Headspace names Zapata as CMO
Val Kaplan Zapata will join mindfulness and meditation-focused app Headspace as Chief Marketing Officer next month. She will join the senior leadership team and lead a cross-functional marketing team with shared responsibility for acquisition, conversion, and retention.

Zapata most recently held the role of Vice President of Growth Marketing for Hulu, where she led growth marketing efforts across the full subscriber lifecycle, including media, acquisition, lifecycle and analytics. Prior to Hulu, she led growth efforts for both direct-to-consumer and media businesses. Zapata built the business development function at Helix Sleep and worked on market operations and monetisation at Instagram.

“I am thrilled and privileged to be joining the talented team at Headspace,” said Zapata. “At this moment in time, I can’t think of a more powerful mission than spreading health and happiness to all. I look forward to helping a growing member base create healthy wellness routines that last a lifetime.”

Madan joins Birdeye as CIO
Birdeye, an experience marketing platform, has hired Sunil Madan as its Chief Information Officer. He will head up revenue operations, internal technology, and help build processes and infrastructure for scale.

Madan arrives at Birdeye from Zoom, where he served as corporate CIO. At Zoom, he was responsible for defining business transformation and executing operations strategy during a period of exceptional growth for the cloud-based video communications platform. He was also previously responsible for strategically designing and executing RingCentrals business systems architecture.

“Customer experience is so close to my heart, and I just love companies that continue to raise the bar in providing delightful experiences, while having a laser focus on categorical transformations. I’m very excited to bring my playbook to Birdeye to help the company’s founders rapidly scale a successful platform and a vision that matches exactly what multi-location businesses need to thrive,” said Madan.

Criteo brings in Scheel on DEI
Rachel Scheel has become the first Senior Vice President of Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at ad tech company Criteo. She will be responsible for designing and driving Criteos Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programme, collaborating across the organisation to launch strategic initiatives that foster a more diverse and inclusive culture.

Scheel joins Criteo with over 20 years of experience in HR leadership roles. Prior to joining Criteo, she was the Global Executive for Culture, Inclusion, Diversity and Engagement at GE Healthcare. In this role, she was responsible for driving employee engagement for the business along with the diversity and inclusion strategy, and aligning with learning and development, talent, reward, and employee life-cycle mechanisms to do so.

“In my career, I have been a passionate advocate for diversity and making a real difference both inside and outside of an organization,” said Scheel. “I am eager to drive Criteo forward in becoming equitable throughout every level of the company, driving engagement from leadership to management and employees to deliver an inclusive culture.”

Hesse takes seat at head of Akamai board
Content distribution network Akamai Technologies has appointed its current Director and Chair of the Environmental, Social, and Governance committee, Daniel R. Hesse, to Chairman of its Board of Directors. Hesse will succeed Frederic V. Salerno upon his retirement in June.

Hesse has been an Akamai board member since August 2016. He is the former CEO of Sprint and currently serves as a member of the boards at Just Capital and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

“It has been a pleasure to work alongside Fred. He has been a great partner in and out of the boardroom and I thank him for his leadership,” said Hesse. “I am honoured to succeed him as Akamais chairman and look forward to helping the management team increase Akamais role in enabling a connected world of unimagined potential.”

Dreams promotes Hegenbartova to CCO
Lucia Hegenbartova has been announced as Chief Commercial Officer at Swedish financial wellbeing platform Dreams. She will be responsible for building Dreams’ new B2B business unit dedicated to the acquisition and development of B2B partnerships, overseeing all revenue-generating functions across the sales, marketing and customer success departments, and carrying out Dreams’ international expansion strategy.

Hegenbartova joined Dreams in April 2020, serving as Country Manager for Germany and then Head of Customer Success B2B. Prior to Dreams, she was instrumental in the market launch of three other tech startups in a number of senior roles including Chief Operating Officer at Contiamo, VP of Marketing at CrossEngage, and VP of Marketing at Commercetools.

