 Hey everyone, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of the AWS startup showcase season two, episode three. This is about MarTech, the Merching Cloud Scale Customer Experience. This is our ongoing series that you know and love, hopefully that feature a great number of AWS ecosystem partners. I'm your host, Lisa Martin, got a great brand guest here from branch Michelle Lerner joins me, the senior director of business development. She's going to be talking about branch but also about one of your favorite brands, yep, the copy place and how they supercharged loyalty and app adoption with branch Michelle. It's great to have you on the program. Yeah, great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Tell us a little bit about branch, what you guys do for the modern mobile marketer. Yeah, absolutely. So you can think about branch as a mobile linking platform. So what that means is we offer seamless deep linking experience and insightful campaign measurement across every single marketing channel and platform on mobile. We exist so that we can break down walled gardens to help our customers engage with their customers in the most optimal way across any device and from every marketing channel. Our products are specifically designed to help create an amazing user experience but also provide full picture holistic downstream measurement across any paid owned and earned channels so that brands can actually see what's working. So what that really means is that we make it really easy to scale our links across every single marketing channel which then route the users to the right place at any device through even past install so that they can get to the context that they expect for a seamless experience. We then provide that cross-channel analytics back to the brand so that they can see what's working and they can make better business decisions. So kind of summing it up, our industry leading mobile linking actually powers those deep links also supports that measurement so that brands can build sophisticated experience that actually delight their users but also improve their metrics and conversion rates. That, those two things that you said are key. We expect to be delighted with whatever experience we're having and we also want to make sure and obviously the brands want to make sure that they're doing that but also that from an attribution perspective from a campaign conversion perspective that they can really understand the right tactics and the right strategic elements that are driving those conversions. That's been a challenge for marketers for a long time. Speaking of challenges, we've all been living through significant challenges. I'm going to say it nicely, right? The last two years, every industry completely affected by the pandemic. We're going to talk about Pete's coffee and I want to understand some of the challenges that you saw in the quick service restaurant or QSR industry at large. Talk to me about those industry challenges and then we'll dig into the Pete story. Yeah, absolutely. So obviously the pandemic changed so much in our lives, whether it's going to work or commuting or taking our kids to school or even getting our morning coffee. So when you think about Pete specifically within the QSR industry, they knew that they needed to innovate in order to make sure that they could provide their customers with their daily cups of coffee in a really safe and effective way. So they got really quickly on their feet. They engaged us at Branch to help launch their order ahead messaging across their online and offline channels. They really wanted to maintain their commitment to an excellent customer experience, but in a way that obviously would be safe and effective. That was one of the things that I missed the very most in the very beginning of the pandemic was going to my local Pete's. I missed that experience. Absolutely. Talk to me about, you mentioned the online and offline. I'm very familiar with the online. There's an app user, mobile app user. But what were some of the challenges that they were looking to Branch to resolve on the offline experience as people were queuing outside or were they trying to get folks to convert to using the mobile app that maybe weren't users already? What was that online and offline experience? What were some of the challenges they were looking to resolve? Yeah, absolutely. The modern marketer is really both, like you said, online and offline. There is a heavy focus within the app and Pete's kind of wanted to bridge those two by pushing users into the app to provide a better experience there. So what they ended up doing was they used our deep leaking capabilities to seamlessly route their customers to their loyalty program and their rewards catalog and other menu offerings within the app so that they could actually get things done in real time. But also in real time was the ability to then measure across those different campaigns so that they had visibility, Pete's into kind of the way that they could optimize that campaign performance but also still get that great experience to their users and they actually saw higher loyalty adoption, order values and attributed purchases when they were able to kind of see in real time where these users were converting. But another thing that we're actually seeing across the board and Pete's did a great job of this was leveraging branch-powered QR codes where we are seeing like the rebirth of the QR code. They're back, they're here to stay. They actually used that across multiple channels so they used it with their in-store signage. You might have even seen it on their to-go cups, coffee cards that were handed out by Barista's. They were all encouraging customers to go order ahead using the Pete's coffee app. But that was kind of just the beginning for them. The creation of unique links for those QR codes actually spread for them to create branch links across everything from emails to ads on Instagram. So before long, most of Pete's