 Okay, thank you So it's a pleasure to be moderating this expert panel today on Data-driven marketing. I'll just take a minute to set context and then we can you know jump into all the rich Experiences they'll share with us on this. So brands today Compete on experiences, right? You can buy technology. You can get skills But how are you able to create those relevant meaningful personalized experiences? Keep them meaningful through the customer journey keep customers engaged with you through their lifespan these are challenges that marketers are struggling with today and Apart from that they also struggle with some very real and practical challenges like you know, it's a complex omni channel world There are many more channels to market on today than there were say ten years ago Omni channel your attribution is a huge problem understanding where the success is coming from Engaging buyers through their life journey is a huge challenge Choosing and deploying and making the most of all the tools and technology 7,000 plus tools and technologies is a huge challenge, but I think most of all The biggest challenge for marketers today is proving the ROI of the marketing that they're doing right and delivering these sort of Engaging experiences The key to it or one of the keys to it is really data So today we have this great panel here today to help us break down What really is data-driven marketing and where has it come from? You know, how did it sort of did it sneak up on us or has it been in the making for the last many years? So I'm gonna first You know invite all the panelists and we have a rich selection here We have the Pali who is a practitioner as well as from a technology company. We have Neeraj, we have Santosh who's from an agency a performance marketing agency and Neeraj and Uday who are from technology companies who are enabling technology companies To hear from them really the party. Let me start with you Data-driven marketing. What does that mean to you? You've had a rich experience as a marketer What are the key milestones on this journey that have brought us to this stage today of data-driven marketing? So I think if he if you want to get into the origins of the data-driven marketing in a manner of speaking Data-driven marketing always existed right 24 years ago when I started working You Dependent on market research based data for market years to take decisions on so there was a sampling based data It was limited. Yes, you did qualitative research You did quantitative research and you still you still thought that you were taking decisions on the basis of data The CEOs for development of products You know the CFOs All of them use data I think the difference that has happened in our lives and especially the marketer's life is on account of the fact that Now in the service industry a lot of the transaction data is available to you for you to be no longer dependent on research based data, but to be able to Actually rely on real data about your consumers. So that brings in the whole issue of one personalization how do you use that data and Second in real time. Can you actually analyze? Millions of data points to be able to take you know decisions Which you can serve then to your customers in real time. So the velocity of Change and decision-making is a new thing that's perhaps coming in the last two three years And which is why I think you know, we're sitting here Doing this discussion right so real time doing that at scale Doing that consistently across all of the channels. These are some of the new elements that have come into data-driven marketing Sintosh, you know, you come from in performance agents. You deal with clients in so many different verticals What according to you are some of the key milestones you see that keep popping up when it comes to what defines data-driven marketing today So basically if you look at it if you were a business which has been in operations for about North of 10 10 15 years Chances are you already have most of the data that you need to do your marketing more efficiently, right? So if the the space that I work in it's mostly towards actually improving your cost per acquisition or Lowering down basically for example in autos it is cost per sale I work with production houses also now who want to know how many tickets have been purchased of the movie spends that I have Done so far, right? So in this in this case, I think the if you look at the milestones. I think people Are not as I think we were discussing before as well Cmo's now have to have a very different had to understand exactly how should I effectively spend that money? Whatever monies have gotten of course, there is also the macroeconomics of things changing We see that the auto industry is taking a turn right now. So instead of us focusing on generating more inquiries Why don't we focus on selling more cars or selling more? Selling more two-wheelers essentially, right? So that's kind of the space that I operate in where we look into Have you harnessed enough amount of your own data to begin with because you've been in the business for such a long time Now are you capturing how many people have come to your events or have they? How many footfalls have happened at your events to the date that how many inquiries have come and of those inquiries? How many have converted and what do I do with the rest that's sitting in the in the ambit with me right now? Take all that data set together That's your own first party data that you can actually leverage upon and then try to buy third parties or second parties First get the first party in action as the milestone that