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Insider Secrets for Digitial Marketing Success
This is Performance Delivered insider secrets for digital marketing success with Stefan Horst.
Steffen:The topic for today's episode is from click to forever, mastering customer engagement. Here to speak with me is Janet Jeswold, the Global VP of Marketing at BlueShift, an SF company that helps brands automate and personalize engagements across every marketing channel. Janet has spent twenty plus years in senior marketing roles at private and public companies such as eBay, PayPal, and IBM Telief. She's an advisor with Peak Spend Capital and has been recognized as a top 101 B2B marketing influencer by CMO Huddle's, a finite top 30 SaaS marketer, and one of the top 14 marketers to watch by Drift. Janet, welcome to the show.
Janet:Thank you. Excited to be here.
Steffen:Now before we get started talking about how to increase customer engagement, how to keep customers longer, therefore create, you know, more lifetime value from individual customer, let's talk about a little bit more about yourself. Tell our listeners a little bit about you. How did you get started in your career? What led you to BlueShift?
Janet:Sure. Yeah. Actually, marketing wasn't my initial role. You know, out of grad school, I went into management consulting, did that for about ten years and realized I needed a real job. And that's really when I went into marketing.
Janet:It's been more than twenty years since, but I went into marketing when a lot more market solutions were developed such that you could measure what was working and what wasn't working. So you could, you know, you could do the make money and make it pretty, you know, the both aspects of marketing. I've always done b to b SaaS. I'm based in Silicon Valley. Love the innovation.
Janet:Love working with, you know, startups as well as, you know, larger companies, including some of the companies you had mentioned, but really love b to b SaaS. That's my passion. And I joined BlueShift because they provide a martech solution for brand marketers. I don't have nearly the same challenges that brand marketers do where consumers are across multiple channels and change their mind from day to day. Marketing to business is a little bit more steady than marketing to consumers.
Janet:Still love what BlueShift provides, which is a customer engagement platform. So we're very much about not just helping marketers acquire new customers, but also to engage them and retain them. Really, the whole life cycle approach.
Steffen:Yeah. And as we talked about just before we came on, that's really an area where there's a lot of room for improvement for a lot of companies. Yes. Everyone talks about let's get more people in, net new people, but a limited amount of companies really focus on how can we keep them longer? How can we basically make more or create more revenue from people that already work with us?
Steffen:And that's obviously the easiest way to grow your bottom line.
Janet:Yep. Agree. Now
Steffen:why are customer engagement and retention considered the new strategy for business growth, and how do they complement each other to contribute to a company growth?
Janet:Yeah. So, you know, the b to b SaaS landscape is competitive, right, highly competitive. And there are a lot of economic uncertainty going on everywhere. And so if you think about it, acquiring new customers is just one piece of the puzzle. Right?
Janet:The real game changer lies in keeping those customers engaged and ensuring that they stick around. Right? Engaged customers are more likely to see the value in your product leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty. So when you've been able to engage customers and retain them, they're more likely to renew their subscriptions or purchase more. Right?
Steffen:Yeah.
Janet:They're also more likely to become advocates for your brand, which is driving organic growth through referrals, for example. So in essence, focusing on engagement and retention turns your customers into a growth engine. Right? Complementing your acquisition efforts, which are important, but not the entire puzzle. Right?
Janet:Yeah. So by complementing your acquisition efforts, it leads to sustainable success. And ultimately, that's what we want. Yeah. So but to say, you know that old adage of it's cheaper to keep a customer than acquire a new one?
Janet:It still holds true today. I know it's corny, but it holds true. Right? Yep. And also, what I've seen is as companies scale and they start to grow and scale, you know, kind of going beyond, you know, maybe that 5,000,000 mark.
Janet:Mhmm. You generally start to see a higher proportion of revenue coming from existing customers versus acquiring new customers.
Steffen:Yeah.
