Video Transcript

My role right now is to wrap everything up. I mean, I think that what I’ve tried to do over the last two days is to listen to what everybody else has said, to hear kind of what were the main highlights. And I think that there were a couple of quotes which I’ve been reading over the last couple of days which I’ve been listening to actually, which I really, really liked. And the first one actually came this morning and it was that data has made customer-centricity possible.

Product commoditization has made it essential. And I think that’s really, really true. I think that what we’re seeing here and the examples of the brands that we’ve seen here today are brands that are building stories. These stories are interesting and beautiful, and strange, and touching. And like the video we saw from DSC earlier, which I thought everybody in this room could identify with some of it at some point.

And I think that that’s really, really special and a really unique achievement. And I think that data has allowed us to do this. And I think that that’s a really exciting thing that’s happening. The other thing which I heard today which I really loved was how do you make marketing feel more like customer service? And I think that’s what we’re all trying to do. Nobody wants to feel sold to. I can tell you as somebody who works in sales, nobody wants to feel sold to.

Everybody wants to buy, nobody wants to feel sold to. And I think that brands that understand fundamentally that what people are looking for is that connection and what people are looking for is a moment where you feel that you’re being served by that brand, it makes a world of difference. And I think the brands that adopt that mindset are the ones which are in the driving seat. The third one which I found really, really interesting was about defining your niche and then owning discovery.

And that’s something that I believe in a lot. And I think that today, you know, we see…and retail is what I know best, but we see in retail some really, really big winners. We see Amazon which nobody can ignore, but we see that there’s space for a lot of other brands. And the reason that there is a space for a lot of other brands is because of that niche, is because there are huge niches and we can’t try and be everything for everybody, but we can be everything for somebody.

And I think that that’s something which is really, really powerful. And for me, those are the three takeaways that I’ve taken kind of from the last kind of two days. So, a couple of quick things. We’ve talked about, you know, some great strategies for effective CRM. We’ve talked about the ever changing face of the consumer. You know, Jackson just gave us some really interesting insight into what the different consumers look like.

I personally love Modern Family and I love Claire. So that was great for me. We talked about how different businesses are dealing with different loyalty challenges and how people are trying to address these challenges of loyalty. We’ve talked about how retailers can compete in an Amazon dominated world. And I think most importantly, what we’re here to tell everybody is that we believe that the marketer’s role today is more essential than ever and we believe that innately intelligent marketing is ultimately what’s going to win the day.

Which really left me with kind of a simple ask which is where do things stand today? And of course, I went to numbers and statistics. But I didn’t quote them so you’re going to have to believe me that it’s real. I didn’t make it up on the flight here. So, 62% of online shoppers say that they are loyal, but 59% would try a competitor for a better experience. I think that’s kind of interesting.

Fifty-five percent would be willing to switch to a brand that gets them more. And if there’s anything more fuzzy than gets them, I don’t know what it is, but I think that that’s what everybody is looking for. That’s what the consumer today is looking for. They are looking for brands which do not just sell them a product, they are looking for brands which understand them and which communicate with them on kind of the same wavelength, let’s call it. Eighty-nine percent of customers will not give a brand a second chance after a bad experience.

I think that we all know this, especially those of us which live in the U.S. The competition is so fierce right now for every dollar in your pocket and the fact that you can buy, you know, a kitchen roll in about six different places, all of them will deliver them in different speeds, but all of them within the first 24 hours means that if one person is not going to give me a good experience, there is no reason for me to give them another chance.

There’s just no reason for that to happen. So are the marketers actually prepared? The short answer is no. The longer answer is you guys are probably more prepared than the average marketer, which is good news for you. But only 51% of brands have some sort of marketing automation in place. That’s shocking to me. But we learn this all the time.

There’s an unnamed retailer which I met in the U.S. just a couple of weeks ago. They described the most manual process I’ve ever heard of sending emails. They print lists, they send those lists over fax to somebody which goes over them, has to mark kind of which customers have been targeted with different campaigns in the last few weeks. That gets scanned and sent back over email.

That list is then typed up, put into an ESP and sent out. So, that sounds insane but this is literally what brands are still doing today and only 51% of brands say have some sort of automation in place. Only 15% of marketers are using some sort of AI. That’s probably pretty good news for Optimove if you ask me. That means we’ve got a lot of space to grow. Pretty excited about that. This is also something that I found interesting.