they would hit and subsequently try to improve upon making that Data richer and make it more cost effective eventually So that's a great point So first party data has really sort of come to the fore as a powerful force for marketers to deploy it today in their Activities so near is let me throw this one to you first party data What is what role really do you see it playing in in a data-driven marketing strategy? Sure. So data-driven marketing if I try to break it down into easy language. It's nothing but people-based marketing, right? We moved this as an industry from more of an inventory buy to a people buy now, right? That has actually helped in optimizing and increasing your efficiencies In doing so the first very important point to consider for a marketer is to have complete control and use of their first party audience Every marketer sitting in this room or across has invested enough time and money in Capturing their first party audiences through various mediums be it be offline be it be online But the unfortunate situation still exists is in case of offline audiences You'll not have any connectors to them which can identify their digital footprints, right? For example at Zyotab we have our proprietary identity graph Which is powered by telcos and other first party data owners Wherein we have linkages for offline data points and their digital identities, right? So suddenly we can enrich the CRM system and hence a marketer can make a more informed decision What are the habits of this person? What are the kind of transactions he does and not only it will help in better? Targeting of a particular campaign But it'll be able to make more informed decision on what are the kind of specific products that I need to push to That person because of their behaviors So that's the power of first-party data that that the marketer has to harness And I'm going to come back to the point you made about the challenges with that multi-touch Attribution the party especially in your context as well. We'll talk about that in a minute But I'm gonna quickly touch base with you on in the banking sector, you know, that's a sector you're familiar with What really have you seen as the evolution? And this is one of the most advanced adopters of technology for data-driven marketing this industry, right? So I think one of the challenges we've seen in You know, what you would call as traditional sectors, right? They've been around for hundreds of years financial institutions banks and stock-broken companies and and Stuff like that is that the whole model has been disrupted Through fintech. So one of the things that data-driven marketing Really now needs to also cover is not only acquiring new customers But to actually how to retain the existing customers and the customers who become Dominant, how do you make them active once again? So that is where I think data-driven marketing again plays a very important role where you look at historical data with first-party data That is already available usage patterns that you have from customers and their changing needs Mapping to it and then again reactivating them To to grow the value of existing customers and bringing back into the folds Customers who probably have been loyal customers but have way in the way because of the lack of focus That typical companies have in the case of banks. It is also about personalized offers So all of us here in the room are victims of The aggressive marketing that most banks do in terms of selling credit cards or loans But think about a situation where your bank really knows you and therefore is only offering services and Different products which actually are relevant to you and that is totally possible because you're already Customer of this there's another aspect where a lot of us keep talking about as digital marketers Keep talking about conversion rates. So especially very Large companies and in the case of banks. There are millions of visitors to the website and only a fraction of those actually Right now to become customers, but there's also a huge amount of data that actually goes unused So that is anonymous data. So data Analytics now comes in to play there a poor actually spoke about it earlier. It is Platforms called customer data platforms, which can actually analyze the data and make sense of it Thanks, and we are going to talk a bit more in detail about these tools and technologies that actually enable data driven marketing Like CDPs and DMPs, but before that the Pali, you know specifically within your context You're in the B2B space right and it would be really interesting to hear a what as the CMO you think are the key building blocks of your Data-driven strategy and also what are some of the very real challenges that you face in executing them I'm going to talk about what we do at IBM a minute later But I wanted to react to some of the things that we heard over here I think the push it pull that you have for a marketing team and therefore the CMO is Really, you know a lot of the stuff that these guys spoke about that's possible and you know get deep into it Which is the fact that you have your performance dollars that you exactly need to drive You know for delivering better and better ROI every year But there is also the you know the art of decision making where data has started playing a better role And I want to just quote two examples there, right? One is a successful one and another one is a failure according to me Okay, so I think the same banks or the credit card companies they have They have billions of transaction points and they know exactly what I like and where I spend my money But I'm I'm still to see in the market personalized offers of discount coupons to the restaurants that I exactly like to visit Right, so the technology is possible That technology is possible by technology it is possible But I think the limitation that you have in an organization is Orchestrating that and at what cost is it really a high margin product where you really need to do it? I think so that's the limitation that you kind of face, you know That's that was on the limitation side second example I want to give is from a broadcast channel a very successful broadcast channel not the first-party data example at all You know in the good old days How would you decide that you know really what what new serial to launch, right? But on account of the fact that they were doing social listening one of the general entertainment channels they launched a they launched a The first series on the basis of you know a lot of creative decision-making much like how Sanjay Leela Bansali Decides on what subject he wants to make a movie next But I think on account of the social listening They realize that some of the secondary characters were extremely popular, you know along with the main characters So they launched the second TV series on account of just the sheer social listening, you know with the secondary characters that they had You know so this I think this is the constraint that you know CMOs have to live with, you know Sometimes the cost may not justify You know the investment may not justify the results and the output that you will get You know it's beautiful to actually chase the holy grail But you know where do where do you really want to do this? And I think the third challenge that you face which all of us currently are grappling with is that the technology in the stacks And a poor made a very good point about the new technology stacks And you know I mean I wanted to ask a question, but there was no time which is How does an org structure inside a CMO organization need to change to be able to orchestrate the ideal example that he was Giving and you know that's really a transformation that an organization needs to go through and there the challenges that you face Is that all of us are at a different level of doing for example And I'm very passionate talking about the multi-touch attribution thing right where for example at IBM I think we're very confident about doing it when you're doing a digital campaign and you're looking at you know A fully digital response, but the moment, you know And we we do invest a lot of money in the offline activities that we do the moment It comes to you know orchestrating that along with digital then knowing exactly which model works And we don't we don't even really even have billions of data points in that sense You know for us to be able to do modeling right any B2B Any B2B market here who's sitting over here. I'm gonna have only thousands of data points You know really to be able to do that and you won't be able to do modeling. So these are some of the real aspects So, you know on one side we have all the brilliant examples, you know That were given here, but I think the orchestration of all of this and the fourth one I think What percentage of your marketing budget goes into brand building and what percentage of your marketing budget goes into your performance driven dollars It's still a percentage that gets decided not by any You know, it's not really data-driven. So I think those are both both that you know We kind of run over a period of time So I think it's a transition that all of us are facing and new things are coming into the play, you know Pretty much every year. Yeah, that's right. It is a journey There's no end in sight it's going to keep evolving for sure and I think just to recap what you said, you know People restructuring and re-skilling the team to deal with these changes Then a building in some of this unstructured data the chatter the commentary that you hear All over as well as connecting the offline world to the online world, which is a very I think real challenge There are a lot of marketers face we can do all that we want to do with CDPs in the online space But you know, this there's still a lot of business happening in the shops in retail at the malls or whatever So that's a huge piece of the puzzle then the Pali like you mentioned the orchestration piece Be it orchestrating all the technologies that you have or then orchestrating all the campaigns that you're running Across so many diverse channels, you know, you have mobile campaigns. You have email campaigns. You have SMS campaigns I mean, which one of us hasn't, you know had that re-targeting ad pop-up Exactly one day after you have actually bought that product, right? So the marketers dollars are getting wasted clearly There is no orchestration and the data is not talking to each other and then finally I think of the piece about balancing the marketing dollars for brand-building awareness some of those more traditional aspects of marketing with What we need to do to prove the ROI of digital marketing today, which is so You know constantly a cloud on top of the marketer today. How do you prove the ROI? Yeah, I just want to add there, you know, so IBM does The global studies every two years where we interview CEOs CMOs CFOs CHROs and the last one that was done in 2018 You know, this is across. I think Sameer was sitting here sometime back. I think 2000 CMOs across the world. Sameer. Yeah so 2000 CMOs across the world and 76% of them said and I'm reading from here They said that their ability to make marketing decisions informed by data-driven insights