What is the one thing that all companies strive to get today? Insight. In today’s commercial landscape, insights are the most valuable commodity. After all, consumer is king. The smallest insight, when used effectively can propel a brand to unmeasurable heights. But, they aren’t easy to obtain. Catching hold of relevant insights requires deep research, connection and data organisation and configuration which today, has become a mammoth task.
Thus, jobs in data science, data analytics, AI and ML, and retention marketing are seeing newfound demand. This is leading to more people showing interest to learn the relevant skills required to provide adequate supply for the increasing demand.
WebEngage is a retention operating system that helps consumer brands engage and retain their customers towards higher lifetime value and marketing ROI. They collect and deliver insights to brands, help them with targeting, and aggregation and organisation data.
Storyboard18 caught up with Avlesh Singh, co-founder and CEO of WebEngage to understand the importance of retention marketing, the effectiveness of insights and the evolution of MarTech solutions.
Edited excerpts.
WebEngage has been focusing more on data science and AI. You recently did some hires too in this regard. How do you plan to use AI and data science to serve your clients?
In a recent development, WebEngage has announced the acqui-hiring of a team of exceptional data scientists from Propellor.ai to strengthen our data practice and capabilities. This strategic move aligns with our evolution from a product-centric company to a holistic, 360° solution provider, committed to offering a hands-on approach to both existing and potential customers.
To support this shift, WebEngage has introduced the ‘Skin-in-the-Game Retention Consulting Practice’. Our goal is to help customers maximize the value extracted from their Martech stack, transforming them into power users of Martech.
Currently, marketers are utilizing only about ~ 20 percent of their Martech capabilities, leading to significant opportunity costs. Our new consulting practice aims to change this dynamic. We believe data and AI are crucial to this transformation, as they provide smarter, more incisive customer insights that form the backbone of our consulting services.
WebEngage has access to a vast amount of data across various demographics and sectors. With the integration of AI, we can process this data at exponentially faster rates, offering insights into specific customer cohorts and their behavior across different industries. These insights, both broad-based and nuanced, will make our advisory interventions highly impactful.
Who is WebEngage’s target customer and how do you service them?
WebEngage is built on the premise that customer retention is an essential metric for sustained growth and profitability. It is the prerogative of all businesses, and not just ‘digital natives’ or consumer businesses as well, particularly seeing as customer engagement has evolved tremendously in recent years, necessitating that all brands engage to retain. Our target customer is essentially all businesses, agnostic of size and industry. Today we stand at 800+ customers cutting across a myriad of sectors including D2C, E-commerce, BFSI & FinTech, Healthcare & Pharma, Gaming, etc.
WebEngage offers a range of tools and solutions that help brands achieve better customer insights and act upon them by way of designing meaningful and personalised campaigns, that are delivered across multiple channels (omnichannel), in a timely manner – all of it designed to enhance engagement, retention, and subsequently growth!
The user engagement space is still relatively new. How do you navigate through this?
In today’s world, with a tremendous amount of information, easily accessible at our fingertips, across every conceivable digital destination (platform), consumer behaviour and expectations are evolving at a rapid pace. Adding to this mix, the proliferation of choices in any given sector and category, has added yet another layer to the complex landscape of customer engagement, giving rise to multiple customer personas, each demanding a uniquely tailored experience.
In order to address this, we are continuously evolving our product, strengthening our data and customer segmentation capabilities, thereby ensuring that we have a robust mechanism for brands to be able to maximise their opportunities for meaningful customer engagement.
Additionally, since the space is new, talent supply too will be minimal at the moment. How do you view this and what measures are you taking to increase reach and growth?
User engagement is rapidly gaining traction among brands due to its direct impact on customer retention, which leads to a loyal customer base and sustainable growth. Recognizing the critical role of retention, industries are increasingly focusing on this metric, as reflected in Neilsen’s 2024 Annual Marketing Report, which noted a 72 percent of global marketers are expecting bigger budgets this year, an 8 percent increase from 2023.
This correlation is also backed by a recent study that we at WebEngage conducted titled The State of Careers in Retention Marketing, a comprehensive study on the evolving landscape of careers in retention marketing, offering insights into the burgeoning field of customer retention and its impact on career trajectories in the field. The study examined which teams the respondents belonged to. While a majority – 52.6 percent – belonged to the marketing team, what was interesting is that there is an uptick in their incorporation into the growth team (31.6 percent) as well.
The talent landscape in this regard is complex, considering that customer retention is yet to be instituted as a practice unto itself within an organisation’s structure. However, there are a myriad of skills that are considered necessary for success in retention marketing. These include Data Analytics, Creativity, Project Management, and Strategy, to name a few. Our study showed that Data Analytics won by a long shot – 39.6 percent – when the respondents were asked what they thought was the most important skill.
But success in retention marketing cannot be gotten in silos, i.e., by batting only for the marketing or only for the product team, and by excelling only in Data Analytics. Effective retention marketing requires a blend of these skills and a shift from an acquisition-first to a retention-first mindset. To support this shift, WebEngage fosters community-driven initiatives like Retention DNA, a collaborative space for growth-minded individuals. We also host the Retention 30 Under 30 awards to recognize top performers in retention marketing.
Additionally, we publish “The State of Retention Marketing,” a quarterly magazine, and a podcast of the same name, featuring insights and stories from leading retention practitioners.
Do you see MarTech solutions evolving? There is a shift from being cost centres to revenue drivers. How do you view this?
The Martech ecosystem in India is growing tremendously driven by a myriad of factors including (a) increased adoption of technology to drive the right message to the right people, at scale (b) evolving customer expectations from brands owing to increased competition and a proliferation of touchpoints, and (c) data overload and the need for technology to process and make sense of it.
The martech stack is no doubt evolving and adapting not only to the changing nature of problems that martech is being leveraged to solve but also to the evolving technologies itself. Generative AI is a prime example of this. Today, there isn’t an aspect of marketing technologies or SaaS offerings, where Generative AI hasn’t been incorporated. Furthermore, we exist in times where third party cookies are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, diminishing the utility of third-party cookie based platforms with it. First party data will soon step up to centre-stage, becoming the only viable way to convert and retain consumers meaningfully. Given its complexity, technology will play a major role in navigating it, having a direct impact on how the stack will evolve. Moreover, this transition will cause a shift away from relying on advertisement networks and publishers to retarget customers, having a tangible impact on operational costs.
With regard to martech, there is a palpable shift in the lens through which it is being viewed, wherein martech is being seen as a revenue driver as opposed to a cost centre. This mirrors the shifting mindsets from ‘acquisition first’ to ‘retention first’, and is reflected in both digital native and legacy brands; B2C and B2B brands, driving more intentional customer engagement strategies across the board. The core principle behind it is that customer engagement begets customer retention, and vice versa.
For example, take a niche brand like Pidilite, an adhesive manufacturer. It would appear that customer engagement wouldn’t top their list of priorities. However, the brand has seen merit in engaging its immediate cohort of customers, the masons who are the key players in influencing purchase decisions among end users. Through various channels, the brand engages and educates them on a regular basis, to ensure a healthy mindshare is garnered. Similarly, a brand like Berger Paints would be more invested in driving engagement among contractors, for it is ultimately that consumer cohort that drives the decisions pertaining to the paint that gets used in our homes.
How do you go about collecting insights for your consumers? Is it all online data focused?
Since its inception, WebEngage has only worked with brands that utilise 0 or 1st-party data owing to greater fidelity (fewer gaps) and reliability. Moreover, we are firm believers in the fact that gathering data should be a transparent and ethical process, and have seen first-hand the profound positive impact on brands that collect their customer data with consent. Brands that reach customers surreptitiously through 3rd party data are often viewed as being intrusive and unwelcome, leading to erosion of trust and a negative reputation.
First-party data is typically collected directly from brands’ websites and other channels, rather than through third-party data aggregators. WebEngage has predefined user attributes for every business it works with, which it must track for better user research. The attributes include first name, last name, date of birth, and more. Once our stack gets integrated into the brand’s engines, WebEngage automatically gleans these attributes for every user who interacts with the brand’s website or app.
WebEngage recently acqui-hired a group of data scientists. Why has the need for data scientists increased now and how do you plan to leverage their skills?
Data today is at the heart of everything we do – the new currency or modern-day oil. In this domain, where data is made available to us in abundance, the challenges that come with are equally complex. Besides volumes, data is susceptible to duplication, rendering it inefficient. This demands that skilled data scientists be enlisted to make sense of it and transform massive data sets into intelligible and actionable insights.
