solved, which was based on my own experiences in the US which were, how do you get information across rapidly to people across the world? When I wanted to go back to India, it would take me, I wanted to know about what’s happening in India. It would take me 10 days to get a newspaper at Columbia University from India. Some of the magazines would take a couple of weeks to come and so on. So I thought the internet could be a great bridge. And I remember writing out the original sort of business planners, thinking about the India world as an electronic marketplace to connect Indians globally. And that’s how we started because the internet was not commercially available in India. And I launched in March 1995. So it was the primary audience where the Indians outside of India, the non-resident Indians. And that’s how the journey began. Oh, very early on this round. The time actually. Yeah. When eBay launched, sometimes I wish if I had not focused on Indians and focused on the American market, maybe I would have made a lot more money.
Rajesh Jain
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. It’s interesting how you bring that up because I remember in my early days of messing around with, you know, with, with computers and whatnot, for me, it was all about bulletin boards in a very similar fashion that you’re talking about, that it was a singular sort of place where people could trade information and do it almost in real-time, depending on, on how your setup was. Um, and I remember just sort of email being, well, you know, email was just email, right? It was just another way to send something to somebody. And I know that you and I probably back then, you know, never really truly realized where the email would be 20, 30 years down the road and how we use it because it was really all about governments and universities using that as a, to share information, you know, studies and those sorts of things.
Dennis Dayman
But, you know, the mainstream use of email, especially the communicate with, uh, you know, our, our, our parents and grandparents and whatnot, right. Was just sort of beginning to take part in that. Um, and it was also kind of neat too, because even back then, you probably remember this mainframe, so whatnot, but you know, the only way to really trade real-time information to some extent was to use chat programs and whatnot. And that’s, what’s kind of interesting to me from your perspective is that you already began to sort of see where email could be or should be in the future. And you began early, you know, uh, actually investing in something that some people will probably say, ah, no, it’s just a fad or just going away. Um, I joke with a lot of people that even back in the days that I was at strong mail, but I was actually betting, uh, being the farm on things like RSS.
Dennis Dayman
And it never really took hugely, you know, commercial, you know, uh, you know, footholds there, but you actually saw an email coming out and you actually went off and said, I’m going to go invest in it. But it is like, is that what you saw with an email is that you saw that marketers are going to be using those for that. It’s going to be another way to, to bring more information, not just newspapers and that sort of stuff, but did you ever sort of see more into this, about it being a profitability center, do you think?
So actually our email journey, uh, can be seen over three sorts of pivots over 10 years when I was running India world, uh, 95 to 99 until I sold it for about $115 million to Sifi [Satyam] at that time. Well, besides the internet sort of portals that we had, we had 13 inland portals. We had an email list. So if you were sending out daily newsletters,
Rajesh Jain
Two Indians worldwide, and that’s where I started seeing the power of email. So just one simple email with news headlines, from India, going out twice a day and tens of thousands of subscribers. And that’s really what helped even get traffic onto our portal. As we went along then the second sort of journey came when, as we set up websites for Indian companies at that time, they realized that they needed to get orders. They were getting orders over email, basically, people writing to them, but they didn’t have proper email infrastructure to manage those. So then I set up a separate entity called Netcode to the early days of Netcore, which set up Lenox mail servers for companies in India. So we’d go take open-source Linux, put it on a server on their premises. And lo and behold, they had unlimited email IDs as an alternative to some of the commercial programs, which were there at that time from Microsoft and Lotus.
Rajesh Jain
And then the third pivot came, uh, around 2005, seven or so, 2005 to eight. That period, when a number of companies who were using us for sending out email, started coming to us and saying, Hey, you know what? We’ve got customers on our website and we need to send out lots of emails to them. So that’s where we picked up. Uh, I think it was some open source components and started creating what became the early version of our email solution for marketing, uh, at that time. So totally evolved. But one led, one thing led to another as typically happens in life.