will become the most important Factor for their professional success, you know, so it's also about developing a muscle where you make, you know, data-driven decisions So, you know about from everything else that we're discussing. Yeah, and I think there's some very specific skills and Structural challenges we need to talk about towards the end of this session But for the moment, let me bring it back to okay enabling that data So the whole process of building this data-driven strategy right from collecting the data managing it making sense of it organizing it Analyzing it and then activating it actually to run campaign So there's this whole stream of workflow that has to happen What are some of the key tools and technologies that a marketer here needs to know about? To actually make that happen to go from unified data to activation that whole Maybe we'll start. Yeah, so I think an important Thing that we was like when we had a discussion in preparation for this panel one of the things that we were talking of is the fact that We typically and this was actually spoken about in a poor session is we choose a tool We we think we have a particular problem. We choose a tool and then we Want the tool we hope that the tool actually Fixes the issue, but that typically does not happen. That's where performance You know driven marketing agencies come in but more importantly As a marketer who's been around for some time what I always Really recommend is what is the customer journey? So I think that's the first step customer journey mapping what when you talk of a customer journey You're not just talking about acquisition, but holding on to that customer and the car, you know as a customer matures Using your product. How do you make that customer into somebody who's evangelizing your? your product and that will actually dictate what kind of You know stacks that you put together Don't fall for this whole Go for one platform and everything gets taken care of there are tools specifically for each Who are experts in each section? So please go for that and also try to first make sense of what all data sources you have Thoroughly study it and come out with trends. So that is the some of the Steps, I think you should first take before you use getting embark into the journey of choosing platforms Don't force. I mean though. I come from a platform company. Don't fall for the platform guys spiel Make your own informed judgment. So once you have your use cases sorted what I would say While it's customer, but first thing is what are we trying to really what is the problem? We're trying to solve right has have the cross-sells dropped Would you want to increase from one to two two products or 1.2 products for per customer or would you would you rather? so I have another case where We basically if you look at an OEM or an FMCG you have a huge offline distribution channel And you have no insights what's going on there, right? So if you actually have like a thousand dealerships going on with you, what is that dealership really doing? So eventually if you get that data together But why are you doing that because at the end you want to really lower down the time to convert of a person Who's coming to inquire to the point of sale you want to lower that down so take Take a business problem at hand break it down into these sections and eventually the tech will fall suit So if somebody comes and tells me to buy this tech or that I first ask them What is are you really trying to solve for first and then we can figure out what tech falls in place? Chances are you may already have it as well and you may not have reaped the benefit of it yet Try to put that piece together and so that eventually it falls in place to solve the problem that you bought that Take forward to begin with I think you're absolutely correct And a lot of things a lot of that has to actually do with what do you want to do with the data? That is actually sitting in your in a stack at your house at your CDP in your DMPs One very important thing which I have understood talking to market here is talking to CMOs across India is Not only they want to activate this data That's that's a very small part of the entire data enrichment process They want to make sense of this data take it back to product take it back to their sales teams Take it back to their market and see what is working in a particular geography, right? I would like to understand more on my offline data behaviors for people What are the digital behaviors? I'll take it back to my product team and probably will tweak a product to make sure that it isn't synced With what my behaviors of customers are actually saying right so stacks and platforms are Secondary to the actual outcome that you actually want to get out of it. That's that's what I Right, so the data that you collect and that you manage and you analyze has many more application than just Activating for campaigns. Sure. It will help you from product development design all of that But Chitra interestingly, you know while you know a lot of us will put up our hands and say that you know We measure everything and we're talking about the higher order data usage once again I'm just referring back to the study forty four percent of the CMOs have said okay, so it's not a small percentage Yeah, yeah So forty four percent I'm gonna send it to you and whoever else wants it my Twitter handle is at the rate Deepali Nair, okay, so Organizations forty four percent don't sufficiently measure and attribute the effect of campaign on sales or profitability Right, so so so the point is that you know we are also discussing the