Personalized engagement | Nehal Gupta

[JP] (0:00 - 0:34)

I got this hat because AI was marketing to me. I was being very picky about getting a Boston hat. All those clicks.

Eventually, they stopped showing me one or two, and they basically kept feeding me the more I kept clicking, and I never interacted with a human. So that is just one example. So eventually they got it, and this hat was called, like, Black Flame Hat, and I was like, oh, they know I like some black flames, so I was like, let's go.

AI doing its thing.

[Dillon] (0:35 - 0:36)

Black flame for a black flame.

[JP] (0:37 - 0:37)

Exactly.

[Dillon] (0:47 - 0:58)

What's up, lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day.

I got my man Rob with us. Rob, you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:59 - 0:59)

What's up, lifers?

[Dillon] (1:00 - 1:03)

And we have JP with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (1:04 - 1:04)

Good day.

[Dillon] (1:05 - 1:09)

And we have Nehal with us. Nehal, can you say hi, please?

[Nehal] (1:09 - 1:10)

Hi, everyone. Hey.

[Dillon] (1:11 - 1:17)

Hey. And I'm your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Nehal, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Nehal] (1:18 - 1:47)

Yes, thank you, Dillon. My name is Nehal Gupta. I'm a customer marketing manager.

I've been in B2B SaaS marketing for about seven years now, with a brief one-year stint in project management. I started out right after college. I did my engineering, and then I did my MBA a couple of years ago.

I live on the East Coast. To all the people who are listening, if you're in the DMV or New York tri-state, want to speak about all things marketing over coffee, hit me up.

[Dillon] (1:48 - 2:10)

Wow. That's dangerous. Get ready.

Nehal, you know what we do here. We ask one simple question of every single guest, and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to, it's usually customer success, but I love that you are a customer marketing professional. So let's make it about that.

So tell us what is on your mind.

[Nehal] (2:10 - 5:13)

What is on my mind and what has been on my mind for quite some time now, it's the supposed AI takeover, the AI revolution in customer marketing. Customer marketing is entwined with customer success. So we'll get there.

One of the biggest shifts that I've seen in marketing is how AI is changing customer engagement, how we speak to them, how we reach out to them, get things out of them, or just like executing strategies and campaigns in general. It's changed forever, right? Just a few years ago, marketing was mainly driven by human intuition, manual research, lots of manual research and trial and error strategies.

So what started out as a supportive automated tool is now becoming like the go all end all of marketing and customer success by extension. It's helping with personalization, error tracking, decision-making, engagement, and it's making everything faster. Like everything is light speed.

So like I mentioned, I started out right after college and things were very different then when it comes to marketing, lots of manual research, references, communities, advocacy, marketing, nothing was automated. And personalization at that time meant, you know, putting your customer's name in or company name in, inputting some details here and there and sending it out. But personalization now has shifted from segments to hyper-individualization.

So every B2B solution will have a target audience or an ICP that you're selling to, or you're marketing the solution to. So primarily it was rule-based before, like I mentioned, just editing things here and there, sending it out. But now you can tweak it to that extent.

Even the customer might be wondering like, how did they know all of these details? Or how are they so good at targeting, right? Predictive analytics and AI and real-time behavioral tracking and all of these crazy buzzwords have come into picture now.

And they collect these data points and patterns and then help you tailor your messaging accordingly. And then that has also made engagement very high-touch, high-impact. There are tools in the market which can analyze nonverbal cues.

If you're speaking to a customer, they can track your eye movement, the change in your tone, your hand movements, your expressions, and then they can give you an insight whether or not that customer is happy. They can be an advocate. If they will churn, renew, it can tell you all of these things based on their nonverbal cues, the things that they're not even saying.

And that, I think, it's crazy, to be honest.

[Dillon] (5:14 - 5:28)

Okay. Let me jump in here for one second. This all sounds fantastic, but you started this off by saying supposed, and I could hear the edge in that word.

So, why is it supposed? It sounds great.

[Nehal] (5:29 - 6:10)

Yeah. I mean, everything sounds great, but I say supposed because there's a debate, there's a whole discourse about how AI is going to take our jobs or AI is going to replace all human workforce. But that's not true.

You cannot have AI without any human intervention. It can work in the background. It can help you.

It can enable you to do all of these amazing things. But if there's no human oversight, if there's no human leading at the front with strategy, creativity, that human emotional intelligence, all of this data falls flat. So, that's where I was going.

What do you think?

[Dillon] (6:11 - 6:13)

I agree. No notes.

[Nehal] (6:14 - 6:14)

Subscribe.

[Dillon] (6:15 - 6:27)

I think the one maybe wrinkle I'd add to that is there are going to be companies that try to do it with very few humans.

[VO] (6:28 - 6:29)

Yeah.

[Dillon] (6:29 - 8:28)

And I think the challenge or those who are going to win and start to take market share are the ones that find out what that balance is. How often does an individual person need to be inserted into the process in order to optimize the experience best, but with the greatest margins for a customer, best experience for a customer while maintaining the best possible margins? I said the magic word margin.