Janet:So this is the rule of thumb. Right? But this is what I've seen in my twenty plus years. You know, you have fewer customers when you're smaller.
Steffen:Yep.
Janet:So you'll have maybe 25% on cross sell, upsell and 75% from new customers. But that starts to shift to, like, sixty, forty as the company starts to scale and grow. You have a larger base of customers. Your product is more mature, and people start to focus on that instead of just being on that hamster wheel of constantly bringing in new leads. Like, that's not fun for anyone.
Steffen:Yeah, of course. Why do you think that is? Why do companies with lower budget tend to more chase the new clients? And then once you hit a certain point, they kind of look at how can we grow from who is already there instead of just keeping the wheel spinning fast?
Janet:Yeah. Good question. You know, I think it's a couple of things. One is I would say most CEOs seem to be more interested in new customers. Right?
Janet:So you kinda subliminally get the message of, okay. I need to get on that hamster wheel and keep getting new customers. But it's not a coincidence to say that, you know, as a smaller company, maybe your product roadmap isn't as comprehensive or you don't have as many opportunities to cross sell and upsell. Right? Maybe you just have one plan.
Janet:So, you know, that could also be the case. I do notice that, you know, as companies are larger and they have to figure out, okay, how do we scale this thing? It can't be just keep bringing in new customers because they take a while to convert. And more established companies have more products. They have more plans and stuff like that.
Janet:So you could so that part becomes easier. But in all cases, if the economy is bad, if you have very demanding customers, that's the easiest way to do that is educate and engage your customers such that you earn the right Yeah. To sell them some new things or sell them a larger plan or whatever it is that you provide.
Steffen:Yeah. That makes sense. Now from a CMO's perspective, what are the key strategies for engaging customers and improving retention in a SaaS business? And how do these strategies contribute to overall growth?
Janet:Yeah. So as a CMO in the b to b SaaS space, I found that personalized communication is critical. Right? And this applies to B2C as well. Right?
Janet:So tailoring the message and the content to address the specific needs and pain points of those different customer segments, it makes them feel valued and understood. Right? If you give a generic message so let's take an example. So if I received a message for, you know, men's shaving cream, yes, I'm in the market for shaving cream, but I don't necessarily want, you know, whatever brand that men use. I want them to know that beyond shaving cream that, you know, I'm a woman and I've got these specific needs.
Janet:And so if they personalize it and if they offer me women shaving creams, you know, with benefits like, I don't know, makes my skin softer, whatever that is, I feel like, oh, they get me. They understand me. They're not wasting my time just selling me some, you know, stuff that doesn't make sense. I tend to pay more attention. Yeah.
Janet:Because that company doesn't get it right. Guess what? I just have to click over to another company. Sure. And very quickly, I'll find, you know, I'll find what I want.
Steffen:Yep.
Janet:So that's one thing which is personalizing that communication. The other thing is offering educational content. Right? Yeah. So in my world, that would be things like webinars, how to guides, case studies.
Janet:Right? Helping me to understand how I can use that product that I purchased in other ways to solve other use cases. Right? Yeah. So that content is important.
Janet:And, you know, SEO has its place. Right? I know a lot of marketers that will optimize content for SEO. So it certainly has a place, but what I don't want or what I advise is don't over index on that. You know, marry those two worlds together.
Janet:Right? You can create truly educational content and helpful content that your prospects and customers want. That's also SEO optimized. But if you create content just for SEO purposes, you miss the mark. It's not on track.
Janet:And believe me, customers notice when you've sent us something that's not relevant. So it can also have a backlash if you don't do it right.
Steffen:Yeah. And there might be also, again, different target audiences require content, right? So if you are going after net new, I know we don't necessarily talk about net new, but in this scenario, new, your content that you wanna optimize for SEO might be slightly different because they have different pain points that might lead them to you. While you have your existing customers and you might have, I don't know, done research or through data collection, you identify specifically what is their pain point. They're already with your platform.