“From day one I’ve been fully on board with the company’s vision of empowering people to feel better about their money, and I’ve been really impressed with how Dreams has already flawlessly delivered on this mission by significantly, and measurably, improving the financial wellbeing of thousands of customers,” commented Hegenbartova.

“These are now really exciting times for Dreams, as the company looks to consolidate its international expansion and growth strategy, and further transform the entire industry. I’m thrilled to be able to bring this bold vision to life, and I look forward to working with some of the world’s most visionary banking partners and help them prevail at the forefront of the emerging financial wellbeing movement.”

BianRosa to take up CPO gig at N26
Mobile banking platform N26 has named Gilles BianRosa as its Chief Product Officer. Taking up the role ‘in the coming months’, he will lead all product teams based across the companys main offices and technology hubs in Berlin, Barcelona, Vienna and New York and be responsible for defining, steering, and implementing N26’s global product strategy.

BianRosa was most recently CPO at SoundClound and, before that, CPO at Samsung Electronics, where he oversaw content and services for Samsung Smart TVs globally. He was also the Co-founder and CEO of FanTV and Vuze.

“After almost two decades in Silicon Valley, Im very pleased to be joining one of the most dynamic product teams in FinTech globally,” said BianRosa. “I look forward to applying my experience from the world of online consumer services to help N26 continue to connect authentically with its customers. Having already begun to redefine banking for customers, I believe that N26 has a unique opportunity to touch more aspects of daily life with their simple, trusted, and delightful experience.”

Freshworks recruits SaaS veteran Epstein as CMO
Stacey Epstein has been brought in as Chief Marketing Officer at Freshworks, a customer engagement software company. She will play a pivotal role in Freshworks’ next phase of growth, leading global marketing strategy for the company.

Epstein was ranked as one of the ‘Top 50 women leaders in SaaS of 2020’ by The Software Report and hailed as the ‘Global CMO of the Year’ by Enterprise IT World. She took SuccessFactors from $10m in ARR through six years of triple-digit revenue growth, an IPO, and subsequent acquisition by SAP for $3.4bn. She went on to join the ServiceMax founding team then went on to serve as CEO of Zinc, which was acquired by ServiceMax in 2019. Epstein stayed on at ServiceMax as Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer until her move to Freshworks.

“With more than 50,000 customers leveraging our modern and highly intuitive solutions, Freshworks has been quietly disrupting several enterprise SaaS categories,” said Epstein. “With a visionary founding CEO in Girish Mathrubootham, who is obsessed with building software that delights both customers and employees—along with a leadership team full of experienced veterans from Atlassian, Oracle, Veeva, and Zuora— the massive opportunity to help transform entire industries is ours to lose. I can’t wait to tell our story.”

Meier arrives to lead digital marketing at Organic
Digital agency Organic has hired Gillian Meier as its Head of Digital Marketing, a new role for the agency. She will be responsible for the creation and delivery of digital marketing strategies across all accounts and disciplines, particular focusing on improving the data and analytics performance, while working closely with Organic’s Creative, UX, and SEO leads to deliver best in class results for clients.

Meier arrives at Organic with 24 years of experience in the digital sphere. She was most recently CEO & Global Head Global Head of BlueMagnet, a business that she founded.

“I have always stood for digital excellence, white-hat, ethics and best practice. Using digital to impact the masses in a positive and meaningful way is not only a skill, but also a weapon with which we can change the world, and it is our duty as digital marketers to use this power responsibly,” said Meier. “These are the ‘Digital For Good’ values that Organic stands for, and these resonate with me to my core. I want to be part of a collective of industry leaders that are committed to driving this message forward.”

Brand Advance turns to Lawson-Wall to direct on people
Melanie Lawson-Wall has been appointed as Director of People and Wellbeing at global diversity media network Brand Advance. She will be responsible for devising and deploying a new HR and wellbeing framework for the business.

Lawson-Wall started her career as a performance coach in the education space and has provided leadership advice to businesses including Deltatre. She is the Founder of Assist Coaching and Text Coaches. Lawson-Wall is also part of the CIPD Steering Group.