Dennis Dayman
Yeah, exactly. No, yeah. I remember that time period. I had just left the, uh, the receiving side or the ISP side blocking emails, uh, and looking at, you know, realizing that there’s a whole lot more to be able to teach marketers and brands about how to use that email and, and never left that side. Actually, it’s been the most fun for me, I think overall, um, you know, speaking of fun things and favorite things as well, I’m curious, you know, from your perspective, uh, again, and, and I’m sure the answer might be emailed, but you know, what’s been your most favorite thing over these last few years when, when it comes to changes in marketing because marketing has changed a lot. I mean, you know, like you said, in the early days in the mid two thousand, it was all about email and then, you know, mobile and social media and all these sorts of things are now popping up. And now there are all these different sorts of concepts. If you will, of marketers that they could be using them whatnot, but you know, what’s been your favorite change or not even change. What’s your favorite thing right now in marketing, that’s exciting you that you think people should be kind of thinking about right now?
Rajesh jain
So, you know, we had Dennis, I have come late to the world of marketing and that gives me a new commerce view. So the marketing, of course, has been around for agents, but the way I think a few things have happened in the last few years, the rise of digital, the digital customer availability of data, that’s been, uh, you know, we leave the sort of pheromones, and every everything that we do, the footprints that we leave. Right. And as I started thinking about this in the last year or so, I realized that, uh, companies basically when they are sending out their communications, when they are interacting with their customers, they tend to treat all customers the same, right? The better phrase, a quote by George Orwell. Uh, all customers are equal, but some are more equal than others. So for the first time you actually have the ability to look at your customer base differently, right?
And as if you start, because now you have data, which you never had probably a few years ago, especially as businesses more online. And I think in the last few months I’ll be a singer, ah, excellent. An acceleration really of, of, of digital businesses. Now that’s good because you’re collecting a lot of data. Of course, you can now personalize messages and so on, but more important than that, you can now segment your customers differently. And that’s what gets very exciting because if you start looking at the data, what I think most businesses will realize is that a small percentage of their customers account for a disproportionate share of their revenues and profits and the trigger for this game, uh, in our book, are we jaded by Peter Fader, a Wharton professor, Chad picked up from strand bookshop in one of my US visits about a year ago, uh, and a thin book on customer-centricity. And when I read the book, I said, you know, this makes so much of sense. And that’s how I started building on some of the ideas that I’m now working on. But the key thing really in marketing now is how can you make it more targeted? How do you make it more personalized? How do you leverage the power of multiple channels to reach out to customers and so on?
Dennis Dayman
Yeah. You know, what, you bring up a very good point. And it was something that I wanted to ask you about. And you’ve kind of started to answer this, is that really what it’s coming down to as well is, um, you know, the data, right? You know, the data has been the most important thing. And it’s, it’s interesting that, you know, a chief privacy officer like myself would ever say something like this, but data’s the new gold standard. Right. We know that, um, you know, over the years, you know, um, brands and companies, I’ve, I’ve even heard things, you know, about, um, some of the data aggregators that are out there who have for years, I’ve had multiple, I’m talking thousands upon tens of thousands of data points on individuals, but yet they use like less than 1% of that data to understand their needs, their wants.
Dennis Dayman
And, you know, and even in that, in real-time, you know, using platforms like Netcore, um, but you know, it is a new gold standard sure. You know hackers and whatnot, or are knocking off, you know, websites and people arriving at Tams. Now that sounds kind of weird, but it’s why people come after the data that we all have right now. And that’s been in our, in our possession for so long because it’s such a powerful thing. Um, and so, you know, you know, by looking at it from that perspective, you know, are you, you know, are you also now looking at an, it sounds like this a little bit, but as should talk about data and understanding the user, I’m hearing a little bit of a message in what you just said about identity, right? That identity, um, a single identity, if you will, is important because of the different ways that people are coming into our brands and our companies to get information, you know, sometimes it is beginning through just watching or sort of seeing what they’re doing on a website. And then from there, maybe the brand being able to understand, Hey, I can find out more information about this individual through our platforms, like Netcore, I should be able to email them. And I should be able to also use a platform like this to segmentate or to segment them out even further, and really look at it from quality over quantity mentality when it comes to marketing. Is that what I’m hearing you say?