Steffen:Now there might be something they might not understand certain points or certain elements of your platform really well. Therefore, they might not use your platform to its full extent. So that content is more geared towards who's already with you versus who can we bring on. Now, it might also be helpful for net new, but maybe at a later step.
Janet:Yeah. You know, certainly, when I say personalization, nirvana is one to one, but not everybody will get there right away. And that's what, you know, a customer engagement platform does. Right? Using AI, you can have one to one engagement, but let's take baby steps.
Janet:What you pointed out, which is do it by segments. Yeah. Understand their needs, their pain points, and how your product can help address that, and then at least personalize it by those segments. Eventually, you can get to a point where what I sent to you is different than what I sent to the next customer. Right?
Janet:It can be on an individual basis.
Steffen:Yeah. What do you do to get to know your customers? I mean, when you're a company that has fewer clients and they might be larger and that's why you have a lot of revenue, that's one thing. You might be more on a one to one level as you said, right? Because you can really set something up, call them up and have an interview almost with them.
Steffen:But if you have a company that has hundreds, thousands of clients, it's really difficult to talk to every individual client that you have. How do you go about collecting information that you then can use to tailor information to build a stronger relationship?
Janet:Yeah. There are so many ways to do that. And I can give you some examples. You know, there are customer advisory boards, right, which is essentially you recruit, not your loudest, customers that aren't shy about sharing feedback. Good or bad, you want both.
Janet:So the idea is to recruit, you know, a dozen of those folks, you know, some partners and key service providers, put them into a session, ask for feedback. Right? So that's one, which is a customer advisory board. Yeah. You can go on to review sites.
Janet:Trustpilot, TrustRadius, g two. I mean, there's there are dozens. Look at the feedback that your customers have provided about your product. You'll get nuggets of gold about your product, your customer service, and just your company in general. Mine that information.
Janet:You know, one of the things that Blue Chip did is launch a survey of, you know, customers to find out what they're thinking of. Those are just a couple examples. I'll get into a lot more, but there are countless number of ways to get feedback. If you don't get it, you risk missing the mark. You may think you know them, but you want that direct feedback.
Janet:And there are literally dozens of ways to get that. Yeah. But it should be regular. Right? And I guess the biggest thing is make sure you're getting feedback on a regular basis.
Janet:Don't stop because you think you've got all this stuff and, oh, you could wait another year before you do that because people's views and needs change constantly. Right? And so you wanna kinda build that into your marketing, which is on a regular basis, find different ways to get that feedback from customers.
Steffen:Yeah. That makes sense. Beyond increasing engagement, what are some strategies you've seen to turn customers into loyal customers and ideally advocate? The one, talked about using customers kind of maybe even in your marketing. I think a few episodes back, we had someone that talked about exactly that.
Steffen:Actually, webinars where customers literally lead the webinar with net new clients. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Janet:Yeah. So you're definitely like, when you reach out to customers and you're doing a case study or a video testimonial, you learn a lot about the customer and how they feel and what they like and what they don't. You can also invite customers to beta programs. Right? So before you launch something, invite a select set of customers, get their feedback.
Janet:They like being part of that beta because they know they have a stronger influence on that road map. They get to say what they like, what they don't, what they think about the pricing, how it's rolled out, you know, what's useful, what's not. And so that's another way to do that. It give them some, you know, exclusive access to new features or beta programs. You could also assign executives.
Janet:So this is something that we do, you know, at my current company as well. Each executive will have a set of customers. They reach out to and talk to about anything, but on a regular basis. And so the idea there is you form that relationship such that it's trusted, such that they feel comfortable telling you the good, bad, and ugly. Right?
Janet:And by having that face to face interactions when something goes wrong, it's a lot easier because there's trust built up Yeah. To, you know, then resolve that issue, if you will. Right? Yeah. Another tactic we've used is creating it's a customer advocacy program.
Janet:And one of the things that we had done is we created a rewards program. So for customers that, you know, wanted to do a case study or maybe do a reference or talk to an analyst or, you know, submit a quote, you know, that we put on the website or on a slide deck or whatever, we would give them points. And they could cash those points in for whatever rewards they wanted. Mhmm. So it made them feel valued that, hey.
Janet:I'm helping you guys out, you know, the companies and giving them, you know, a small token of their appreciation, if you will. Yeah. But it helps them to kinda also understand because they know they're gonna be asked anyway. Yeah. But that this is a nice way for them to be advocates and to be recognized for it.
Steffen:Yeah. You just talked about kind of this building almost rapport with clients, right, where you have constant conversations so you almost know what's going on before things kind of being blown up, for example, why don't you build trust? Are there any other early warnings or warning signs of a potential customer churn that you could or that you identify to help proactively avoid those kind of things and to measure that, you know, the leave part is much lower than for normal companies potentially?
Janet:Yeah. So monitoring customer behavior, I think, is key to spotting, you know, the early signs of churn. Right? You don't wanna wait until something's up for renewal before you find out, oh my god, they don't like us or they were unhappy. Yeah.
Janet:So, you know, one of the ways we do it is inside of our product, we monitor product usage. Yeah. So if we see a drop in login frequency or certain parts of the product they were capabilities they were using and they aren't using it as much or the people that were using it actively have dropped off, you know, those are all for us early warning signs that, you know, maybe there's a red flag. We should look at it. Right?
Janet:So there are lots of digital adoption tools. Some of the ones I've used are like Pendo, Userlane, UserPilot. There's a bunch. There's a bunch. But those things help you to engage with customers, but also to see product usage and product adoption.
Janet:Right? Definitely negative feedback, you know, maybe through your support tickets or unresolved support tickets. Those are also indicators. Right? So what we do is we establish a customer health scoring system, taking all those different pieces of information and coming up, you know, and putting a score to it and kinda then bubbling it up to, like, you know, an a, b, c, or d, whatever that is.
Janet:Right? Yeah. And so we aggregate those various engagement support, product usage, reviews, whether they're an advocate or not, you know, the amount of how many years they've been with us, whether they bought some new things or not. And, you know, in addition to having executives that, you know, have built relationships with these customers and Yeah. Mind you, you can't do that for all customers.
Janet:We do that for strategic customers. But don't forget that the account manager or the customer success manager, whoever is assigned to that account. Yeah. They also have regular check-in such that they can see if somebody's disengaged. They can, you know, uncover underlying issues and stuff like that.
Janet:So that's also useful. And then other ways to engage them is to offer training or resources that are tailored to their needs to reengage them. So the point is stay vigilant, stay responsive, and then you can mitigate churn effectively by doing those things.
Steffen:How can you elevate customers? You just talked about strategic customers. Now very few customers will come on, they immediately become strategic. Right? They might get there because they grow their engagement with you and do two other things.
Steffen:How can you get customers to become more important to you? What I mean by that is also from a bottom line perspective, basically. Right? That's what it all boils down to in the end.
Janet:Yeah. You know, that's where you really need to understand why they purchased your product in the place. Right? You wanna make them the heroes. You're the Sherpa.
Janet:They are the heroes. Right? You're behind them. You're supporting and cheering and carrying their load for them. But, ultimately, you have to envision what are they trying to accomplish?
Janet:Why did they purchase you to begin with? And if you can elevate them, whether it's their personal brand or make them more successful in their role such that maybe they get the promotion or they're recognized for something, that goes a long way. That else require you to understand them on a one to one basis. So, you know, that can be developed over time. You know, the obvious ways to identify strategic customers are, you know, if they're spending more with you or they're in a larger or they're spending more with you or they've been with you longer.