“I’m excited to be joining the Brand Advance team, having closely followed the company since its inception and witnessed it go from strength to strength,” said Lawson-Wall. “I’m here to champion the employees that have been critical to Brand Advance’s success so far, and ensure that they can operate in an environment which encourages them to bring their best selves to the workplace and continues to bring their individuality to the fore.”

Bezi? added to board at Infobip
Infobip, a cloud communications company, has welcomed its new Vice President of Planning and Strategy Implementation, Marin Bezi?, to its Board of Directors. He will be responsible for optimising business management including enhancing the go-to-market framework and overseeing revenue operations.

Previously at Microsoft, Bezi? was central to product development and the force behind Microsofts first business intelligence application. After spending eight years at Microsoft’s global HQ in Washington state, he moved to Microsoft’s EMEA HQ in London, where he led the application platform business in over 100 countries. In 2009, he returned to his native Croatia to run his own consultancy firm.

“Im excited to be a part of Infobips story. The feeling is very similar to the beginning of my career when I came to Microsoft. Infobip is a globally recognizable, fast-growing company full of fantastic people. Its great to be part of a company that allows people worldwide to improve the way they live and work, all with the help of technology. I am looking forward to being able to use my knowledge and experience to help Infobip realize its vision,” Bezi? said.

Flashtalking selects Tuminello as strategy VP
Michael Tuminello has been hired as Vice President of Strategy at Flashtalking, an ad management platform. He will be instrumental in bringing Flashtalking’s offerings to market globally across Europe, the US, and APAC and refining them to keep pace with a rapidly changing market.

Tuminello brings varied and deep industry experience to the new role at Flashtalking, with over 15 years in leadership at companies including Integral Ad Science, Innovid, and Sizmek.

“Having watched Flashtalking evolve and lead in the industry, I’ve always been really impressed with the breadth and depth of the offering,” said Tuminello. “I’m excited to guide our ongoing advance into the verification space, particularly as the industry seeks to establish a foundation of trust in the high-value OTT and CTV channels.”

Clarizio takes spot on board at Simpli.fi
Programmatic ad company Simpli.fi has added Lynda Clarizio to its Board of Directors.

Clarizio has previously held the positions of President of US Media at Nielsen, Executive Vice President at AppNexsus, CEO at Invision, President of Advertising.com, and Board Member at IAB, among others.

“True to its name, Simpli.fi has simplified programmatic buying and cross-channel workflow for thousands of independent agencies, enabling them to better serve brands in media planning and buying,” said Clarizio. “I am pleased to join Simpli.fi’s board and look forward to working with Frost Prioleau and Paul Harrison as Simpli.fi continues to grow and expand.”

Brand Metrics expands London team
Dhruv Roy and Sumran Kaul have joined measurement company Brand Metrics as Integrations Manager and Client Lead respectively.

Roy is an accomplished digital advertising specialist, and has held roles in a range of businesses including Microsoft, Apple, DAZN, the BBC, Zee5 and SoundCloud.

Kaul was most recently Senior Manager of Insights at News UK, where he used research and insight to advise clients when planning and executing their marketing strategy and objectives. He has also held insights leadership roles at Ofcom and ITV. 

“Dhruv and Sumran boast impressive technical knowledge and broad experience, but they are also strategic thinkers and passionate team players,” says Anders Lithner, CEO of Brand Metrics. “The response we’ve had from the UK media market has been overwhelming. Providing better insights and audience understanding and consistent, comparable brand lift measurement is resulting in larger campaign investments, winning more campaign pitches, and lower overall measurement costs.”

Kelleher added to mParticle board
mParticle, a customer data platform, has announced the arrival of Eric Kelleher to its Board of Directors.

Kelleher is currently Chief Customer Officer at Okta, where he oversees all of Okta’s customer relationships and is responsible for building its global teams and businesses for professional services, education services, success management, customer support, and subscription renewals. Prior to Okta, he spent 11 years in customer leadership roles at Salesforce. Kelleher was also the first Global Head of Customer Success at LinkedIn Talent Solutions.