retail marketings were actually branch links just because of the ease of creation and reliability, but more so again, going back to that customer experience, it really provided that good experience for the customers to make sure that they were getting within the mobile app so that they can take action and order their coffee. Another way that branch kind of bridges the different platforms is actually between mobile web and app. Pete used branch journeys and that's a product of ours. It's a way that they can convert their mobile web users into app users. So they use deferred deep links with the ultimate goal of then converting those users into high value app users. So the Pete's team actually tested different creative and interstitials across the mobile site, which would then place those users into the key pages like either the homepage or the store locator or the menu pages within the app. So that also helped them kind of build up not just their mobile app order online, but also their delivery business and they could hire new trials of seasonal beverages. They could pair them with a free delivery offering. So they knew that they were able to leverage that at scale across multiple initiatives. I love those kinds of stories where it's kind of like a land and expand where there was obviously a global massive problem. They saw that, recognize our customers are still gonna be as demanding, maybe if not more. Absolutely. I want my coffee. I want it now. You mentioned real time. I think one of the things we learned during the pandemic is access to real time data isn't nice to have anymore. We expect it as consumers, even in our business lives, but the ability to be able to measure course correct, but then see, wow, this is driving average order value up. We're getting more folks using our mobile app, maybe using delivery. Let's expand the usage of branch across what we're doing in marketing can really help transform our marketing organization and a business at the brand level. Absolutely. And it also helps convict that brand loyalty. Because like you said, we as consumers expect that they are, that brands are gonna kind of follow us where we are in our life cycle as consumers. And with you don't do that, then you're kind of be left in the dust, unfortunately. I think one of the memories that will always stick with me, Michelle, during the last couple of years is that first cup of pizza that I didn't have to make at home myself, just being able to finally get in the courage to go back and use the app, go in there, but oh man, that was probably the best taste of coffee I've probably will ever have. You mentioned some of the products you mentioned, journeys, and that allows them to do what? Like A.B. testing, looking at different CTAs, being able to kind of course correct and adjust campaigns in real time. Yeah, absolutely. So journeys, what it does is it's basically a banner or a full page interstitial that is populated on the mobile web. So if you go to, let's say, pizza.com, you could get served as a user, either different creative or depending on where you are location-wise. You could be in the store, maybe there's a promotion. So it's triggered by all these different targeting capabilities. And so what that does is it takes me as a user, I can click that and go into the app where like we said before, we have higher order value, higher lifetime value of a customer and like all my credit card information is saved. It just makes it so much more seamless for me to convert as a user within the app. And obviously it keeps like that as well because then their conversion rates are actually higher. There's also kind of fun ways to play around with it. So if I am already a loyal customer and I have the app, you probably would target different creative for me than you would for someone who doesn't have the app. So you could say, hey, download our app, get $5 off of your next mobile order, things like that you could play around with and you can see really does help increase that loyalty. But actually they were able to take, they kind of are experimenting with the geo-targeted journeys and different key markets with different peeps. And actually it was helping ultimately get their reinstalls growing. So for customers who maybe have the app before but needed to reinstall it because now they're such a bigger focus, they saw it both on the acquisition and the re-engagement side as well. So Branch has been pretty transformative not in my estimation to piece marketing but to piece as a business, I'm hearing customer loyalty, revenue obviously impacted, brand loyalty, brand reputation. These are things that really kind of boil up to the top of the organization. So we're not just talking about benefits to the marketing and the sales folks. This is the overall massive business outcomes that you guys are enabling organizations like Pete to generate. Yeah, definitely. And that's kind of what we tell our customers when they come to Branch. We want them to think about what their overall business objectives are versus if you think just campaign by campaign, okay, that's fine, but ultimately like what are we trying to achieve? How can we help the bottom line? And then how can we also kind of help integrate with other mobile marketing technology or the modern tech stack that they're using? How do we integrate into that and actually provide not just a seamless experience for their end user, but with their marketing works, their product works, whoever's kind of touching the business as well. Have you noticed along those lines in the last couple of years as things like customer delight, seamless experience, the ability to translate if I start on my iPad and I go to my laptop and then I finish a transaction on my phone, have you noticed your customer conversations increasing up to the C-suite level? Is this much more of a broad organizational objective around we've got to make sure that we have a really strong digital user experience? Yeah, absolutely. Like