higher order usage of the data But what is very interesting is that some some forty four percent of the organizations are not doing the base level work That's almost half of it. Yeah Exactly and that and for for organizations that are not say e-commerce organizations this becomes a crucial gap Isn't that we're connecting back all that you do in the space to your actual sales in the offline world But again if we were to structure those building blocks of the data-driven marketing strategy for the purpose of marketing Okay, again narrowing it down to that then what would be? The essential to assuming they've got their use cases, right? Okay, they've done their homework They know what problems they're trying to solve What are the key tools and technologies that they need to have a marketer needs to have? First thing is for example, I mean it starts from bottoms up So you need to have your data layer in place first it is as simple as having your CRM which you probably do already From there on Plugging so basically if you walk up the path you need to first have and a tool that gives you those insights Right. So again many a times you may already have bought if you use if you have a website in place You may have Google analytics already in place or you may have Adobe analytics in place You got to plug the data back in otherwise is just doing your website journeys and that's it So push the CRM data back. It's a very simple conduit any of your engineers can do it in no time It's publicly available. You don't even need me. No, do you need niraj or anyone of us here? The third step after that once you have your reporting in place Then you need to orchestrate it you need to understand which campaign should I run at what point in time? What creatives should I run for that campaign at what point in time? This is defined by your target audience whom are you trying to go after that's why I'm saying you need a Use case in place. Are you want to do you want to lower down your cost for acquisition? Do you want to increase your cross-per-sell? Cross-sell or do you want to actually lower down your time to convert then finally comes the whole entire layer? I haven't honestly seen a stack of a single vendor have all of these in one shot many a times The other point to the Pali as well I think first thing that CMOs or even the CEOs of your organization should do is first Not let people work in silos because they buy their own techs And then eventually what do you end up doing is like a big marshmallow of God knows what not you got in there And you don't even know what you're paying. That's the worst part Your finance guy won't tell you because he's actually cutting the bills directly to the vendors So first thing is to to get to know what they are and subsequent to that take up the stack And then eventually push it to production in the form of an activation which goes through media can actually instrument your call centers Can instrument your websites any of these will fall in place through that take completely? I think what is emerging? From from our discussion is that this tech tech stack decision and You know Santosh was rightly pointing out and when I was doing this journey orchestration at Intel I've found that most of the Elements that I wanted to put together Were already bought by another group within the organization And it was a global license and it was very much available to me But as he rightly said people were not talking to each other. So I think our major part is You will have to be this kind of visionary, right? So as as a marketer, you no longer this esoteric branding guy who you know breeds and evangelizes the brand but You also need to really start thinking through What are the pieces and really understand it? Otherwise every vendor will kind of pull you in different directions I just want to say this so you know at IBM therefore we call this something called a cognitive enterprise Which has got not just the marketeers, which is about the enterprise Be conscious of how what a poor spoke about earlier, which is you know stacks which are based on customer experience Which is about data-driven decision-making and you know the non-siloed approach and that's another report guys that I can send All of you if you write to me on Twitter, it's a very interesting report But you know the practical challenges of what happens is that it's not an ideal place and an organization is born today and Has a fair estimate today of what it's going to look like two years later And therefore I go and buy the stack today. That doesn't happen You know I once was part of LNT insurance We were a startup and well well funded startup at that and insurance was a mature industry You know where we did this we went and you know what the stack that we really liked But you don't get that opportunity when I joined Mahindra holidays or when I joined HSBC, you know earlier on there are there is the Legacy systems that you inherit and there is only so much capital investment that you're allowed to do Subsequent to that you know, so that's a that's a practical reality also that you know We must consider and going back to the point you made I think the biggest tool You know Chitra's asking tool and technology tool and technology You know and I'm saying, you know people people people with the right attitude and skills, you know training them You know so the change management that aspect of it is I think the most most critical part of it Great. Yeah, so I think silos Integrating the tools The legacy Solutions that you're left with that don't let the data talk to each other, but then of course the people