“The market for data infrastructure to help teams leverage their customer data to drive personalized customer experiences is exploding,” said Kelleher. “The opportunity is enormous and theyve built a great company with incredible momentum. I look forward to working with the team to help them continue to scale.”

The post Movers and Shakers: Headspace, Birdeye, Criteo, Akamai, and more appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

The combination of Infobip and OpenMarket will create a company with a revenue runrate of more than $1bn which processes more than 14bn customer interactions per month in more than 190 countries.

“This transaction marks a significant leap forward in our journey towards exponential growth,” said Silvio Kutic, Co-founder and CEO of Infobip. “Combined, Infobip and OpenMarket have some 10,000 customers, including many of the world’s leading enterprises. We will now be better able to meet the customers’ needs in every region, with best-in-class direct connectivity to more than 650 mobile operators and a best-in-class combined portfolio of cloud-based messaging and SaaS offerings.”

Jonathan Morgan, CEO of OpenMarket, added, “We are excited to join forces with the Infobip team to offer an even better value proposition to our customers at this exciting time. I want to thank Amdocs for its support of OpenMarket over many years, and for recognizing the extraordinary potential of this strategic combination.”

Earlier this year, Infobip raised over $200m from private equity firm One Equity Partners at a valuation of over $1bn. It was the company’s first external round of funding.

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At this year’s GSMA WAS#8 event, Infobip polled more than 300 mobile network operator leaders globally to uncover the mobile trends of the future. When we asked what single trend or development would have the most profound effect on the mobile industry in the near future, we received a wide range of responses. But, at the same time, there was a clear leader. The continued development and early rollouts of 5G will be a game-changer over the next two years.

Having lived through the evolution of mobile data from GPRS back in 2000, to 4G, which is still being rolled out to some areas, it’s natural that people will have developed some weariness around the launch of the next generation network. They know it will be a bit faster, and thus allow for some applications that weren’t really feasible before: effectively another step up on the dial.

While 5G will indeed offer extremely fast data speeds, as the mobile execs we spoke to confirmed, it is, in fact, a much broader set of technologies that create the conditions for a wide, and growing set of revolutionary new service propositions.

This includes the ability to connect many thousands more devices to any given base station, using parts of the technology called Massive MIMO and millimetre wave, as well as extremely low latency. This will make the kind of network overload you may have experienced at large outdoor events a thing of the past.

Better things
But the most anticipated beneficiary of Massive MIMO and millimetre wave in 5G telephony is the Internet of Things (IoT), which was – not coincidentally – the experts’ second-hottest trend in our study. The related item, M2M (Machine-to-Machine – an older term for some parts of what we now call IoT), appeared in fourth position in their list of key trends.

IoT for large-scale, industrial and consumer use has been touted as the ‘next big thing’ for several years. But though the technology for creating minute, power-sipping sensors is already available through technologies like NB-IoT, keeping them connected in situations where wi-fi is not practical, such as in automobile, agricultural and logistics applications, has proven trickier to implement. With 5G, this barrier will hypothetically be lifted, and we can expect IoT applications to grow significantly in popularity and scope as the new network standard becomes reality.

Road to riches
The third trend getting the industry excited is RCS (Rich Communication Services). Described as next-gen SMS messaging, RCS – as the name implies – allows for the kind of rich content and interactivity that has, to date, been restricted to OTT chat apps, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

The RCS open standard has been developed under the stewardship of the GSMA, and is already available to use in the form of Google’s Android app, Chat. RCS messages can easily switch to regular SMS if the message recipient’s device is not compatible, or no mobile data connection is available, so the standard retains the reliability of message delivery – a major factor in the enduring appeal of SMS. In 2019, operators expect the service to extend and for commercial organisations to begin to adopt RCS for marketing and transactional messaging more widely.

One potential roadblock for this is Apple’s current refusal to work with the standard, though only a minority of the operator experts at WAS#8 viewed this as a significant challenge. The rollout of 5G, allowing more, faster network traffic and lower latency, is viewed by more operators as a factor in successful corporate adoption of the standard, as is the availability of tools to manage RCS as part of a varied diet of omnichannel communications offerings.

Network effects
There is no consensus at this point on how much capital investment will be needed by operators to create their 5G networks. The standard itself will not be exactly the same from every operator, and the extent to which existing infrastructure can be re-used and upgraded, as opposed to using entirely new infrastructure, will vary tremendously between them. However, it is significant enough that its commercial success is absolutely imperative for the future of every operator that chooses to participate.

For this reason, it is clear why topics directly related to operators’ income dominate the remaining items on their agenda. Consumers have become highly resistant to paying roaming charges as they travel, for example, a practice which has now been scrapped in the EU. Similarly, consumers and businesses alike rankle at high data charges and are making use of wi-fi and OTT apps to avoid such charges.

So, the success of 5G for operators will not just be about being able to repay whatever they need to spend on infrastructure upgrades. It is also about creating and curating new services that can provide significant ongoing revenue streams that people will happily pay for, replacing those services for which they will not. Think about potential services such as sensor-driven remote doctor’s consultations, live VR news reporting from major events, and entertainment events sold as richly immersive experiences.

The challenge for operators to monetise 5G effectively should lead to a much brighter future for us all.

The post 5G to dominate operator innovation in 2019 appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Despite the ever-increasing use of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, retailers are continuing to opt for SMS because a text message is far more likely to be opened than an unsolicited email, phone call, or instant message, according to application-to-person (A2P) messaging platform Infobip. In fact, the SMS open rate is 95 per cent, compared to the open rates of as low as 23 per cent for email.

“It’ no wonder businesses see the value of SMS as a customer engagement tool,” said Silvio Kutic, CEO of Infobip. “SMS is now a standard component in any retailer’s digital marketing strategy. High street brands gearing up for Black Friday and Christmas are able to track customers’ online shopping habits and send them SMS updates about their favourite products. Retailers can also apply this intelligence to send customers real-time messages while shopping in-store for the latest deals.”

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Mobile is the ultimate personal device for speaking to consumers, but between the complexities of app marketing, the ever-changing world of programmatic and the multiplying selection of messaging platforms, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, and that’s before we bring in innovations like AR, VR, the Internet of Things and smart cities. Our Brand Summit aims to be a knowledge hub for brand marketers looking to get the most from mobile, letting them discuss the challenges that they face with a wide range of experts and peers.

If you weren’t able to make it to the Summit, you missed out on some fantastic guidance from leading industry figures, but you can still access some of the gems of wisdom here, with our top 10 quotes from the day.

“When Theresa May announced the election, I had a personal mission. I knew our readers were young and engaged. They want to be entertained and informed.”
Sophie Tighe, Snapchat editor, The Sun

Sophie Tighe from News UK started the day off by exploring how The Sun reaches a new audience on Snapchat, often one that has never picked up the newspaper or even visited its website. She shared how the publisher adapts content for its Discover channel, ranging from celebrity gossip to political coverage, and how it has built up a relationship with the young consumers that make up Snapchat’s audience.

“During the process of building it, they found they were playing the game more than they were programming it, which meant they knew they were on to something.”
Tony Foggett, CEO, Code Computer Love

During his talk, Tony Foggett from Code Computer Love described how a side project at the digital agency designed to showcase its search data capabilities turned into a number one app with 6m downloads and 500m plays. He walked us through the making of The Higher Lower Game, how the firm used agile development and iteration to perfect it, and some of the mistakes the team learned from along the way.

“Who better to create content for your campaigns than customers themselves, who love your products and your brand. The influencer-created content is just getting so powerful, so beautiful, because the creative tools that you have on your smartphone are getting more powerful every year. You’ve seen the Shot on iPhone billboards – that campaign’s a testament to how great those cameras are.”
Jules Lund, founder, Tribe Group

Jules Lund from Tribe Group sang the praises of micro-influencers, those with between 3,000 and 100,000 followers on social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, and how they can take mass marketing messages and turn them into personal content that reaches huge numbers of consumers. He also explained how the market is evolving from just influencers as a channel to influencer generated content, which can provide brands with a powerful resource for marketing their products.

“90 per cent of our customers are under 35, and because of their demographics and their profile, we know they’re global, they’re very active on social media, but most importantly, mobile is the one thing that’s really important to them. They’ve grown up with mobile devices, and it’s natural to them to transact on a mobile device.”
Breffni Horgan, head of product & design, Hostelworld

Breffni Horgan from Hostelworld spoke about the importance of mobile to travel brands, where the personal nature of the device offers an opportunity to provide users with real utility and value while giving brands a direct line to consumers. She provided us with an overview of how Hostelworld is continually evolving the products and services it offers through its app, and how that’s driving both reach and engagement.

“If you have, for example, a website, a CRM, even a physical location, and you’re not using that to drive the data that you’re using on your mobile experience, you’re missing out.”
Simon Baptist, director of business development, EMEA, Tune

Tune specialises in helping brands optimise their app marketing, and Simon Baptist offered insights into how it’s not good enough to simply be mobile-first anymore, you have to be mobile-best. While billions is set to be spent on driving app installs next year, Simon argued that brands need to focus on engagement and retainment if they truly want to connect with customers.

“As we approach GDPR, people like telcos that have that first party relationship with a customer will be the lead that other people have to follow. There’s a value exchange in process and a trust already established.”
Martin Weller, managing director, Weve

Martin Weller from Weve addressed one of the topics that everyone in the room had questions on: the looming spectre of GDPR, and how it will affect the digital marketing ecosystem. Martin suggested that while ad tech firms may struggle, companies that have access to first-party data will be able to leverage their relationship with customers and maintain their ability to use data to target advertising.

“Clients don’t always have the opportunity to have completely bespoke video content, or a dedicated creative agency working for them, but working with the editorial and design team, we can take assets created for print or online, whether it’s a video ad, or just still images or text – and make them more dynamic, adapting it to the platform.”
Milton Elias, head of mobile & video, News UK

Speaking alongside Sophie Tighe, News UK’s head of mobile & video Milton Elias explained how the publisher partners with brands on Snapchat, and how News UK works with clients to create content that suits both the mobile format and today’s fast-paced millennial consumers.

“The right communication channel is the one your customer wants, not the one that want to give them.”
Kevin Britt, country manager, UK and Ireland, Infobip

Messaging platforms offer brands a hugely valuable channel to reach consumers on a one-to-one basis, as Infobip’s Kevin Britt detailed in his talk. SMS and over-the-top messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Line are increasingly preferred over email, and offer brands unique features that they can use to offer consumers a richer experience, from in-app payments to chatbots.

“We did a great job up to the booking, but once the customer got to the destination, we didn’t really communicate with them. We tried to understand what kind of data we had to help augment their travelling experience, and we asked customers what we could give them that would make their travelling experience better. The top answers were weather, recommendations for things to do, and places to eat.”
Breffni Horgan, head of product & design, Hostelworld

As part of her presentation, Breffni Horgan from Hostelworld explored how the brand’s app gave them an opportunity to extend their contact with customers beyond the traditional transaction, and how customer feedback and data drove their ventures into new functionality, from the MyTrips information portal to the ‘Speak The World’ translation feature.

“It’s not out of the realm of possibility for a brand to be able to tell when you’re on that final five, 10 per cent of battery, send you a push notification inviting you in and letting you charge your phone wirelessly while you get a discounted coffee.”
Ben Phillips, global head of mobile, Mediacom

Ben Phillips from Mediacom closed out the days presentations by asking the question of if mobile had reached its perfect peak with the release of the iPhone X, which seems to bring together several of the most cutting-edge innovations and offer marketers rich new opportunities for personalised interactions with consumers in the always-online world.

The post The 10 Best Quotes from our Brand Summit appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

In April 2017, the number-one operating system accessing the internet was no longer Windows – it was Android. This was the moment when mobile devices undeniably became the dominant players online, turning the marketing world mobile-centric.