Janet:But there are also strategic accounts where they could be small, but maybe it's a vertical or a segment that is important to the customer because they wanna expand to these new verticals or the new market segments. So, you know, whatever that criteria is varies from company to company, but make sure that they represent where you are and where you're going to help identify those. And they can change. It's not like just because you selected them today, it doesn't mean they have to be strategic forever. You can switch and take on some new ones and drop some other ones, you know, as you see fit.
Steffen:Yeah. Now can you discuss the role of AI in reducing customer churn, particularly in managing long tail customers? We just talked about more strategic, so the ones that are more visible, but as it relates to long tail customers and outline steps involved in implementing such strategies.
Janet:Yeah. So, you know, as I mentioned earlier, you can't form those relationships. Not everybody's a strategic customer. Right? So there's gonna be a whole bunch of that.
Janet:We'll just call them long tail for lack of a better word. So AI, you know, just about every software company is incorporating AI or has it on their roadmap. Certainly, AI, especially, you know, generated AI, that seems to be the big part of AI that's getting the most attention. But in general, AI will make repetitive and time consuming tasks easier. Right?
Janet:So that's the good news is that things that took a long time and weren't so fun, you know, like summarizing research or coming up with a new subject line. Right? That stuff AI can do really well. Right? Yeah.
Janet:But now AI has been evolving to assistance, you know, where you can automate little tasks. Right? Like, generate creative that's specific for this segment. Right? Take a core set of creative images and then modify it such that instead of male, it's female, or instead of a Gen X, it's Gen Z, or, you know, changes of color.
Janet:So creatives are where, you know, assistants can come in and do that or generating subject lines or creating, you know, a quartered verse different size posts and things like that. The next evolution of AI is agentic AI, and that's where I think it holds the most promise for marketers and really for everybody. Right? Those agents are essentially kind of like little autopilots. They can run commands by themselves and optimize it.
Janet:Yeah. So an example is AB testing. Right? That is so painful, and it's so time consuming for marketers because you have to come up with different tests. You have to test it.
Janet:You have to make sure that it's statistically valid. Then you update your campaign on that. Yeah. And so imagine if AgenTik AI and I'm not saying imagine because that's something that, you know, my company, for example, has rolled out. But imagine if it can do that for you, which is it'll figure out, oh, these need to be tested, and I'm gonna test it on this group or that group.
Janet:I'm gonna come up with the creative for the different tests, not just for the subject line, but for the body. And I'm gonna run those across all campaigns until I find the ones that are the best. And I'm gonna keep doing that for every new campaign, every set of communication, whether that's through SMS or email or, you know, on the website or push notification and do all that. Yeah. Now imagine how much more effective your marketing's become without you really lifting a finger.
Janet:So in terms of, you know, predicting and reducing churn, especially amongst long tail customers who might not get, you know, that same amount of attention, AI can be especially powerful. Right? Because it analyzes vast amounts of data. It can identify those patterns and predict which customers are at risk of leaving such that it prioritizes for you here. So once you should, you know, spend more one to one time.
Janet:Mhmm.
Steffen:Makes sense.
Janet:If that makes sense.
Steffen:Yeah. Absolutely. So your company Blue Shift recently researched almost, I think you said 300 b to c marketers regarding the impact of data, AI, and effective customer engagement.
Janet:Yes.
Steffen:What are some of the key findings from that surveys?
Janet:Yeah. So we commissioned an independent research company that surveyed almost 300 US based brand marketers, and that was in January. These marketers come from a variety of industries and size. We did exclude small startups, but everybody else was included. The study is gonna be published in early March, so the information I'm about to share is hot off the press.
Janet:But some interesting findings from the study is, you know, more than 90% of marketing leaders said that personalized cross channel experiences are key to improving customer retention. Now that's pretty intuitive. Was like, well, yeah, duh. You can personalize it. Of course, you know, that's gonna help with retention.
Janet:But what was interesting is that eighty 9% of marketing leaders saw improved cross selling and upselling results with those personalized recommendations. Right? And mind you, you know, doing cross channel marketing and being consistent, that's not easy. Right? The study found that certain industries, they struggle the most because they had very complicated cross channel data.