So, Rob, why don't you jump in and you nodded vigorously when I said that. Margin and growth metrics, especially I think about that when I think about customer marketing in particular, which is a nice niche that you bring to the table, Nehal. So, I was thinking about a couple of things.

I was thinking yesterday I was at this like pitch competition, a bunch of startups. And one of them, they're building something sort of like a light version of, do you know Synthesia? Like AI bots that personalize messages for people.

They're sort of building a light version of that where I could record a video of myself and I can say, Hey JP, Hey Dillon, Hey Nehal. I can say that, but the name part is swapped out by AI and it just uses sort of like voice mimicking software to input the right recipient's name. A little creepy, a little creepy, a little impersonal.

There's certainly still the human element, but it's designed to be a lead gen tool. And then when you get to the demo too, I actually, I've been geeking out. There's a meeting recording tool I use called Spikey that I really like.

And they, what was that? Never heard of it. Never heard of it.

If you don't turn them into a sponsor, Rob, you have failed. I don't even recall saying, I have no idea what I've said in the past, just so you know. Well, I got the transcripts baby.

But it's cool because the name from the company derives from the spikes that you see from like emotional and verbal intonations.

[VO] (8:29 - 8:29)

Yeah.

[Dillon] (8:31 - 9:02)

It's some of the most deep analysis of sentiment that I've seen in meeting recording tools, which is really cool. So when I think about customer marketing, I think about customer marketing as an activity, which is like, how do you actually do the activity of marketing to your customers or using your customers for marketing? And I think about the outcomes too, which the outcomes could be leads that could be deliverables like case studies, but across the board, I think you're right to call out that there's a reckoning coming for all of those domains.

-: 11:17

Yeah, absolutely. Like transcript taking tool that you mentioned, there are so many of them in the market. I am almost always double booked.

So I ask whoever's hosting the meeting to record it. I put it into these AI tools. It gives me like the top five takeaways, top three action items.

It's so easy, rather than just going back and forth and saying, hey, can you change the time I'm booked at this time I have a conflict and I agree it makes you so much more productive. It makes everything faster. You can fish out content so easily.

I work with customer case studies and webinars and all of those things on the daily basis. There are tools which will, when plugged into your meeting platforms, it will take transcripts and then based on that conversation that you've had with your customer, it can flesh out a case study. It can flesh out all of these testimonials, these NPS surveys or CSAT surveys that you're doing based on their answers.

They could create these very nice case studies. Obviously you would a human element to see if it is in line with your brand, if the tone is fine, if the storytelling makes sense, if the logo is right. All of those things that creative and design aspects of those things, humans are necessary for it.

But like the case study creation process has now gone from say one month or three months to two days. That's a huge deal. So yeah, I mean, it might not replace the teams that we have now, but it will change how we work.

We can't just go back and forth with these case studies anymore. Writing a draft, going back to the customer, going to the writer. It's just so much faster now.

And the lead gen that you mentioned for webinar, I work on webinars and it's a very common practice to have poll questions in the webinar, right? I was reading about a new tool that when integrated with these webinar platforms, it can create poll questions based on the conversation that's happening live. That's so cool to be able to tailor everything so efficiently on the spot.

[Dillon] (: 11:18

JP rapid fire, close us out.

[JP] (: 11:23

I got this hat because AI was marketing to me. Is that true? Absolutely true.

I was being very picky about getting a Boston hat, all those clicks. Eventually, they stopped showing me one or two Boston hats. And then it was all Boston hats in the ad.

And they basically kept feeding me the more I kept clicking. And I never interacted with the human. So that is just one example of how new era, what's this cat made by?

New era, come sponsor us. You'd be great. New era.

They make some great hats, y'all. Fits perfectly. Yeah.

Fits perfectly. It's a fitted hat.

[Dillon] (: 12:08

You know what I mean? I meant the sponsorship, but yeah.

[JP] (: 12:10

Yeah. Yeah. That too.

So eventually they got it and this hat was called Black Flame Hat. And I was like, oh, they know I like some black flames. So I was like, let's go.

AI doing its thing.

[Dillon] (: 12:25

Black flame for a black flame. Exactly. May all that is our time.

I love this topic. It's fantastic. The nuances is perfect.

I would love for you to come back and tell us more about this in the future and maybe how it's evolving so rapidly. Here's a crazy prediction. You guys ready?

Yep. We are going to evolve so rapidly in this direction that you guys are describing that the new winning approach is going to be the least efficient and most personal method, specifically in I think, Rob, it was you that was talking about outreach, right? And that synthesia light, the new winning model is going to be when somebody actually gives a crap about you and you can meet them in person and shake their hand and talk to them about something.

I think it is the rise, the re-rise of the door to door salesperson.

[JP] (: 13:30

We're back, baby.

[VO] (: 13:33

I want to shake your hand.

[JP] (: 13:37

Put it in there.

[Dillon] (: 13:39

Thank you so much. This has been a pleasure. Come back soon.

But for now, we have to say goodbye.

[Rob] (: 13:49

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