Rajesh Jain
Well, absolutely right, Dennis. So if you actually look at, uh, uh, say two of the building, the first two building blocks, it’s really the ability to aggregate data from every customer touchpoint, right? So customers can call into a call center. They are doing something on a web on the web, they are doing something on an app. They are clicking on emails and they’re responding to app notifications and so on. So every action can now actually be taken by a company and put into a sort of CDP or customer data platform. So what that lets you do is to get a unified view of a single customer. That’s the starting point. You can mine sort of the demographic and for the identity, uh, the, the transactional information, the behavioral information, what they’re actually doing into a CDP, then we can start doing some fun things with it between this is the second step.
Yeah. They’re the first thing it should be done, which companies can actually now do. And which is what feeders books actually talk about. An R is the, is the calculation of the customer lifetime value. That’s the key to segmentation. So there are multiple ways to do segmentation, but really the most important is what is this customer worth to the business? What does the brand? And every customer has a different value. So if you can take transactional information past transaction information and then calculate the customer lifetime value going forward, so predictive forward-looking metric, then it now becomes possible to think of maybe the top 20% as your best customers. Then you have the long tail which is there. And then for the best customers, how do you provide them a differentiated experience, sort of the red carpet treatment or the velvet rope marketing like you see in the airline chicken counters or at Disneyland or the Oscar ceremonies, how do you create an amazing experience? These are customers whom you do not want them to, you don’t want them to leave because they account for a share of their off of the profits. Oh, for your business. And that’s the origin of the ideas that I’ve started working on now.
Dennis Dayman
Yeah. I’m glad you said that actually, because I, that’s kind of where I wanted to get into today. I read a quote the other day from you, which said that, you know, while everyone else in the organization is focused on cutting costs and conserving cash, that the idea around velvet rope marketing is the magic sauce that can transform you into profit doublers. Right. Um, which, you know, seems, you know, for those that are listening or maybe that seems cold, they’re kind of going, wait, what does all this mean? And what is that marketing? You know, I even, you know, as you were starting to talk about this, you know, over the last several months and years, um, I hadn’t even go look it up. Um, now, I mean, I’m 45 now, so I’m not necessarily going to a whole lot of clubs anymore. These days that I began to think about the days of my younger, you know, youth where, you know, we would go somewhere and there would always be one or two different lines.
And there was always a general line of people and it would wrap around the building. But yet, you know, if you were the special person or you had a connection right there, that you then have the ability to be in this velvet rope sort of area, which was the most important folks and you were getting it before everybody else is that sort of like the mindset as people are listening to this, is that the imagery that they could be using in this and, and you know, what is, is that sort of what velodrome marketing is, is that you’re separating or segmenting out those more profitable people to you or, you know, into your business,
Rajesh jain
Right? So if you start thinking that, look, look at us, look at it. As customers, we are customers of many brands. You buy, you spend your money with different brands and for some customer, for some brands, actually you are a very valuable customer, but then the brands tend to treat in most cases, everyone, the same. And you keep thinking as to, you know, I’m doing so much of business with them. Why should I not be it better experience then someone else I’ll give you an example. I’ve watched about a hundred movies or with family at, uh, at a couple of the multiplexes near my house. Every time I go to watch a new movie there it’s like that, uh, actual movie, 51st dates. When I say wake up in the morning, the heroin heroin wakes up and she has no short term amnesia. So they have to remind her who she is, videos, et cetera.
It’s the same thing with the brand. They have no idea who I am. I could be walking in there for the first time. Right. But then I have to rush with everyone else trying to book tickets, trying to get seats together for the favorite show, et cetera. Instead, if they could send me an email, say Thursday morning at nine o’clock, which says radish, this new star Wars or Avengers movie is releasing on Friday. We know from your past data that you’d love to watch this movie. We know that you’d love to watch it on a Saturday evening at five 30 and in these three seats, the second last row, um, three seats from the Island and you know what we’ve done, we have, because you are part of a velvet rope marketing program exclusive for you. We have reserved three seats for you. You have to just click here and pay and we’ll hold the seats for you for the next two hours.