themselves, you know often I think sometimes I feel like the system is set up to incentivize Individual silos to perform in their area, right and that's how the metrics are set up as well And if you want true data-driven marketing, you have to integrate not just the tools and technologies But the people the teams and all of that and speaking of teams I think we have just about two and a half minutes left. So, you know, let's wrap up So the CEO today this was something we were talking about in the room before we came here The CEO today is the chief customer experience officer. She is the chief revenue officer Chief digital marketing officer marketing technology officer all of these things, right? So a what if you want to be a data driven marketer if I had a dollar for every time I heard that so if you want to be a data driven marketer Which all of you sitting here will be called upon to be What are some of the key skills they need to be thinking of picking up as well as how should they be approaching the new marketing Organization, you know the structure I think one of the things that I started doing about Seven or eight years back and that's what has made me successful is what I call the sales first approach So I stopped thinking about You know, what are the eyeballs I need to get what kind of visibility for the brand I need to get But I actually started first mapping Every region that I was Ealing what are the kind of sales targets? What product mix needs to be achieved and then I started working backwards Creating the the marketing pool that would actually impact create that kind of a sales impact And I was you know sharing with Chitra earlier in my current role I own the sales number as much as the head of sales in my organization and I am more of a demand generation Director Than just a typical marketing director So if you look at and that's why I also drive alliances I drive partnerships and everything else which typically a CMO would not be expected to Drive is expected. No, they are expected. I think that that's changing So I know that in a lot of companies where I've worked at the KPIs are very linked to sales, you know, you own You know doing that, but I also identify with what he's saying I remember years ago joining an organization where marketing was only measured on cost per lead and You know after six months when we figured, you know, how to improve the conversion rates The one thing that we did was you know change the KPIs of every market here in the system to cost per sale Right. I lost four people in my Sixth Member team of the digital marketing, right? I also lost my agency because I said now your KPIs are also going to be cost per sale I didn't like it. What are the poly because one experience that I actually like to share is talking with so many people in your capacity The the thought of learning, you know, what data is what are the new trends in marketing? What can data do for my organization has actually on the rise is is Taken by both hands open, right? And I think that's gonna shape up the next big thing in this industry as you're living it right now Yes, however, I think that's a challenge, but learnability is a challenge and you know how much how much do you invest in it? So Chitra, I know you told us we have two and a half minutes. So Yeah, yeah, it's over to you Do you need to engage with you know when you're setting helping a client set up a data-driven marketing agency yourself, you know So actually the previous question, I'm sorry, but I think All you guys have to start thinking like an entrepreneur. So if you're running your own business unit How would you make it successful? Right? So that's something if that's a skill that you don't have I think you should start looking into yourself to check Can I run this unit by myself and if I am how much of a junior you are doesn't matter Or how much of a senior you are doesn't matter if you cannot if you can't think like that chances are You will hit a plateau somewhere or the other right and if you do if you do start thinking of that that like that Usually a problem solver. So you should be good at quantum analytics and data and science will come naturally and So sorry, what is your question again? What are some of the key roles that the titles that I actually go across the entire stack for me to convince? So basically it comes as a it's best Interpreted if I just understand their problem, don't tell me what you would What tech to you would what stack to use what team to hire tell me what your problem is it usually comes from top-down But sometimes I have seen super entrepreneurial guys whom I meet in conferences That's that I just tell me that this is a small problem that they would like to solve for and they are actually an analyst inside an Organization pretty big enough and from there and we can start the whole process Thing is it has to go across the stack by my most of my time takes in unifying an approach so that all the All the you various business unit heads have to be brought brought into alignment to go in that direction and that It's time-taking but I think it's worth the effort because you'd have done a radical transformation in the organization So when you're thinking about data-driven marketing for building out customer experience It's more than just the marketers and I'm going to wrap up here for it is the functional heads It's the technology people it is of course also the marketing people who are then the glue to bring it all together Thank you so much all of you Enjoy it moderating Any questions that the audience might have from this panel? Thank you so much