The power of data to stimulate meaningful creativity across brand campaigns, or product innovation, or even the simplest of communications, cannot be overstated. With quality data, dissectible across a number of demographic criteria, brands are able to glean intimate knowledge about their customers, what drives them and their pain points. At the hands of a marketer, this is sheer gold, throwing the possibilities for hyper-personalised customer engagement wide open. With data-backed insights and hands-on counsel, brands are empowered to maximise the potential of their martech stack, which holds the potential to increase a brand’s revenues by up to 20 percent.
With our recent association with Propellor.ai, we aim to institutionalise and strengthen our data practice in a significant way. Access to vast amounts of data cutting across a myriad of industries enables us to look at the ‘big picture’ and ‘zoom in’ all at once. This will enable us to not only continuously innovate but also be able to give sound counsel when required.
The retention report revealed that the salary of the head of retention and user engagement at a large-scale gaming or entertainment brand can go as high as 1 Cr. Why are these two industries specifically high on the salary trend scale?
In our recent report on The State of Careers in Retention Marketing, we unearthed some broad salary trends to understand the potential career trajectory and growth prospects for retention practitioners. The study reveals a remuneration framework that is linked with the individual’s educational background and work experience, weighted against demonstrable data-backed and experimentation-led success.
One of the key findings was that the head of retention at a 500 Cr. + brand stands to make as high as 50-70 LPA. Head of retention & user engagement at a large-scale gaming or entertainment brand can go as high as 1 Cr. The reason for this trend specifically pertaining to these industries is that there is a high-volume of customers and as high a propensity for user churn. Furthermore, with these platforms – gaming or entertainment – deeper engagement often involves monetary transactions (in app purchases, etc), the stakes on effective engagement and retention strategies are far greater.
In our experience, the gaming and entertainment industries offer high salaries for retention and user engagement heads due to their focus on maintaining high user engagement and repeat usage. These sectors are digital and product-driven, allowing strategies to impact millions of users instantly. Professionals in these roles need a blend of market insights, consumer behavior understanding, and data analytics, making them essential at a CXO level. The large user base and high average revenue per user (ARPU) further justify the premium salaries in these industries.
Data analytics today seems to be one of the top skills crucial for success in retention marketing careers. Why do you think that’s the case today? Why are brands focusing so much on data analysis?
Acquiring a customer is a one-time activity, and customer retention and engagement, by definition, is something brands must do every day! To retain customers brands must provide elevated and hyper-personalised customer experiences that go beyond loyalty programs and mere query resolution. Today, the customer expectation of a truly delightful experience has become commonplace – a given – and brands must be able to preemptively capitalise on micro-moments to hit the perfect chord with customers.
For hyper-personalised and omnichannel customer engagement to be successful, data plays a crucial role, in its ability to convey crucial and actionable insights and information pertaining to consumer behaviour. Having a robust data practice backed by strong analysts within an organisation today is indispensable.
Furthermore, we are also entering into a paradigm shift where 1st and 0 party data is becoming a necessary mandate, with the negation of 3rd party data. While capable of delivering excellent customer engagement results and garnering lasting loyal customers for brands, the world of 0 or 1st-party data is complex, but ultimately solvable. This is where a strong data analytics skill set, coupled with technology becomes paramount. At WebEngage, we have always worked with brands that leverage 0 and 1st-party data to derive customer insights and drive engagement.
The report also revealed that retention marketers are some of the most early investments brands make in the team. Why has retention marketing become a non-negotiable for brands today? There is also a tangible shift among brands from digital marketing to retention marketing. What is the reason for such a shift?
The conversation around retention marketing is steadily gaining traction across various industries. Brands increasingly recognize the need to engage meaningfully with their customers to become their preferred choice.
Our “State of Careers in Retention Marketing Report” indicates a strong presence of respondents from the D2C and E-commerce sectors (35.8 percent), with significant representation from Ed-tech, BFSI, and Media & Entertainment at 17.9 percent, 10.5 percent, and 8.4 percent, respectively. This distribution reflects the growing emphasis on retention across diverse sectors.
Why is this shift happening? It’s clear that retained customers are crucial for a business’s growth and profitability, often more so than newly acquired ones. While customer acquisition is often seen as a sign of growth, it can be a vanity metric. The cost of acquiring a new customer (CAC) is high, and the first purchase often only covers this cost. True profitability begins when a customer makes repeat purchases.