The immense popularity of smartphones has left brands trying to adapt to a generation of users that expect easy interaction across multiple channels, from SMS to email to an OTT app. This expectation means that, in order to stay ahead of the competition, it’s now essential for brands to deliver seamless communication when and how users want it. In short: welcome to the new era of omnichannel communications.

Omnichannel and multichannel: What’s the difference?
While the wisdom of reaching consumers in multiple ways is undeniable, the wealth of communication channels now available can be a double-edged sword, and businesses can struggle to live up to consumer expectations. This is where it might be useful to understand the difference between multichannel and omnichannel communications.

Multichannel communication is when you use more than one channel to connect with your customers – for example, through an email newsletter as well as a Facebook feed. However, in the multichannel world, those channels might not be linked together. You might not know if the customer you’re contacting has already emailed, phoned or messaged another department. As consumers, we’ve all experienced this when we have to explain our problem from scratch every time we reach a new person in a call centre.

This happens because, in many companies, different departments ‘own’ different communications channels. Marketing might be in charge of the product newsletter, while sales has the lead nurture flow, and support owns technical calls and emails. Nine times out of 10, replies to newsletters for support bounce back or, at best, receive an automated reply with a generic email address.

In an omnichannel world, companies can use multiple channels to engage with customers, but they are all interlinked, so every interaction becomes part of a single, ongoing dialogue — which customers already believe it is.

Implementing omnichannel isn’t complicated, you just need to understand what customers expect, and make it happen without worrying about breaking down communications siloes. No part of the communications flow or conversation matrix can operate outside of the system. Remember, customers already see communicating with you as a single conversation, regardless of how they do it. Omnichannel only works if you see it that way too.

Omnichannel platforms look for ‘trigger words’ and other data in incoming messages, and direct the message to the relevant person within the company. For example, emails with support-related trigger words get queued to support, while a reply from a customer to a marketing newsletter appears in the account manager’s inbox. Today’s omnichannel systems are sophisticated enough to learn and manage these kinds of tasks. They can automatically pull customer data up for representatives answering incoming calls, for example. An SMS from a certain number can be directed to an account rep or support, depending on the words it contains.

Starting slow is essential for companies dipping their toes into omnichannel. Instead of integrating every possible channel from the word go, start with the ones that you do offer and integrate them. If you only offer voice and email right now, integrate those before bringing in push and SMS. However, the eventual goal is to have a platform that straddles all of the popular communications platforms through a single integrated hub.

The new omnichannel model on the block
By far the most popular method of going omnichannel quickly is through the Communications-Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) model. This is designed to overcome the challenges that businesses face when looking to roll out omnichannel, and it offers an array of benefits.

CPaaS delivers the geographical spread you need – top vendors have omnichannel frameworks in place across all key global markets. CPaaS vendors generally offer a one-stop shop that integrates messaging, user segments and reporting into one system. Being able to monitor, analyse and report on customer engagement is as important as having a functioning and professional omnichannel messaging platform in place. The CPaaS model supports this by helping businesses to better manage their communication flow from initial user interaction to customer feedback and beyond.

Nowadays, new messaging services gain popularity with bewildering rapidity and are as unpredictable as consumer preferences themselves. This is another area where CPaaS comes into its own. The model offers the fastest time-to-market for the integration of new messaging platforms, allowing fast and efficient integration of new platforms into a system, in tandem with consumer demand.

Process trumps technology
According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, companies with strong omnichannel strategies retain an average of 89 per cent of their customers and see an average 9.5 per cent year-on-year increase in annual revenue. Approached correctly, omnichannel offers increased brand visibility, more routes for interaction with new and existing customers and much-improved customer satisfaction. It’s a win-win for all involved.

Omnichannel communications solutions are designed to make the technology part of the equation easy. However, all customer-facing departments need to realise that they all have a stake in getting new customers and keeping existing ones happy. This isn’t a problem that technology can solve – people have to clear this hurdle first. The sooner your employees realise that customer communications are everyone’s responsibility, the easier it will become to integrate all your channels into an omni solution.