we were talking about before, it really does help like affect the bottom line when you're providing a great experience with branch, like being a mobile linking platform, our links just work. We outperform kind of everybody else in the space and it might sound like really simple. Okay, a link is working getting me from point A to point B but doing it the right way and being consistent. Actually it will increase performance over time of all these campaigns. So it's just an addition to providing that experience or seeing those key business results every single time. Talk about activation for a minute because I've been in marketing for a long time in the tech industry and that's always one of the challenges is we want to know what lever did the customer pull that converted them from opportunity to lead to what not. Talk about the ability for a branch from an attribution perspective to really tell those marketers and the organization exactly tactically down to the tactical level, this is what's working and this is what's not working even if it's a color combination for example, that attribution is really that science is critical. Yeah, absolutely. Because we are able to cover the entire marketing lifecycle of that they're trying to reach their customers. We have, we cover off on email, we have mobile web to app, we have organic, we have search, we have no matter what you can look at that purview under a bridge lens. So we're just providing not just like the accurate attribution down to the post install what happens after that but also a more holistic view of everything that's happening on mobile. So then you can stitch all that together and really look at which ones are actually performing. So you can see like exactly which campaigns attributed directly to what amount of spend or which campaigns helped us understand the true lifetime long-term value of customers, let's say in this case who ordered delivery or pickup. So to the kind of customer persona, it really helped. And also with, they actually were able to see Pete's because of our attribution, they saw actually a four and a half time increase in attributed purchases at the peak of the pandemic. And even since then they're still saying a three times increase in monthly attributed purchases. So because they actually have the view across everything that they're doing, we're able to provide that insight. That insight is so critical these days. We, like we mentioned earlier talking about real-time data, but we expect the experiences to be real-time and I expect that when I go back on the app they're gonna know what I ordered last time. Maybe I want that again, maybe I want to be able to change that, but I want them to know enough about me in a non-creepy way. Yeah. Give me that seamless experience, right? Absolutely. I'm expecting, cause of course that drives me to come back over and over again and spend way too much money there, which I'm guilty of, guilty as charged. It's totally fine. Right? Thank you. Thank you so much for validating that. I appreciate that. Well, talk to me about, as we kind of wrap things up here, the brick and mortar is it was such a challenge for globally, especially the mom and pops to be able to convert quickly and figure out how do we reach a digital audience? How do we get our customers to be loyal? What's some of the advice that you have for the brick and mortars or those quick service restaurants like Pete's who've been navigating this the last couple of years? Now here we are in this interesting semi-post pandemic I would like to believe world. Yeah. We're getting there slowly, but surely. But yeah, it's really important for them to adapt as we kind of move into this like semi-post pandemic world. We're kind of in the middle of like a hybrid online, offline, are we in the, and in stores, are we ordering online? These brand and customer relationships are super complex. I think the mobile app is just one part of that. Customers really shouldn't have any problems getting from the content, their item they're looking for, no matter if they're in the store, if they're in the app, if they're on the desktop, if they're checking their email, if they're perusing TikTok, the best customer relationships really are on the channel in nature. So what I would say like the need for providing this stellar customer experience isn't going to go away. It's actually really key, whether it's driving users from their mobile properties into the app, providing a great in-store experience like the QR codes, customers are expecting a lot more than they did before the pandemic. So they're not really seeing this, these brand touch points as like little silos, they're seeing like one brand. So it really should feel like one brand, you should speak to the customers as if it's one brand across every single device channel and platform and really unify that experience for them. Absolutely, that's going to be, I think, for so many different brands, whether it's a brick and mortar or QSR, that's going to be one of the defining competitive advantages. If they can give their end users a single brand experience across channels, and you mentioned TikTok and these channels are only going to grow, as are I think our expectations. I don't think anybody's going to go back to wanting less than they did two years ago, right? Absolutely, absolutely. Well, this has been great, Michelle. Thank you so much for joining me, talking about branch, what you guys are doing, mobile linking platform, mobile measurement platform, the deep links, what you were able to do with Pete's Coffee, a beloved brand for since the 60s and so many others. We appreciate your insights, your time and the story that you shared. Thank you so much, Lisa. Hope you have a great rest of your day. You as well. From Michelle, owner, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of the AWS Showcase. Keep it right here, more great content coming up from theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage.