September 15, 2025 • 53 mins
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In this episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, we’re joined by Pradeep Manivannan, Martech Consultant at Academy Sports & Outdoors. Pradeep brings extensive experience from roles at eBay, Salesforce, and Nordstrom, offering a unique perspective on connecting data, building journey-based experiences, and aligning marketing operations across channels.
Pradeep explains how to map customer journeys effectively, leverage segmentation, and implement omnichannel strategies that work in both B2C and B2B environments. He shares lessons learned from consumer-focused marketing and how B2B teams can apply them to drive better engagement and measurable results.
In this episode, you’ll learn
- How to design seamless customer journeys from scratch
- The role of data integration across channels in marketing success
- Segmentation strategies that improve targeting and personalization
- What B2B teams can learn from consumer-focused marketing approaches
This episode is perfect for marketing, RevOps, and growth professionals looking to improve customer experience and operational efficiency. Tune in to hear Pradeep’s actionable insights on building journey-based marketing strategies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Hartmann (00:00):
Hello everyone , welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the MoPros out there.
I'm your host, michael Hartman,flying solo today.
Today, we're going to be doingsomething a little different.
We're going to be exploring howcustomer journey mapping,
segmentation and omni-channelstrategy comes to life, with
lessons pulled from both B2C andB2B worlds.
(00:21):
As you know, we tend to get alot of B to B examples, so I'm
excited to get some B to Cexamples here.
So joining me today is my guest, pradeep Manavanan, martech
consultant at Academy Sports andOutdoors.
Among other things, he's heldroles at eBay, salesforce and
Nordstrom and brings a uniqueperspective that blends deep
(00:41):
technical experience withstrategic marketing operations.
We're going to dive into whatit really takes to build
journey-based experiences fromscratch, how to connect data
across channels and what B2Bteams can learn from
consumer-focused environments.
So, Pradeep, welcome to theshow.
Thanks for joining.
Pradeep Manivannan (00:56):
Thank you, thanks, michael.
Thanks for that introduction.
That's really helpful.
So, yeah, so just to let meintroduce myself, or let me give
some more context here about myexperience and then I'll
directly dive into the actualquestions.
Yeah, sure, so by this time youguys know my name, pradeep
Maniwandan.
So currently I'm a MarTecharchitect, slash consultant at
(01:16):
Academy Sports and Outdoors.
But, as Michael said, like I, Iused to work at Nordstrom, which
is a very luxury retailer herein Seattle Washington, and then
eBay Salesforce, mostlyproviding B2C kind of solutions
for all of our clients.
So during my Salesforce days Iused to be a market tech
(01:37):
solutions architect forMicrosoft and Boeing for the
World here in Seattle Washington, world here at Seattle
Washington.
And then, prior to that, I wasat eBay, where it was like I was
in the B2B business but we wereeven doing some consultations
or consultative service for B2Cas well.
So that was my eBay experience.
But prior to that I was atCisco and doing consulting at
(01:58):
Tata Consultancy Services andthat's how I built my
foundational experience.
And then Cisco is the one whichled me to dive into the smart
tech stuff and all those kind ofstuff.
So currently, post Nordstrom, Ithought let me try to get into
the startup world and dosomething.
And then I got into thehealthcare startup.
(02:19):
I was at Lumanity it's aprivate equity-based startup in
New York.
It's a private equity-basedstartup in New York and we were
trying to work with all thepharmaceutical companies, like
App-V, aweos, and then try tobuild an omni-channel system not
just a one-term solution to runa very scalable customer
journey campaign for all theHCPs, health care professionals
(02:40):
and doctors.
So I have a mix of B2C and B2B,but, as Michael said, at the end
of the day it's just customers.
I'm going to get into thosedetails, but right now it's for
Academy Sports and Autos.
I'm working for a veryinteresting project there where
they are trying to integrate allthe point of sale and digital
to the omni-channel system andthen we are going to run a very
(03:01):
kind of cross-journal journeysacross mobile and email and
several other digital channelsas well.
So that's, I just added it.
So it's interesting so far.
Michael Hartmann (03:13):
Yeah, got it.
Yeah, well, we were talkingbefore we started recording that
, because you thought I mightnot be aware of Academy, but
they're well-known here down inTexas.
It is that time of year whenthey are extremely busy.
You've got football season andhunting season all happening at
one time.
They get people doing both.
Pradeep Manivannan (03:34):
Yes, great Agreed.
They are pretty famous downsouth.
Their headquarters is in Katy,texas.
I usually travel there.
I was there until last week, soI'm going to travel next week
as well.
The leadership is great andthey have close to 310 stores or
something around down south, toCharlotte, pittsburgh,
(03:57):
pennsylvania, new Jersey, aroundthat area, so there is less
penetration in the West Coast,but they are aiming for a huge
growth in the next one or twoyears.
Michael Hartmann (04:07):
They are doing a lot of interesting stuff
there.
So for our listeners who arenot familiar where Katy Texas is
, it's a Houston suburb, houstonyes.
Yeah, so I'm in Dallas but veryfamiliar with them, All right.
Well, you said you've workedwith a lot of those B2B and B2C
kinds of organizations.
Why don't we start with this,Like, when are you?
(04:28):
Like you said, you knowcustomers are customers kind of,
and I tend to generally agree.
But what do you see as some ofthe major similarities and
differences between those twoenvironments, especially when it
comes to how you approachmarketing operations?
Pradeep Manivannan (04:45):
Sure, that's a good question.
So let me answer this one byone.
I think I'm going to talk aboutthe similarities first and then
the differences, and I'm goingto talk about the recent trends
happening in the marketingoperations side.
Similarities, as you said likein the sense, I think one thing
is whether it's B2B or B2C, thecompany is interested in knowing
(05:07):
who the customer is, kyc, knowyour customer, and then they
just want to make sure thecustomer is in safe hands and
then they just want to make surethe whole customer journey is
all plotted and then make sureeach of these touch points
whether it's B2B or whether it'san healthcare side of the
business or normal Microsoftkind of enterprise software kind
of a business Microsoft isinteresting.
(05:28):
It's more B2B and B2C combined.
So they just want to make sureeach of these touch points are
connected and there is amarketing, coherent marketing
messages happening between allthese touch points.
So that's one similarity forsure.
The other similarity is I'mseeing in recent times, at least
(05:50):
for the past three, four years,more and more companies,
especially the leadershipC-suite.
They are trying to invest moreon the marketing technology and
marketing operation side.
But there's always thisconfusion of hey, is it just
creative madman kind of a world,or is it just creative madman
kind of a world?
Or is it just art and sciencecombined kind of the world right
now?
So I think it's smart tech.
As the name says, it's bothtechnology and marketing
(06:12):
combined, so it's more art andscience combined now.
That's one thing, and thenleadership is trying to
understand hey, this is notmundane campaign operations or
something.
There is a strategic elementthere and whether it's B2B or
B2C, I see that as a commonelement and that's something
(06:36):
happening both in the B2B andB2C world as well.
I think that's on thesimilarity side.
On the difference side, b2c oneclear thing as I come from as a,
as a, you know I started as acampaign operations person.
So for b2b, every singlecustomer is precious and they
are like the for an healthcareside of the business.
If you're losing one doctor,you might lose close to at least
(06:57):
500k to 600k revenue, whetherit's a cancer away of
pharmaceuticals, for example,like their list is like 10,000
or 15,000 doctors.
But if you lose one doctor forsome reason, because of the
email fatigue or some sort of athing, you lose the doctor and
then you lose the revenue.
So B2B is very sensitive inthat case.
B2c for example, nordstrom weused to run multiple campaigns,
(07:21):
bogo and all those kinds ofstuff flash sales, merchandising
sales, errand sales and allthose kind of stuff flash sales,
merchandising sales, errandsales and all those kind of
stuff even if a customer optsout, there is there.
There is not that muchsensitivity towards, uh, the b2c
thing.
But b2c is like they want totap into how the real life
customer behaves, gen z's andgen x and all these different
segments at the top level, andthen like exclusively for men,
(07:43):
women's, fashion, watches andall these subcategories involved
as well.
So B2C is even more deeper.
And then they go to the actualtail end and make sure that the
customers are there and then weare trying to bring them to the
digital ecosystem or offlineplatform or brick and mortar or
whatever, and they just want tohave this omni-channel
experience, because that's oneportion as well.
(08:04):
So that's the difference.
And B2B there was always thisbudgeting discussion there.
Banned those days.
Budget.
Michael Hartmann (08:12):
Oh, right, yeah, okay, Like the client or
customer budget.
Correct, correct customerbudget.
Pradeep Manivannan (08:18):
And then let's say, if you're trying to
sell enterprise software orsomething like that, you've got
to talk to VP of sales andthere's the usual nurturing
element.
And then there are the userswho are actually using the
software or product or whatwhatsoever.
And then we need we may need tojust have a one-on-one sales
calls or something like that toget to the platform as well.
(08:38):
That's all in the sales offside.
But marketing's job is to makesure from the top down hey, are
we trying to have a rightmessage at the b2b platform?
The value, prop and everythingis clearly communicated so that
our enterprise software userscan come to our platform and get
a one-stop shop answers for allthese questions.
So that's the difference in theb2b.
(09:00):
But trying these two things,what I'm seeing is there are
more and more marketingoperations, technology person
people are hired in the company,for example, even Academy
Sports.
They're like hey, we are notjust CDP.
They used to call themselves asa CDP team.
Now they're like no, we are aMarTech team.
They're trying to advertisethemselves or trying to
propagate that message so thatwe are not just CDP.
(09:23):
Having a treasured data andtying the stitching, the data ID
resolution, we are doing morethan that.
We are trying to connect tomarketers and trying to promote
this and display the attributes.
We are going to work with theSMS partners, list track and all
these several other partners,the digital partners too and
then making sure that, hey, ourdecentralized team is going to
(09:47):
help you for any sort of martechneeds, whether it's pure
creativity-based landing pageupdates or anything of that sort
, or the actual data reports orany sort of fanatical reports as
well.
So that's, something happeningin the industry for sure.
Michael Hartmann (10:02):
So it's interesting to me.
One of the first points youtalked about essentially is one
that I see is like the scale,right, so the big difference,
one of the biggest differences.
Obviously, like the volume ofstuff, right, and B2B tends to
be relatively small compared toB2C and it's more complicated,
right, the relationships, theconnection points.
(10:23):
There's a somewhat of asimilarity between, like buying,
complicated, right therelationships, the connection
points.
There's somewhat of asimilarity between buying groups
on the B2B side versushouseholding in the B2C side,
right, but in general I thinkB2C is simpler from that
standpoint.
There's a little more of adirect tie to purchases.
I know it's not completelydirect, I mean maybe more so
(10:43):
with e-commerce is.
I know it's not completelydirect, I mean maybe more so
with e-commerce, but I thinkit's interesting that maybe I'm
just sort of hitting on it.
I liked your point about, in theB2B world, losing one potential
prospect.
There's a pretty significantcost or potential revenue loss
that is associated with that.
(11:05):
It's an interesting way ofthinking about it.
It hadn't really occurred to me.
The other one, which is towardthe end, there it feels like and
I think it picked it up becauseyou said that team at Academy
had initially talked aboutthemselves as a CDP team, right,
which is basically atechnology-first mindset, which
means like, are they?
I would assume then that iswhere they kind of come from,
(11:26):
where they like embedded in itmore so, which would make sense
with the volumes of data thatcome with B2C stuff.
I am sure, like it's a heavytechnology, uh, storage, right,
moving data, around, processingit, right, it's.
It's much more significantthere.
Pradeep Manivannan (11:44):
Yeah, so let me put it this way.
So I think that's a very greatquestion.
So an academy?
So MarTech is still under thetechnology umbrella.
So Nordstrom had this debate.
Before I joined Nordstrom,martech was under the marketing
umbrella and then they came toknow that, hey, this is not just
(12:07):
running campaigns and creatingHTMLs and anything of that sort.
We are trying to talk to ourmarketing operations team plus
the actual data science team andcentralized content
merchandising to several otherteams, to our marketing
operations team plus the actualdata science team and
centralized creative sorrycontent merchandising to several
other teams.
And then we were trying to, uh,like I think at dot storm there
are like close to 125 to 150attributes from data science at
(12:30):
a very deeper level to know thecustomer so that we can go to
the salesforce or any ecosystemto send a campaign.
So they slowly move the marttech to the technology umbrella.
The similar thing is happeningin the academy sports to your
question.
It's on the technology side,but they don't want to restrict
themselves to just CDP assets.
They just want to make surethat, hey, we are more than CDP.
(12:52):
We are trying to do the digitalonboarding at the same time
trying to integrate to theactual real-time prescreening
and all these kind of stuff withour third-party vendors and all
those kind of stuff too.
So just for an example here soAcademy Sports, let's say, this
is like Amazoncom, so if you'regoing and trying to buy
something online or offline,they just want to make sure
(13:13):
their customers are coming tothe platform.
They're getting someAcademy-specific credit cards
and there is a pre-approval,pre-screening checks and all
these things are happening.
Sure, okay, there are morecustomers coming to the platform
and there is a loyalty base.
They are trying to grow up.
So what I'm seeing there is uh,the technology is there, but
there is.
There is this constant umcombination of both.
(13:39):
Hey, marketing is trying to tapinto this technology side.
Plus, they are like hey, wewill do more than that.
We are trying to do proof ofconcept on several other
platforms, not just email orpush SMS or several other
platforms as well.
So what I'm seeing is it's acombination of both uh,
technology, plus there are a lotof innovative element happening
(14:01):
there, and that's the reason itis like it's no longer on the
marketing side.
They are trying to.
Hey, we are trying to, we aregoing to go into this one mail
champ or mobile link and allthese things.
So now we have become aone-stop shop there.
So that's the culture whereit's very open-minded and trying
to do this innovative stuffthere.
Michael Hartmann (14:17):
Yeah, I mean I don't know that.
I mean I probably have atendency to lean towards wanting
more control over it, tied tothe marketing right and the
experimentation and all that atthe same time.
I think it almost doesn'tmatter if you've got the right
structure.
It's kind of like the decisionabout where, where do BDRs roll
up into right, do they roll upto a marketing function or a
sales function?
(14:38):
And it kind of depends on wherethe best person is to manage
that team.
Who has the best experience andbest chance of making them
successful.
I think the technology formarketing kind of probably fits
in the same thing.
Right, if you've got a strongIT team.
And I mean just knowing what Iknow and it's a little bit old
about the technology that isrequired for the volumes of data
(15:01):
that are out there withconsumer stuff, right, it's just
it's huge Right, and justmanaging that is is a heavy
technology one, as opposed toyou know what you do for B2B
standpoint, which has a lot ofdata but not even close.
B2b standpoint, which has a lotof data but not even close.
So I want to get into a littlebit more.
(15:22):
I mean you've sort of touchedon this and I think we talked
about it in the context ofNordstrom when you were there
when we first talked.
But you've done work whereyou've done customer journey
mapping and then segmentationkind of related to that.
Maybe two parts right parts,right one.
Maybe you could do it in thecontext of the nordstrom one.
But, like, what are some of thethings that, um, you know, why
(15:45):
do you think that's importantfor marketers and maybe
marketing ops teams to befocused on and what do they like
?
What are some of the thingsthat maybe cause them to not do
it?
Well, I mean, I I suspect a lotof people say they want to do
custom journey mapping and theydo something that is maybe not
as useful as it could be.
(16:05):
I think the same thing happenswith personas, because there's
so many different meanings ofwhat that is.
I agree, yeah.
Pradeep Manivannan (16:16):
So let me try to synthesize this.
So I think the question is whyis customer journey important?
And how is MarTech Maroff'steam is going to help you to
design a campaign or to designan omnichannel kind of a journey
for a customer coming into thisretailer ecosystem that's now
stronger than Academy Sports.
Yeah, so to the first thing, tothe's Nordstrom or Academy
(16:37):
Sports, right?
Yeah, so to the first thing.
Like to the first point, likewhy is customer journey
important?
So I'm going to come up with anexample instead of vague
explanation.
So at Nordstrom, there are likeclose to 35 to 45 million or
something like that, nordstromrack and Nordstrom full price
active customers I'm saying justactive customers, so they are
(16:58):
most of the customers atNordstrom Rack and Nordstrom
Full Price.
Act to customers.
I'm saying just act tocustomers, so they are most of
the customers at Nordstrom havethese different tiers called
ambassadors, icon influencer andmember for all the customers
there.
So ambassadors are the ones whocreate all these.
They are the ones who generatemore revenue to the Nordstrom
ecosystem, whether it's digitalor brick and mortar, and icons
fall next.