The post A Small Step for Technology, A Giant Leap in Mindset – Infobip appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

It’s a relatively new concept, but ‘omnichannel’ has already come to mean many things to many people. For retailers, it’s the multitude of sales channels available to shoppers. In the financial industry, it refers to the methods you have at your disposal for handling your money, from ATMs and bank branches to banking apps.

We’re saying nothing new when we say that the world has gone mobile, with smartphones now the focal point of our daily lives. This mobile explosion has created many conveniences for users, but also many challenges for businesses.

In a way, this shift all started with SMS. It has been a popular communication tool basically since its introduction, and as a result has been widely adopted by businesses of all types for alerting, marketing and customer support purposes. As a channel, SMS still boasts remarkable reach and efficiency. According to analyst firm Mobilesquared, over 99 per cent of all text messages are read by the recipient, and 90 per cent are read within three minutes of delivery.

The mantle of SMS has since been assumed by feature-rich messaging apps, which have become the dominant mobile communications channel for millions of users worldwide. Many types of services are now available within messaging apps, dramatically changing not only the ways that people communicate and do business, but how they perceive customer engagement and relationships with brands and businesses.

This has created many challenges for enterprises, app makers and developers. All of them now have to keep in mind the wide array of communications services, apps and channels used by their customers, to be able to send individually tailored, relevant and efficient engagement messages in massive volumes.

Multiple channels, single solution?
This is exactly what is giving rise to the concept of omnichannel for enterprise communications, and the idea of different channels and approaches working seamlessly through a single platform to drive customer engagement. A2P (application-to-person) SMS and email have long been the staples of enterprise communications, each with its own set of uses and customer perceptions. Now it’s becoming indispensable to craft communication strategies that include multiple channels, devices, failover scenarios and intelligent workflows.

This is where the challenge starts. SMS, voice, email, push notifications and chat apps are all separate channels and different technologies. And more likely than not, each is provided by a different vendor.
This siloed approach to service provision is an extension of the current legacy approach to customer communication. Forced to stitch together different vendors, technologies and platforms for a complete communication strategy, businesses simply cannot reap all the benefits of an omnichannel approach to customer engagement.

A single solution would be the answer. When you need features like CRM and business intelligence system sync, or centralised reporting and analytics, a single solution allows businesses to minimise the resources needed, and maximise the quality, frequency and success of customer engagement.

Take, for example, chat apps. The likes of Viber, Facebook Messenger, Line, Telegram and many more are exposing their APIs to businesses and third-party providers. This creates the need to engage with consumers across all these channels, depending on their communication preferences. Add to this the need to include channels such as SMS and email, and the complexity just keeps growing.

The CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) model aims to remove the technical as well as financial issues associated with deploying an omnichannel customer engagement solution. A single provider and platform reduces the resources needed to integrate, deploy and operate an omnichannel engagement strategy.

Another benefit is the ability to monitor, analyse, and report on customer engagement thanks to tools built directly into the omnichannel solution. With the proper data available to them, brands can build communications that are more centred on the consumer, using the data on each individual’s communication habits and preferences for interacting with a business, in order to craft a better strategy.

The chatbot future
Chatbots were one of the hottest topics of 2016. The trend of chatbots and AI in customer communications continues in 2017, and no doubt beyond. Automating certain functions in customer service or support can further drive down costs for enterprises, limiting the need for dedicated contact centre staff and software.

One key direction in development will be towards emotion-savvy AI, able to perceive and express emotions when communicating with a customer. As anyone who’s ever angrily called a customer service centre can attest, sensing that you have the attention and empathy of the person on the other end of the line is crucial for a good user experience. In the form of chatbots or otherwise, AI which can do that will greatly increase the level of personalisation, one of the key issues in customer engagement. This feature is incoming, although it’s hard to tell exactly when.

Even before that point, though, we can expect omnichannel to gain more traction. It’s inevitable, as the need for immediate, cross-platform, personalised customer engagement becomes more pressing – and increasingly one of the key requirements of consumers today.

This article first appeared in the June 2017 print edition of Mobile Marketing. You can read the whole issue here.

The post The Omnichannel Challenge: Customer engagement for the smartphone era – Infobip appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.