Dennis Dayman
What an incredibly different experience that would be. Yeah. And this is what will engender even more loyalty, even more business of mine towards that particular brand. And this applies everywhere when you call up say a telecom company, uh, yeah, you’re on hold many times to get through to them. Um, and if they recognize you from your phone number, you should be sent through to the best agent immediately, if you’re, uh, if you’re a part of their best customer program. So essentially a simple idea that think, how can we identify your best, the best customers based on all the data, how can we retain them? And then how do we acquire more like the best that’s Velvet Rope Marketing.
Rajesh jain
Yeah, no, that’s actually a good use of data, right? I mean, again, we’ve always talked about data being the gold standard again, but it is just if people would just take the time to do that, you know, and it’s not easy. And it’s funny because when I talk to brands and marketers, they always say, Oh yeah, no, we’re looking at our data. And then we’re like, okay, well, let’s, let’s, let’s kind of break that out. Like, what do you mean by you’re looking at our data? Well, you know, we’re looking at Oaklands and clicks and it’s like, you know, you’re looking at their past buying habits and personas and not just the fact that they bought a movie ticket, but you know like you just stated very, very succinctly. Even now, for me before the pandemic, I was able to buy a movie ticket and actually reserve those seeds.
Cause I like to be right in the middle and, and some people like to be in the front, people like to be in the back. Um, and they’re also now, uh, tracking if you will, when I walk up to the confessors stand that we’d like to get a big thing of popcorn and we share that and my wife likes a particular candy. And if they would just use that opportunity right. To entice us, you know, even like, you know, if you weren’t in a pandemic right now, but if they were to be able to say, Hey, it’s a Friday. And, and, and you know, the, you know, the United States is off right now before the July 4th holiday. Then as you might want to come to a movie this early morning, and like you just said, you know, here it is, w you’re almost even setting them up, like to buy, like, like you’ve kinda gotten them halfway there.
And not that they feel obligated, but they’re like, Ooh, that’s actually not. It it’s, it’s the idea of suggestions as well, right. Is that, you know, Hey, yeah, maybe I do want to go do something like that. Right. And this and that they would do that. I think, I think, you know, people are suggesting it can’t be very suggestive or, you know, moved into that sort of, you know, model there. Um, you know, w when I think about this year, that right in terms of what’s happening, right. Um, it’s very similar to what happened in 2008, you know, we saw a market correction, and then what we heard was a lot of chief financial officers saying, Hey, we’re cutting the budget. Hey, marketers. Um, we’re taking some money out of your, you know, coffers, you need to go do more, but you got to do with less and whatnot.
Dennis Dayman
Um, and it really kind of upset brands for a little bit and not knowing sort of what was happening. Um, w when you look at velvet rope marketing the application of it right now, I mean, you know, I’m hearing you talk about the bigger applicability, if you will, to the marketplace. And it’s something where everything’s just fun and perfect. How can velvet real marketing, I guess, help marketers today in the pandemic. I mean, you know, you guys, as Netcore had been doing some really neat offers for people to be able to use your, your platform. And I’ll, I’ll, I’ll bring that up here at the end of our podcasts, but how could they be using builder marketing right now when things are just kind of a little bit upside down, I mean, you know, can it save time? Can it help with some of these constraints and things like that?
Rajesh Jain
I think the most important idea that the most important thing that velvet rope marketing can help do for marketers and for CEOs of companies is to help them grow their profits. So essentially every CXO really needs to become a chief profitability officer in today’s times. And this happens in two ways. First is once you can identify your best customers, then you can communicate more effectively with them. You’re concentrating your resources, your energies in the interaction with them. And because they’re also getting better experiences like 11 I’ll spend more with you. And therefore you can actually grow the revenue from the best customers. The second step, or where it helps in improving profitability is by now looking at the customer genome of the best customers, look at the genome, look at the DNA of the best customers are doing where they are coming from, who are they?