Now what happens is Nordstromecosystem, whether it's digital
(17:18):
or brick-and-mortar, and iconsfall next.
Now what happens is.
Nordstrom has this interestingcustomer option where they can
purchase a Nordstrom credit cardand if you purchase a Nordstrom
credit card, you can shop atNordstrom stores and they get
extra discount.
And you can like a Costcocredit card.
You can shop at any other placeas well, so Nordstrom credit
card customers can shop at anyother place as well.
So non-strong credit cardcustomers have an option or a
(17:39):
luxury to get into the previewof all the early sales and
anniversary sales, thanksgivingsales.
They get a privilege, they getthis red carpet kind of a
privilege where they can accessthis not strong thing and then
they get a lot of discounts.
Plus, there is a specialtreatment there, and not strong
is famous for customerexperience.
It's the one absolutely yeahsure, right.
So that means that.
So the customer journey, thepuzzle we were trying to solve,
(18:03):
there was, I think, some of thecustomers who were purchasing
not strong credit card.
There is an active churnhappening every two, three
months.
They're just signing up, they,they, they use the credit for
for a month or so and then theyare no longer seeing any values
and they are like trying to, youknow, trying to call the
customer support and they'retrying to, um, disconnect the
credit card or, you know, justdisable it.
(18:23):
So now that there is a loss,there is a churn happening and
then we just want to make surethat we are going to fix that
leaky bucket there, leaks there.
That's one thing.
And then second thing is wejust want to make sure that our
loyalty platform or loyaltycustomers sorry, loyalty
customer base is growing andthen that's going to help the
Nordstrom in general, becauseNordstrom got into the different
(18:44):
kind of a business handbusiness as well, nordstrom
merchandising kind of a platformwhere Nike shoes can be applied
to the Nordstrom platform aswell.
That's a kind of a differentchannel, different experimental
approach they tried.
So you just want to make sureall these top tier customers are
into this path.
So to your question here nowearlier the project like before
I joined RN and the projectbefore that the before image was
(19:08):
we didn't have any idea aboutthese credit card customers.
Why the churn is happening?
Because this was all managed ina different department and this
is all managed from a differentsystem called Chase and Fiserv
and all these kind of redfinancials and all kinds of
systems.
Now Nordstrom at the centralthey're like hey, whether it's
Nordstrom Rack or full price,I'm going to see how can I bring
(19:28):
this to the actual centralizedecosystem and kind of tie it up
to the actual campaign we havehere so that we can reduce the
churn.
I still remember the numbers.
I think 29 percentage of thecustomers do disable the credit
card within three months or so.
And then our vp.
(19:48):
They were like they came upwith this interesting demand
impact number which is like forevery month if you tap into this
customer base, at least one ortwo percentage from this 29%
slowly, like I think within oneor two years, they found out
like close to 300 to 400K EBITjust for a month or so.
So there is a huge potentialhere for this credit card
(20:10):
customers because Nordstrom hadthis ambitious plan to tie all
these digital offline stores andthen they just want to make
sure credit card customers getthis privilege too.
So think, in that case, to yourquestion.
Tying back to the originalquestion, we didn't have any
idea.
It was a totally black box tous.
Why are these customers gettingchurned and what's happening
there?
So we just want to make sure weare building the centralized
(20:31):
ecosystem, not running a usualwelcome journey or a warm-up
journey.
We just want to make sure.
Hey, these are some of theprivileges we have here.
These are the early previewaccess to the Nordstrom platform
and there is the actualtailoring shop available in
Nordstrom where you can go andtap into.
So we were trying to treat themin a different way.
At the same time, we weretrying to mix them with other
(20:53):
kind of customer segments andtap into those kind of
attributes and then run a verypersonalized, hyper personalized
campaign there.
That's, I think, in from thatstandpoint, customer journey is
very important.
We can, so that way we canunderstand how the customer and
the day in the life is going tocome into this ecosystem and
what are the attributes we cantap into for journeys first.
(21:13):
One second thing is we have allthese system.
Our vp always says thatsalesforce I think, uh, it was
12 million dollars for threeyears or something like that.
That was a contractual value orthe amount we used to pay for
salesforce.
So we just know that we tapinto that value and then get
these customers and then makingsure the marketing message our
(21:34):
systems are going to enable themand then so they are the
customer life cycle value.
The cltv number is strongerenough for these kind of newer
customers so sure, yeah, yeah,there needs to be a financial
type.
Michael Hartmann (21:47):
So I've still I guess I'm missing the a little
bit.
So I get right, you were tryingto, if I, if I summarize it a
little bit you were were tryingto identify what was the journey
for those who eventually becamecredit card customers.
And then why did the ones thatchurned quickly?
(22:07):
Why did they churn quickly,right?
So did you go through a processof mapping out that journey?
Is that what you did, to try toidentify where those leaks were
happening, as you said?
Pradeep Manivannan (22:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So now what happens is whenevera customer buys a credit card,
now what happens is for thefirst two or three weeks there
are some discounts given to thecustomer and after a month or so
it becomes dried up and thenthey are like hey, you know, I'm
not seeing any values out ofthis credit card stuff, so I'm
going to disconnect or disablethat.
That's one thing.
And then how do we find out allthese stuff through the third
(22:38):
party?
That's a good question.
Sorry, I missed that part.
So from Pfizer and Chase thereare two different credit systems
.
We were trying to tap into allthose data and then store them
with the credit card databrowsing platform there.
So we were trying to get intothose kind of platform and then
the data attributes, trying tosee hey, when is this credit
(23:00):
card customer signed up?
Is there a real-time pre-screenor all those things showed up.
If that is the case, why thereis a delay?
Why did the customer again callwithin 15 or 20 days, so that
it's a zero percentage, one zeropercentage interest rate and
all those kind of stuff?
We were trying to have a surveyfor all those kind of dropped
customers and then trying to tapinto those values, unstructured
(23:21):
data, and then get into thisNordstrom ecosystem to make sure
that we are running somefilters on top of those kind of
survey data so that we can runan omnichannel journey based on
that.
So, that being said, I think toyour question.
I think we were trying to getthis data from survey through
(23:41):
third-party system andeverything through Fiserv and
Chase and then tying it up withthe actual purchase data and
transactional data andcentralized system.
Michael Hartmann (23:50):
Okay.
So what did you end up doing?
Did you build out some new likechange something about how that
onboarding and posts?
You called it a purchase butlike post sign up, I guess for
the card.
How that happened.
Pradeep Manivannan (24:08):
Yeah, so that's a good point.
So I think what we were tryingto do is this was treated pretty
independently, michael, likethe Nordstrom credit card
customers.
They were not into thisecosystem, so Nordstrom had this
terminology called nordic clubfor all the loyalty customers
yeah.
So they are like hey, you know,first thing I'm going to try is
this is again a combination ofbusiness, both more of strategic
(24:30):
decisions.
So they just want to make surethat, by default, if you're
buying a credit card, you'regoing to participate at the
nordic club.
That's one thing.
And then there was a welcomejourney that was going in, and
then there was another.
As part of the welcome journey,we didn't want to do just a
mundane a welcome to thisNordstrom platform because it's
a Nordstrom retailer thing andjust 15-person sale or something
(24:51):
like that.
We just want to educate themand give them several other
privileges, like hey, you get anearly access to the anniversary
sale and the account privilegesand all those kind of stuff.
So, in a nutshell, we wererunning a 30-day customer
journey, email and push combined.
This was developed inSalesforce Marketing Cloud
(25:12):
Journey Builder.
So I was the one who wasworking with the credit card
Nordstrom credit productmanagers and then the actual
marketing strategy directors andleadership here and then the
content team in terms of how canwe make sure that the the
actual credit product plus thecontent content is king these
days plus the strategy alignedfor these newly joined credit
(25:36):
card customers and run a verysmooth 30-day journey.
I think we had seven, sixemails one transactional email
just for the six promotionalemails, one transactional email
if a credit card customer goesand activates the card and then
couple of push push messagesalong with this.
So this is purely omni-channelemail plus push combined.
(25:58):
Plus there is a transaction.
Michael Hartmann (26:00):
Push meaning SMS, text Mobile push Mobile.
Pradeep Manivannan (26:04):
Push, not SMS.
Michael Hartmann (26:06):
This is the usual, oh, mobile app messaging.
Okay, got it Mobile appmessaging one.
Pradeep Manivannan (26:12):
That is how we started and this was an MVP
and then the initial numberslook good.
My collect in the after twoweeks, what I'm trying to say is
at the end of sixth week, whichmeans we'd have done with one
month of campaign and then thesecond week of the next one.
We were trying to do thisreadout to the leadership team
(26:32):
and we were just going with thisactual metrics.
So this is an interesting one.
I just want to bring this uphere.
So we were looking atunsubscribed rate, all these
kind of things, but these arevanity metrics.
But we just want to make surethat how many of these credit
card customers are just actuallygoing to the click or whatever,
the CDA button and they areactually going to the ecosystem,
(26:54):
notstromcom or notstromradcom,and doing this purchase, so that
all the URL variables,everything connected and same,
or even brick and mortar, notfrom the actual point of sale
and then doing transactions.
So the numbers where we werestruggling to connect those dots
, but we were there trying tosee how the actual conversion
(27:15):
numbers are going to look like.
But the goal is to reduce thechurn from 29% to 26% or 25% in
the next six months or so, sothat I can get into this EBIT
value there.
So we did this combination ofboth strategy plus the landing
page sorry, the content portion,as well as the email.
Why six or seven emails?
(27:37):
Why not 10?
Why not six?
There were a lot of interestingdiscussions happened, so that
we don't want to bombard themand fatigue them At the same
time, we want to make sure thatthey are on this platform and
doing active business.
Michael Hartmann (27:48):
Gotcha.
So you talked about tying thatreduction in churn rate to EBIT,
right?
So EBIT meaning earnings beforeit comes in tax, right?
Yeah, okay, I'm just trying toremember my finance terms here.
So, when you were reporting onit, like, how did you like, did
you even talk about, did youtalk more about, the financial
(28:11):
impacts of the work done?
Or did you talk about thechange in churn?
Or did you talk, like youmentioned vanity metrics, which
I kind of recoil at these daysbecause I actually think that
they've been given a bad namebecause people call them that
and I think they're still usefulin the right for the right
thing.
Right, they're not ones I wouldgo present to executives, for
example, necessarily, but, um,but, like, talk me through.
(28:33):
Like, how did you connect thedots from here's, what we did to
here was the outcome?
Uh, especially how youcommunicated it to, like, people
who are less familiar with, um,what you were doing, or what
marketing, like, whatmarketing's role is, I guess
even yeah, sure.
Pradeep Manivannan (28:49):
So I think I have some numbers here, so I'm
going to I don't want to rushthis one up, so I'm going to
slowly walk you through thenumbers.
So, vanity method like sorry,yeah, so the click-through
metrics unsubscribe rate isstill good, like, uh, we don't
want to it's.
It's pretty directional, likeit's going to give some some
directions, and that was reallyhelpful for sure.
And then this is how thenumbers were, michael.
(29:10):
So, on a daily basis, onaverage, we were seeing close to
700 to 800 customers joiningthe credit card 700 to 800
customers.
I'm leaving the peak seasonslike July, august, anniversary
sales or thanksgiving sales onan average, 700 to 800 customers
across 310 stores.
(29:31):
That's kind of an average, uh,per year.
Now, okay, after this campaign,within three, four weeks, this
campaign was running for a monthand then at the end of the 30th
day we were like, okay, solet's try to pull some numbers.
And then we had to wait for twoweeks to get all these numbers.
And going to the actualcentralized system we used to
call it as nap, not stronganalytical platform that's where
(29:54):
all this camping data goes backand there's a semantic layer
there where we can pull tableaureports and all those kind of
stuff okay, so it's like a datawarehouse data whatever data
lake, whatever.
Michael Hartmann (30:04):
Okay, exactly, uh, it's.
Pradeep Manivannan (30:04):
It's like a data warehouse data whatever
data lake whatever Exactly, it'slike just a one-liner
definition of NAP.
Nap is more of an in-house CDPbuilt by Nordstrom leadership.
Michael Hartmann (30:17):
Nordstrom.
Pradeep Manivannan (30:18):
CEO has this vision and they want to connect
all this inventory data, salesdata, point of sales and
everything and bring it to thisanalytical platform and do AIML
stuff and everything like that.
Because Nordstrom's customerbase is huge.
The data science attributes areclose to 125 to 150-ish
probably more than that rightnow.
So that's how Nordstrom wasplanning to do.
(30:40):
They had this ambitious visionand that's how it was.
So, going back to the numbers,right, so now 700 to 800 number
customers.
So I'm going to be very clearhere.
So, within like three to fourweeks from the day joined, let's
say September 1st, I'm going tostart this campaign and then,
every day, we are going to getthese kind of 700 to 800 ish
(31:01):
customers on board.
Now we could see out of, uh,like we could see, close to 80
to 100 customers are moving frommember to influencer status.
That is, this is all kind of aballpark demand impact number
from our finance team, so, whichcomes to close to 11%, and then
(31:24):
we could see close to, I think,18% of the customers this is a
big number where they weretrying to do greater than $500
transaction in a month, whichputs them in a different mode
which is nothing but like theymight get into the icon or
ambassador kind of a tieredsegment.
(31:44):
They might get into the icon orambassador kind of a period.
So, if you see this right, Ithink we I still remember the
day it went live.
This campaign went live exactlyon October 31st of 2022,
because that's the Q3 end date.
The Q4 starts from November 1and then it goes until Jan, and
(32:04):
then we want to make sure thatthis campaign goes at the end of
the Q3 so that we can reap thebenefits during Q4 starts from
November 1, and then it goesuntil Jan.
And then we want to make surethat this campaign goes at the
end of the Q3, so then we canreap the benefits during Q4, and
then we can have a good holidayseason numbers and then the
profits and all those kind ofstuff too.
So, that being said, if I justdo a math, I think there were
some numbers taken.
I think, if you close to when Isay 18% of the numbers, it came
(32:29):
somewhere around 1.8million-ish or something like
that for those kind of theoverall customers for that
particular month.
So that's the kind of ballparkwe got from the finance team,
but this campaign was a big hit.
We got from the finance team,but this campaign was a big hit.
And then, from the techstandpoint, we added two new
(32:49):
data science attributes, whichis A, how many of these RAC CC
credit card customers zero tosix months are doing some
transaction and not strong fullprice customers doing some
transactions?
And then, from the Nordic Clubstandpoint, this is where it's
getting interesting, where forevery dollar spent after some
certain threshold you get twopoints per dollar spent or
(33:11):
something like that.
So there's kind of a flywheel,if you see this.
There is this 700 to 800customers joining on a daily
basis.
Close to 54 out of 700, 800customers are moving from member
to influencer.
So that's a good jump.
And then there is a.
That's one number.
And then the second number islike close to 1.8 million.
(33:32):
That's an interesting one whereit's not just influencer, icon
plus ambassadors arecontributing.
That too.
So that is like within the Q4,we could achieve that number and
that's one interesting step.
So from the finance standpoint,we could see that there is some
traction happening there andthere is lesser churn.
Just because we released itpre-holiday season, that might
(33:53):
be one of the interestingstrategy as well.
So from the qualitativestandpoint, we were seeing more
stickiness where the credit cardcustomers are going to the
actual Nordstromcom and RAC andwe could see some optimizing
metrics there from our tech teamto find out hey, you know,
there are more stickiness forthese kind of credit card
(34:14):
customers because we add allthese reward on metadata, on
that, sure, yeah, and then,since we launched it pre-holiday
season, we could see there aremore stuff happening.
But in hindsight what I wouldsee, what I would do.
That is, I think instead of sixto eight different emails plus
push combined, we should havereduced it to close to five
(34:36):
different topics or sixdifferent topics.
I, I, I, I found out as anlittle little or a little little
, uh, overwhelming with theeight different topics and eight
different email contents andpush combined.
I think we should have reducedit to five or six different
topics.
But again, that is just anexample.
Michael Hartmann (34:55):
A little more specific to those.
So I'm curious so you'retalking about this revenue
impact.
Is there any?
I mean, it's hard enough in B2Bto do attribution with complex
sale or something like that, butso you've got the added
challenge here, where you've gotbrick and mortar retail stores
in addition to online purchasing.
(35:16):
Don't you have to go into a lotof detail?
But how did you try to connectthe dots between online I'm
sorry, in-store purchases withthose new customers or converted
customers?
Pradeep Manivannan (35:31):
Yes.
