5 'Must Reads' from March 2021

Speaker 1: Welcome back to Thinking Caps. In this episode, Richard and I choose five must reads for the month of March. We're going to give you a five stories. Let's dig into them right now. Okay, Rich. I gave you some homework. I wanted you to pull the five must reads for marketers out there this month. You've got a few, I've got a few. We're going to summarize them very quickly. What did you pull?

Richard: Right. So it's a blog post entitled How Hiscox is Delivering Personalized, High- Converting Email. And let me give you a little bit of taste around it. So firstly, they talk about why personalization is the key for them in 2021. We know people like it when you personalize content, offers and messaging, but does it work? Is it worth the effort? And this is what this article goes into. So ultimately, yes. Hiscox, they're an insurance product company, shares the stats. Blends the need to segment AB test and measure all at high volume of email send, all in a highly regulated industry.

Speaker 1: That's a big test. There's a lot of things they're trying to accomplish here.

Richard: So they talk about how they do that across 300,000 customers. And they get a nearly 15% lift in email engagement after implementing some tweaks to their email marketing program. So it's a quick read, it's inspiring, it's meaningful, so check it out.

Speaker 1: Oh, cool. All right. I didn't read that one. I got to read that one. All right. Well, I have one and it's a cool company over in Italy called Thun. It's spelled T- H- U- N. But it's titled How Thun Created a Best- in- Class Loyalty Program for its Customers. So again, Thun, Italian manufacturer of gifts, furniture, and ceramics. They have nearly 1 million active members in their loyalty program. So really nice program going on there. They needed to basically build a better digital relationship with our customers and consumers, especially as consumers are going from bricks to clicks. In 2020, we saw that transformation. They also wanted to achieve a single view of their customer data in one spot. So they use the Cheetah Digital EDP, our experience data platform, to do that, and they also activated our loyalty solution platform. So those two products. They talk a lot about how they're using machine learning and personalization features in there.

Richard: Nice.

Speaker 1: And through this, this is cool and we heard this with Vans, who's also on a Cheetah Digital loyalty program, they increased revenue from members in the loyalty program 60%. So essentially, they're getting 60% more revenue from members as opposed to non- members.

Richard: Love that. Love that.

Speaker 1: So again, when you have a member in there, you can message them, you can do all kinds of personalization, you can do the upsell, cross sell. You can inaudible.

Richard: We are seeing similar stats in terms of the lift of people in the loyalty program versus customers that aren't across multiple brands and multiple industries. So go check that out. If Thun can do it, you can do it.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a great story. It's a good read for anyone who's also trying to get buy- in from the top because this is a great story. So go check that one out.

Richard: I got another one for you, which is a blog post by our own Nicholas Einstein. Great name.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Smart guy.

Richard: So it's entitled Delighting Customers From Moment One With a Customer Engagement Suite. Now, this is a real kind of practitioner view of how you can use the Cheetah Customer Engagement Suite to actually deliver some fantastic marketing results. So I'll give you a little bit of a synopsis of what's in there. So he wrote this piece and explains the whys and hows behind a cross- channel strategy. Super important. We know that. And it highlights how the Cheetah Digital journey designer tool can be used to engage your target audience across email web and mobile and provide that joined up seamless experience across all those different touch points. It also explains how to set expectations for your audience and your team, practical ideas of how to get this thing right, and examples of how you convey your value proposition across the journey across these different channels. And it closes with ideas about how to deliver relevant offers and personalized content as you knit together the customer journey across these different channels. So again, it's another short read. Gives you a good roadmap as a marketer to start to think about dynamic journeys for your customers.

Speaker 1: Yeah, Nicholas is a great guy on our product marketing team and also, the cohost of the podcast The Pulse.

Richard: Right.

Speaker 1: So if you're a practitioner, you really love getting in the weeds, great guy.

Richard: Go see The Pulse.

Speaker 1: What's funny is I also chose something that Nicholas penned the month of March and it's titled Liberating Your Customer Data with Citizen Data Scientist.

Richard: Wow. I would say, definitely listen to Einstein.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Right? Einstein is writing about citizen data scientist. I must admit, I didn't really understand what the citizen data scientist thing was. I've heard about it. It's been around for a few years. Gartner I think coined the phrase. So this is a great starter to get you in to what that's all about. It basically explains the citizen data scientist model, which is basically using people that aren't in the analytics and statistics departments, but they're helping to create advanced diagnostic analytics, predictive prescriptive analytics, et cetera. It's pretty interesting. It puts the power of sophisticated machine learning in the hands of the marketer. So it allows you to build all kinds of different models, derive insights, better understand your audience, et cetera. This read is great because it's for people like me. Non- techie. I'm not an engineer. I understood it pretty well. And by the way, a note here, is we have integrated the citizen data scientist model into the Customer Engagement Suite here at Cheetah Digital. So our customers at Cheetah Digital actually have the benefit of this modeling inside our own product.

Richard: We can all be Einsteins.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Right? Let's scale it up. So I thought that was an interesting read and definitely something to enhance your knowledge around these awesome models that are out there.

Richard: Cool. Well, the last piece, number five here, it has to be the 2021 digital consumer trend index report.

Speaker 1: Of course. I mean, you've heard us talk about it, but it has to be on the list.

Richard: Yeah. Look, I mean, getting your finger on the pulse of exactly what is happening with consumer attitudes around many of the different things that will impact your digital acceleration, you're own digital transformation, is absolutely key. We know we're in a very weird time. It's hopefully the tail end of the pandemic. We're all looking forward to coming out the other side. But consumer attitudes are changing. It's a dynamic thing. And this will get your hands on the pulse of what's happening in five markets around the world with aggregate data, with data broken out by country, by age. Definitely check this out.

Speaker 1: It's deep. You've heard us talk about it. So it's deep. Well, there it is. That's our top five must reads for March. Kind of like our own little book club, I guess, here.

Richard: Yes, indeed.

Speaker 1: A little shorter than that.

Richard: But it's good stuff. Check it out. Check it out.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of content coming out of Cheetah Digital. We appreciate you, as always, watching Thinking Caps. Go check these out. You can check them out at CheetahDigital. com under the resources tab, as well as our blog. And you should subscribe to that. You should definitely check it out. And I guess we'll see you next time.

Richard: See you next time.

Speaker 1: All right. Adios.