Janet:Companies like health care industries, insurance, finance, credit unions, and I get why. They're regulated. Mhmm. Right? So it's a little harder to then reach them through, you know, social media, email, mobile, website, you know, and so Yeah.
Janet:But, you know, what was interesting is that, you know, assuming you've solved those regulations and there are ways to do it, it's not like it's impossible. Right? You just have to get permission. You have to word things a certain way. But what the study found is that 87% of brands achieved higher retention using AI driven customer journey engagement.
Janet:So, you know, the proof is there that it can help and it does work. One of our customers, car parks, for example, they used a lot of personalized recommendations. When they reached out, it was much more the experience of personalized across channels. They had a 400% increase in engagement.
Steffen:Mhmm.
Janet:And that's notable. It's like four x. More people were engaging with them when they were able to personalize that interaction as opposed to giving, you know, a segment specific or a general message. Now imagine how much of that engagement can translate into real revenue. Yeah.
Janet:And happy customers. Yeah. It's real. It works.
Steffen:Yeah. Absolutely. Now before we come to the end, one last question for you. Yeah. How can companies leverage customer feedback to enhance engagement and retention, and what are some practical methods for collecting and acting on this feedback?
Janet:Yeah. I mentioned a few of them, but there are still many more tactics and strategies. So bottom line is customer feedback, it's a gold mine for improving engagement retention. Right? And so other tactics that I haven't mentioned would be, you know, survey them on a regular basis.
Janet:You know, get feedback inside of the app, right, by using those digital engagement tools. Monitor social media presence. Lots of consumers will, you know, complain or share an experience that maybe was negative or positive. Make sure your customer success team is also looking at that. Uh-huh.
Janet:And I might have mentioned this, but I've used feedback from review sites to understand, you know, those patterns and trends in customer sentiment about a product, about support. Community. That's another way. Right? So host user forums or host community groups.
Janet:And nowadays, Slack makes it a lot easier. You don't necessarily have to have a separate customer feedback platform, but that provides a lot of sentiments into customers' and partners' sentiment. Right? So the key is don't just collect this data. Act on it.
Janet:Analyze the data. Look at the common pain points. Look to see what they're telling you about features that you could add. Right? And then prioritize that.
Janet:Like, actually use that to prioritize your road map. Right? Don't just look at it. And then communicate back with them. Right?
Janet:Make sure that they hear that their feedback matters and that you have acted on it. You may not have implemented it, but acknowledge it. Mhmm. And that helps them to form that deeper connection with your brand, which results into revenue and retention.
Steffen:Yeah. What I hear to kind of close this out is like, there's a lot of data already there. You don't have to necessarily set something up internally with people. You could just go to so many different data sources outside of your organization where you can get a lot of information that will help you improve your engagement and keep clients longer. Once you have that exhausted, then you can add all the other parts.
Steffen:Or if you have a bigger team, you can do everything at once. I mean that's the kind of from company to company different. Janet, thank you so much for joining me on the Performance Delivery podcast and sharing your knowledge on how to increase customer engagement and how to maintain clients or keep clients longer, and therefore have a bigger impact on the bottom line. Now if people want to get in touch with you and learn more about you, about BlueShift, how can they get in touch?
Janet:Yeah. You know, the best way is through LinkedIn. So just, you know, search my name. There's only one of me. So, yeah, just reach out and I'm happy to share, you know, my experience, provide advice.
Janet:Right? Like, it's all good. And that is how the community works is we help each other.
Steffen:Perfect. And we will leave Janet's LinkedIn URL in the show notes. Everyone for listening. If you liked the performance of our podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast application. If you want to find out more about Symphonic Digital, you can visit us at symphonicdigital.com or follow us on Xsymphonic HQ.
Steffen:Thanks again and see you next time.
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