So the question is how do Iknow that these are newly credit
card customers who are doingtransaction, compared to the
existing customer?
Michael Hartmann (35:39):
Well, no, like , how do you know that they're
doing transaction in the store?
And I guess I'm thinking about,like, if they, obviously, if
they use their credit card Iassume their new credit card,
that's easily trackable but thenhow do you do it if they choose
to use a different form ofpayment?
Pradeep Manivannan (35:54):
in a store.
No, that's actually a good onetoo.
Yes, there is some percentageof data where customers do use a
different credit card althoughthey have a not-strong credit
card.
That's something, yes there.
Different credit card althoughthey have a not strong credit
card, that's something.
Yes, that's there is.
There is always that percentage, but I don't exactly recall
that percentage.
But now what happens is evenfrom the customer standpoint.
Michael, within 90 days, if youdo a purchase in general,
(36:15):
whether it's not strong creditcard, any credit card for that
sake.
I bought alaskan airlines.
I got, I received 40 000 milesif I spend some x amount of
dollars within the first threemonths.
So I did tap into that uh,reward stuff.
I got 40 000 bonus miles and Ihad a trip to.
So, likewise, I think,nordstrom and this is where, for
a nordstrom customer who areshopping during the holiday
(36:36):
season, the naughty club points,as I said before, for every one
dollar spent, there is likefive x dollars kind of returns.
That's one thing.
And then the second thing isfor non-strong credit cards.
Since there is this, I thinkthis is more of um chase flash,
uh, the finance side of thebusiness, where there is like,
uh, zero person, jpr orsomething like that connected to
(36:57):
it.
So they just want to tap intothat and then see sure, so well.
Michael Hartmann (37:01):
It sounds like the the connect connection
between the credit card and thatperson as a loyalty person.
That's the glue that can reallydo it Correct.
Pradeep Manivannan (37:13):
I think the first one point is more on the
finance side and I think, as anoutcome, we could see that, hey,
the naughty club points aregrowing for these credit card
customers.
Plus we could see all thesestickiness happening, plus all
these purchasing behavior forthese newly joined credit card
customers.
So, yeah, it's spot on.
Michael Hartmann (37:30):
Yeah, it's interesting.
I mean, I know personally likethere's at least one retailer
probably more than one, but onein particular that I think of
when I think of this kind ofthing where, like, I get a ton
of value for the trade-off ofletting them know what I'm
purchasing and using it becausethey are regularly providing
incentives to me, right, yeah,discounts and points that go
(37:54):
towards purchases, and to thepoint where, like any given
purchase which I don't do a lotof, maybe once a month, once
every two months it's not superinfrequent, but it's not like
every day kind of thing, but Ican, I can get in some cases 20
off of a total purchase, likeany given one, like, yeah, it's
(38:15):
worth it.
So, and it's like, yeah, it'snot tied to the card I use, it's
tied to me being saying, oh,this is me, right, right.
Pradeep Manivannan (38:25):
Yes, yes, no , spot on.
I think I'm just trying torelate this to an example which
is happening at Academy Sportswhere I think, by default, we
are working in a situation wherewe are trying to auto enroll
customers into a loyaltycustomer base and then Academy
is also trying to come up withthis Academy-specific it's
(38:45):
called co-branded credit cardwhere they are trying to have a
tie-up with MasterCard and theytry to.
All Academy Sports cards, whichare normal cards, are normal
card customers are going to moveto this co-branded credit card
where you can use it anywhere.
At the same time, we just wantto auto-enroll them into the
loyalty platform.
(39:05):
So Nordstrom has a specialthing too For Naughty Club.
The way they treat the NaughtyClub reward points and
everything is very different too.
And then there is this it'smore of a gamification kind of
stuff, right, and even AcademySports, like, for every $500
spent, I think, we get a $25rewards or something like that,
where a customer can use,customer can share with their
friends, families Nordstrom isvery famous for that where you
(39:29):
get a lot of preview sales andeverything.
So that's, I think it was notjust so.
This is where it getsinteresting, where it was not
just financial metric.
They just want to align this tothis overall vision of customer
obsession and experience.
Sure, sure.
Michael Hartmann (39:47):
Yes, I mean it's interesting to me, like I
don't know why this popped in myhead, but I remember back in
the day when I was a consulting,I traveled a lot back and forth
to houston from dallas and sothe easiest way to do that was
on southwest airlines.
The southwest airlines back inthose days this is pre-911, so
it'll literally what you could.
Literally, they had so manyflights going back and forth
they still do that you couldliterally walk up.
(40:08):
They had kiosks, kind of likean ATM, where you buy a ticket,
like in person, right, you don'thave to have a reservation,
they called it a quick it, andevery one of those tickets you
know what it had on it A drinkcoupon, every one of them, every
one of them.
And if you were a loyaltymember, right, the rapid rewards
, uh, every time you had I thinkit's 10 segments you got a book
(40:30):
sent to you with another 10drink coupons.
Like I, I had so many drinkcoupons, like I would literally
like me.
I was traveling a lot with twoother, two other guys back and
forth to Houston to a clientsite from Dallas, and like we
would get to the airport onFridays and we would just give
people drink coupons because wecould never use them.
All you know, I flew.
(40:50):
I flew all my wife's friends into Dallas one time and they all
got sent a book of drinkcoupons because they flew.
That was when Southwestcouldn't fly.
You couldn't fly into Dallasfrom many places directly, so
they'd had to do stops and solike.
But it's great, like that.
So it was like for me it wasalmost worth it not to have a
(41:11):
reservation.
Yeah, right, yeah.
Pradeep Manivannan (41:15):
No, I think Southwest is famous for that.