We can, brands can actually dramatically improve the new customers that they acquire so they can actually cut down. Marketing spends acquisition, spends a lot of those, get wasted to the unrest, Hey, get me anything, get me any customer. Right, right. Now you can concentrate on saying, look, this is the profile of my best customers. How do I acquire my next customers who can look like the best? How can I onboard them faster? How can I make them into the best customers sooner? Right? What are these things taken together? Actually have a direct impact on profitability. You get more revenues in one case, and you’re able to cut down your marketing costs. In the other case, both of them float with a bottom line and they help him grow profits.
No, that’s a good message. Actually. I think marketers kind of forget about that. It’s okay to try to save money in certain areas and you don’t always have to continually spend and spend and spend, right. It’s, it’s sort of what the model has been for the last, you know, two or three decades it’s, you know, spend millions upon millions and just, and let’s just hope that something’s going to come from this. Right. Let’s hope we get that 1% or that 10% of people to buy something. Right. And again, it goes back to, to the, to the, uh, to the Monica that I just had said a minute ago, which was like, no, this is about quality over quantity. Right. We’ve been saying this for years and email marketing overall, because it’s always been about send the right message to the right person at the right time.
Dennis Dayman
Right. Um, and so if you do that and you get less fan complaints, if you do that, um, you know, you’ll be able to retain people who will not want to unsubscribe because, you know, maybe not over sending to them, but if you, as a marketer or a brand are continually just trying to spend cash, really, you’re just, it’s almost sort of like, I don’t know. We always hear about, um, you know, um, in, in submarine movies, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this. It’s funny that you talked about movies, but the submarine movies, they talk about how fast the summary was going and that they could easily run over, uh, uh, the captain’s teenage radio, because they’re going so fast that they can’t hear anything. Right. They’re just, they’re just going at a thousand miles an hour. And it’s almost like driving in a car, like, you know, you’re going a hundred miles an hour and you’re not really able to see things moving by, but you slow down a little bit.
Dennis Dayman
You can really see a little more detail in what’s happening around your world and marketers need to kind of consider that. And so what I’m hearing from you is that, you know, it’s, it’s okay. Brands. It’s okay to take a step back to save a little bit of money to really, again, focus on the quality leads that you have there. Um, but then I know what they’re asking right now, and this is then, and what do I do with those other ones? Right. You know, if you’re, if you’re telling me I’ve got these velvet rope marketing, you know, prospects that I don’t know, 20 or 30% of them, what do I do with the rest of them? Do I just leave them there? Do I put them in a regular camp? Like you have any sort of thoughts or advice for them about what to do with all that stuff then?
Rajesh Jain
Right. Very good question. So this is what, excuse me, what I think of as the long tail of customers. So if you think of the framework that I like to use as best, what are the top 20% then the rest, and then have the next customers, the future customers that you’re looking to acquire. So for the rest, which is effectively the long tail. So back up a little bit, when you actually plot the CLV curve of customers, you’ll see a power lock of you would see, uh, the top 20%, uh, um, essentially, um, accounting for a large chunk of the revenue. So you have your highest CLV is there. And then the CLV is the customer lifetime values tend to drop. And when you get to the long tail now, what is it that we can do with the, with the rest of the customers? First is we have a lot of signals today. We can get early lead indicators. Uh, we can get signals on which of those rest of customers, actually, it can be tomorrow’s best customers.
So then how do we sort of start nurturing them towards becoming the best customer? So replicate the behavior of what the best customers would do. The second is that from this long tail of customers, the other thing which can be done is what is the next best action that our specific customer should basically be taking? So what is the next offer that I should email to the customer? And this is again where analyzing the genome of customers, uh, we, all the data is there, and this is actually done today by AI ML engines. So it becomes a very efficient, very automated and improving on a daily basis. So now I can compare genome so I can look and say, you know, Dennis is a couple of steps ahead of radish. We have very similar genomes. So maybe I should send radish the specific offer of the products that Dennis actually only already bought and radish has not. So now it becomes, again, you’re using data, your emails are becoming much more relevant. So we all talk about the right message, right. Time, right place, right channel. But it’s, how do you make that message very relevant, right? This is whereby comparing genomes. You can actually do it for the long tail of customers and therefore persuade them to take that next step, the next action towards, uh, contributing, uh, for the brands, uh, revenue and profitability.