Over 90% of marketers feel they’re currently unable to review, analyze, and act on their customer and marketing data in a continuous fashion. And I think that what we’ve heard today from every single panelist and every single speaker has been the importance of testing and iteration. And I think that that’s the only way that we learn. We have to challenge our own assumptions about what works and what doesn’t work in marketing. And that’s the only thing that is true. That is the only constant. The only constant is testing, learning, and iterating.

So, now I’m going to make some predictions which are going to be terrible because I was asked to talk about the future. And obviously, there is no way for me to win this. So I’m going to give you guys a couple of really, really small predictions based on what we’re seeing in the market. The importance of the CDP as a central nervous system of the marketing team will drive more independent, mobile, agile marketing teams and marketers.

This one I’m willing to take to the bank. The CDP is not a passing fad. The CDP is changing fundamentally the way that marketing is built. It is creating marketers which are more independent and quicker and more able to do what before took many, many, many more people. The fact that we see marketers today being able to go from ideation to execution in record time means that they can spend more time thinking about how to tailor the experience, means that they can connect with the Joneses more properly.

And I think that the only way for that to be done is to have a true CDP in place, meaning really have access to all of your customer data. I mean be able to utilize that data in a really, really efficient way across any channel. And we shouldn’t care kind of what that channel really is. So, I don’t know if many of you are familiar with SendGrid. SendGrid is an email service provider which recently got acquired by Twilio last week for a lot of money.

I think it’s four point something, four point something billion dollars. So that’s a lot of money. And I think we’re going to see a lot of vendor consolidation. I think that there was a lot of money in the marketing technology space over the last couple of years and we’re going to see vendor consolidation. And I think that our prediction is that CDPs are going to…quite obviously. We believe the CDPs are going to be the central place and we think that a lot of the vendors which surround the CDP space are going to have to consolidate, because there are a lot of companies out there which are not differentiated and these things are becoming more and more commoditized.

Today, a lot of these channels are becoming commoditized and there is no reason to pay premium for a commoditized service. The second thing is that talent will continue to improve. Even in the short amount of time that I have been involved in the world of marketing technology, it’s unbelievable to see the quality of people that are dealing with marketing today. And it’s really, to me, the most amazing combination of left brain and right brain, which I’m not really sure what other kind of roles inside a company can offer today.

So I think that that’s pretty, pretty special. We believe that the emphasis is going to move away from rule-based automation. If you spend more than $100, you’re going to get $10. We’re going to stop with those things. We believe that things have to be much more innately intelligent. We need to self learn. We need to understand.

We need to identify patterns in the data and how we can actually use them. And the last prediction, which I also feel relatively confident about is that, there’s going to be a proliferation of engagement channels and we see that today already. There’s going to be…in the U.S. we’re going to have to deal with WeChat at one point or another. We’re not going to be able to keep ignoring it.

You know, Pinterest is actually going to be a channel that people are going to use for attention and so on and so forth. But at the end of the day, there’s one big truth which is probably email is still going to stay king. Email is a great channel. Through the acquisition of Dynamic Mail this year, we’ve learned even how amazing it can possibly be and how rich those experiences can be. It doesn’t have to be, you know, this flat boring facts based kind of idea.

It can be exciting and rich and can really be a powerful vehicle for you guys to engage with your customers. So, before I thank our sponsors, I want to thank our marketing team led by the ever fearless Amit Bivas, who I think has done…has done an incredible, incredible job. Tal Tzaig who’s been kind of leading the charge on this has been incredible.

I think that the design here, the design team at Optimove and Galit and Dan and everybody have… I do a lot of events as part of my role, I travel all over the world, and I’m super biased and unobjective, but I think this is one of the most beautiful conferences I’ve seen. So a huge thank you to everybody at Optimove who’s worked so hard to put this together. Four years really. A massive thank you to all our guests that came from abroad, from all over the world, from the U.S. and Europe.

We appreciate you guys being here. It means the world to us to have you here. And of course, a huge thank you to our sponsors, to Mobivate, to PostFunnel, to Wiraya, and to Xtremepush. You have all been wonderful. I can only offer you drinks on the roof now and we’ll see you back here in 2019.