AiThority Interview with Sara Richter, CMO at SAP Emarsys

Hi, Sara. Welcome to the Interview Series at AiThority.com. Please tell us a bit about your role at SAP Emarsys.

For those who don’t know us, SAP Emarsys is a customer engagement platform that works with the world’s biggest brands. Our tech is designed to empower marketers, helping them to build, launch, and scale cross-channel campaigns that deliver better business outcomes.

As CMO, it’s my job to coordinate and direct global marketing initiatives that reflect this goal, helping our customers get the most out of the platform. For me, it’s really about practicing what we preach — delivering great marketing experiences that drive business results.

What was your team’s contribution to the recent recognition as a leading personalization engine in the industry?

Being a Leader in the Magic Quadrant as well as a leader in the IDC marketscape is a testament to what the platform and the team are capable of – especially at a time when consumer expectations have grown so dramatically.

Shoppers expect brands to recognize them across every device. And, as consumers become more demanding, a personalized experience, across all channels, is essential.

That means we’ve got to understand what marketers need from our platform, and continuously innovate our offering to be the best it can be.

On the topic of personalization; artificial intelligence is the most efficient and sensible way to rapidly analyze all the customer data your team has at its disposal, and then apply that data in real-time to both individual messages.

Please tell us how your Marketing Technology budget has evolved in the post-pandemic era?

How are you planning to consolidate your martech investments around AI and automation capabilities? 

Emarsys was acquired by SAP during the first year of the pandemic. This has been an exciting opportunity to make our offering part of the broader SAP CX solution and has put us in the best possible position to continue investing in our platform.

Much of that investment focuses on AI because it’s one of the only tools that can pre-empt your customer’s next move. With the right data, context, and intelligence, retailers can successfully predict when a customer is about to make a purchase – or when they’re about to leave a brand. Marketers can make quick, smart decisions based on that data.

Our latest platform update in July, for example, launched ‘Mobile Wallet’ as a new channel allowing brands to develop digital loyalty programs and reach customers directly via their phone’s wallet apps. Usable online and in-store, brands can close the loop between the online and offline experience while customers are reminded of that brand every time they open their phone to make a payment.

A digital wallet might not sound directly linked to AI, but the wallet acts as another channel for data collection, helping marketers to better understand their audience. It’s also another channel for customer engagement, where offers and personalization are both heavily AI-driven.

Maximizing the capabilities of AI by designing your platform around its potential for data collection and automation has huge potential.

Could you please let us know how your personalization engine delivers personalization to users? 

In simple terms, personalization puts a strong, trusted relationship between customer and brand at the heart of every interaction. Offers, messages, and more should all be based on what we know a customer does or doesn’t respond positively to.

Any brand serious about personalization needs a platform that can capture a customer’s behavior and preferences. This data then needs to be centralized and made available to marketers from a point where they apply it to their day-to-day campaigns.

That’s one of the ways in which the Emarsys platform excels. It can ingest data on everything, from online sales to website behaviors to contact request forms and build a genuinely 360-degree picture of customers.

From there, marketers are able to use that data pool to inform campaigns even as they’re being developed. That data can identify and remove problematic messages, respond dynamically to products that a customer has shown an interest in, and so on.

How do AI-assisted omnichannel personalization capabilities empower marketing teams at various stages of the customer journey? 

AI is incredibly useful for moving faster. Emarsys empowers marketing teams by accelerating the speed at which they can operate. We give them room to really focus on the human, creative side of the job – while being better informed than ever.

They need that room because marketing budgets are falling across the board; Gartner has suggested that the average marketing budget has fallen from 9.5% of a company’s revenue in 2022 to just 9.1% in 2023.

But, while money is taken away from them, marketers are still recognized as a crucial revenue driver to any business. Their remit can cover customer experience, digital marketing, CRM, customer retention, brand development… the list goes on.

Beyond speed, empowerment also means helping marketers to be as informed as they’ve ever been. Being able to use customer data to shape campaigns, even once they’re live, is so valuable and could make a difference to a purchase.

All of this accelerates a brand’s journey to a level of personalization that makes a shopper feel recognized, understood, and valued.

Could you please tell us how AI plays an important role in B2C marketing success?

Could you share an example from one of your customers/ users?

Given the level of consumer expectation we’ve spoken about, and how many different hats marketers now have to wear, AI is the only realistic way for B2B marketers to move at pace.

Take Gibson, for example.

The instrument manufacturer uses the Emarsys platform to differentiate between customers, based on their music experience, and on their previous behaviors. People who purchase acoustic guitars, for example, seem more likely to download the Gibson app – which slants how you engage with that customer.

AI can capture all of those data points, and then automate an appropriate response far quicker than any human could.

The more data a platform can analyze, the more appropriate the resulting action can be. So, when using AI to support new channels, momentum is cyclical; each download can give you more customer data, which marketers can then apply to refine their engagement.

Both sides feed the other.

Your tips for all CMOs and Chief Digital Officers who are at an early adoption stage with generative AI for their marketing campaigns?

For any company at an early adoption stage, it’s incredibly important to understand the regulations behind how AI is used and to make sure that the right protections are in place for both business and customer. You need the framework within which AI can be used if you’re going to make the most of it.

Once that’s set, personalization is one of the best points of entry for introducing AI. It’s inherently about using customer data to make their experience better, has a direct impact on that customer, and brings a huge amount of new customer knowledge into the business.

All of that can add up to a huge shift in brand perception if used well.

AI is no magic bullet – but it can simultaneously make your business more efficient, more informed, and more emotive.

Thank you, Sara! That was fun and we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]