Dennis Dayman
So I have a, I have a clarifying question here, cause, you know, as we’re talking about genome sort of thing and understanding the buyer’s journey right, as was sort of what I’m thinking of my mindset, right? It brings me back to sort of the idea around marketing automation. When, when, when we started that back in the late two thousands around B2B and whatnot, you know, are, are you also then sort of talking about that marketing funnel, right? That we have here where you’re just throwing a bunch of people into it, but you’re then taking it from a, from a bunch of just unknowns or just, you know, you know, this list of things to a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead. Is that also part of that vision is using that marketing funnel ideal that there
Rajesh jain
Oh, absolutely. And this is where, what companies really need is full stack marketing automation platform, right? So you need a single platform which can collect all this data. So you have a CDP at the bottom and you’re using all the analytics on that. The segmentation that we talked about, segmenting the customers, figuring out the customer lifetime value, then you’re creating the journeys, the campaigns that need to go out. Then you bring in a personalization engine, which lets you personalize. What’s going out to every person. And then you have omni-channel delivery. You have eight, 10 channels today because customers interact on different channels. So you as the brand also have to be able to reach them, whether it’s email, SMS, WhatsApp, or Facebook messenger, Oh, app notifications on the browser. And some cases even Google a customer or Facebook custom audience. Sure. There are multiple channels which are there. You need a single solution which can do all of this. See what happens many times is that why, why are many brands not being able to do this? Because the data effectively gets siloed in many different, uh, platforms in many different, uh, software solutions that they have then integrating all of this to give the full unified customer view becomes a big challenge. Without the full view, you cannot do segmentation, right? You cannot do the campaigns. Right. And that’s where our marketing automation platform I think can work wonders for making this happen.
Dennis Dayman
Okay. Um, you know, we also kind of keep hearing about retention being the new acquisition. Does the idea, cause you know, we keep talking about existing clients, rather your existing clients or existing clients, you know, Ken velvet wrote marketing help with sort of that retention aspect of it, you know, and, and, and new acquisition of clients or again, is it just a, Hey, we have to wait six months till we get enough data on them, but is there a way to use it as an acquisition piece too?
Rajesh Jain
Oh, absolutely. So what is happening here? What can be done here is the following. Okay. Once we have data on the best customers, then you can take those lookalikes, the lookalikes of those best customers, feed it back into your ad tech engine. So this is where the MarTech and the ad tech platforms sort of need to come together. There’s a bridge required between ad tech and Mar tech. Traditionally these two worlds have operated completely independently. So ad tech has all been about acquisition. MarTech has been about engagement, retention, development, growth of customers, but there’s not much communication happening between these two platforms by identifying what the best customers look like, feeding that information back to the ad tech platform. Again, cost can be optimized. When you know, you’re acquiring customers who are likely to be tomorrow’s best customers. You can actually spend more time and effort onboarding them, creating a smoother onboarding process for them, right?
Again, they become best customers faster. So this is where this whole feedback loop, like what you said earlier that customer journey can actually be integrated together with, with the MarTech platforms and you then create a growth flywheel. Number one, you’re identifying your best customers. Second is that you are working through velvet rope marketing to make sure that you can cross sell up, sell them better with customized personalized meals. And so on third is that you’re acquiring the best customers for tomorrow. And for this you’re making sure at once those best customers come into the system, you’re smoothing the process for them to reach their peak threshold of spending this flywheel is what can really drive business growth and profitability. Okay. That’s awesome.
Dennis Dayman
Well, you know, um, as we sort of get, you know, close to the end here of the podcast, again, you know, you’ve talked quite a bit about, you know, Peter faders, you know, studies and books from Wharton and on, you know, focusing on the right customers for, you know, strategic advantage. And, and I, and I highly suggest that folks that are listening to this, go off and read some of this and, and, and check out his book actually. Um, you know, cause it is a really good read actually, but you know, as we’re looking, you know, sort of this, are there any sort of additional, like special tips about building marketing that you want to talk to our listeners today about and how they can immediately, you know, start optimizing their email marketing?
Rajesh Jain
I think the first thing would be to aggregate the transaction data and figured out the customer lifetime value and do the segmentation are your best customers. I think it’s very, very important to be able to figure that out. In fact, for your best customers, you may also want to put up, put in some caps on how many times you communicate with them, right? How do you make the communications more relevant to them? So even though brands may be using, uh, many different apps, software applications, how do you think of your best customers as a separate cohort? How do you then rethink every aspect of the interaction and engagement with them? What emails you’re sending out to them, what other communications are going out to them? How do you make that absolutely relevant? It may not be possible to apply this to every customer. It can get very, very expensive at different times. So if you start applying this idea of velvet rope marketing, I think the way I like to look at it as a gross profitability and it creates small profit cones, which are profitable, uh, companies, uh, rather than unicorns, many of them who tend to burn a lot of money on an ongoing basis.
Dennis Dayman
Awesome. That’s awesome. I love that closing. That’s actually perfect. That’s that’s really good advice. Listen to my friend. I want to thank you for being a part of this podcast today. Um, you know, again, I, I, I’m very blessed to have, you know, sat down with you in New York, like I said last year and just sort of hear your story about, you know, the vision that you had, you know, as the founder and chairman of Netcore, um, you know, just, you know, again, two decades ago. And, um, it was, it was interesting to sort of see a lot of similarities. I think, you know, for a lot of us in terms of where we can see all this technology, um, where it was going to hopefully go right. And, and even now where it’s still changing daily for us. So, so thank you for, for sharing your story with me in the last year.
And thank you for sharing your story again today with us here on the, on this podcast. It was wonderful chatting with you again, thank you very much for having me on the show. You’re welcome. Well, listen, folks, as we wrap this up again, like I said, I, I I’d like to thank everybody also for being a part of this Netcore Email Podcast Series. And in this specific one on Delbert rope marketing, um, we hope that those that are listening here have learned how that growth of devices, uh, you know, acceleration of digital, uh, uh, you know, availability of data is now making it possible to treat your customers differently and recognize that there are more, or that are some that are more equal than others. Right? And that, again, that they’ll, but marketing is that, you know, new business idea, right. That we could be using them all of this.
Right. Um, and again, if you haven’t read, you know, some of the information or books has been put out so far by rejection the team, um, you know, I, again, I suggest that you go off and take a look at that, you know, look at those actual insights, take it back and implement that into your email program so that you can, you know, not only manage your current clientele, but also acquire, you know, those, those new customers. I also want to remind everyone that obviously, if you guys need help check out Netcore, right. Again, as you guys have heard me say, they are a global email engagement leader within the AI powered email and delivery, uh, campaign space, right. Um, again, you know, as Rajesh had just said, right, he’s been doing this for almost two decades now, and the company has grown by leaps and bounds.
Um, you know, and then also as well, right, to help you guys again, you know, during the 2020 sort of changes that we’re seeing, you know, Netcore has been offering since early March, their COVID email relief program, uh, this is going until September this year. Um, and this is continuing. You need to enroll now. And what this is going to allow you to do is be able to send unlimited emails at a zero cost, if you will using their platform and using one that you can do everything in without having to have multiple different systems or different companies involved Netcore can do everything for you. Um, at the same time, don’t forget to subscribe to Netcore weekly podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, visit netcore.co. You should be able to find all the episodes on Netcore website that we’ve been doing since March. And we’ll be doing these every Thursday as well. So again, thank you for being here. Thank you to our listeners. We’ll be back really soon and everyone stay safe and healthy. And we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you.