I think they they were the oneswho came up with this
interesting stuff even beforecustomer experience.
And now now we are for stuffeven before customer experience.
Now now we are.
For the past 10 years we havebeen talking about this customer
obsession and topic.
Yes, amazon's goal was customerobsession from b1, but I think
southwest airlines were so outof the curve they were doing all
these kind of interesting stuff.
Uh, and right now, like I thinkI, I can see almost every
(41:37):
single company is trying to havethis kind of an amazon effect
where you know, I'm going to,I'm going to pamper the customer
and then put them into thisdifferent mode where they can
continuously come and shop andthey just want to have this
brand as kind of a mental tickmark in their brain.
Like, hey, for any sportsmaterial, kind of a shopping,
(41:59):
I'm going to go to AcademySports.
For anything luxury, not luxury, I'm going to put it any sort
of a good clothes and everything.
Michael Hartmann (42:06):
Like my daughter likes not strong a lot,
she continuously shops and notstrong yeah, um, I wouldn't say
I mean my kids do too, but uh,mine tend to go to uh thrift
shopping now.
So that's, I think, the newthing yes, I go to kohl's as
well.
Pradeep Manivannan (42:23):
I I don't have any preference.
But as an employer I used totake my friends to like, hey
guys, and my friends used tolike that a lot.
Then I used to tell them hey,you know, if you buy a not
strong credit card, you get allthese kind of.
And then they're like oh, weget these benefits.
And I try to.
It's not about promoting that,but I try to say that, hey,
(42:49):
there are several differentoptions here.
Most of them think that it's avery luxury retailer kind of
thing.
But Nordstrom Rack is foreveryone, for my kind of layman,
normal customers too.
Michael Hartmann (42:57):
We're going to have to wrap it up here, but
there's one thing we can'tignore, which is the impact of
AI in all this.
What are you seeing in thisspace?
That was what you talked aboutwith Nordstrom and now what
you're doing.
But how are you seeing what youdid then?
How do you think it would bedifferent now with AI in the mix
, or if at all, and where do yousee it going?
Pradeep Manivannan (43:21):
That's a good one.
So, michael, I'll start withthe very basic thing.
Like in the sense, I think, atnot strong, we were trying to
for most of the content.
This was the practice.
They tried to do ab testing.
And then we were running a, youknow, in a journey canvas.
And imagine, there is a canvaswhich does this customer journey
(43:42):
mapping and everything andthere's an automated camping
going on.
Now they're like, hey, I havethis flash campaign with these
kinds of apparels and the sameflash campaign with blue stuff,
whatever different kind of ahero image or whatever, and we
want the winning version to bedone.
So I remember Salesforcereleased a feature called Path
Optimizer, where we don't needto manually go and pull the
(44:04):
results, do a readout and thenhave a forum to discuss that and
then say EA is the winningversion.
Let's do and bring the pictureof EA for the future sense.
Now Path Optimizer doeseverything through AI, like
where it can automatically goand collect the data and then
you can set it up, whether, hey,I want to go and choose based
(44:24):
on the hero image or for aparticular cta button or for a
particular time frame.
A lot of options are there.
And then that was one of the aifeatures.
I worked.
I started, uh, exploring duringmy non-strong days, and I think
we did that during my humanitydays as well.
So, path optimizer, uh, andthen the content, wise.
(44:44):
So this is a very broadquestion, the ai.
So what I'm seeing is um thereare more and more cdps coming, I
think.
That being said, I think when itcomes to the content side of
things, I'm seeing there aremore ai innovation happening
there.
Content is king.
So what I'm trying to say isit's not just dynamic rendering
(45:08):
of Nordstromcom for severaldifferent customers, it is just
trying to make sure that, hey,do I need to, based on Pradeep's
past purchasing behavior, do Ineed to put a Nike shoes in his
homepage or somewhere on thesite compared to my wife's
shopping behavior, wear jewelryor something like that.
(45:29):
I just want to make sure thatit there.
There is a lot of stuff goingon, and then this is going to
this there are a lot, there is alot of um burden reduced from
these kind of optimizely kind ofa platform where ai can do its
job automatically around theclock, whether it's holidays or
weekends or whatever it is.
From the CMS standpoint, thecontent management system
(45:52):
standpoint, that's one thing.
I can see there is a lothappening there, but from the
data standpoint, I think not somuch the ZIML kind of a data
science model.
Sorry, I missed that part, soI'll be very specific here.
So I think for each segmentsmen's fashion, women's, kids and
everything even and for men's,like for apparels, shoes and
(46:12):
everything they were trying, asI said before, like the non-stop
credit card is this customernon-stop credit card customers
zero to three months, three,three to six months kind of
purchasing behavior, so I couldsee for every single segment
they were having close to atleast 15 to 20 or even more than
that are kind of subcategorydata science attributes so that
(46:32):
we can use it, when I say wemarketing team can use it and
run a very hyper personalizedcampaign.
So there is a constant datascience model which is
automatically learning based onmy purchasing behavior.
This was all there in the past,but this is happening a lot
these days and these are kind ofcustom models too and we are
trying to tap into a third-partydata, like it's not just email
(46:53):
push Sorry, I was trying to.
There is a paid campaign fromVibram too, and there is a
direct mail campaign sent fromdirect partners Blue core for
triggered sense.
So there are like several othersystems involved.
Nordstrom was like, hey, I'mgoing to bring all this data,
let me do this ID stitching andthen do all these kind of a
continuous 24 hours kind of amodel and this model.
(47:15):
I think there is a huge datascience team doing all this,
bringing work there.
I still remember, and I thinkwe constantly get a request to
pipe in these attributes andthat's a very omni-channel
campaign.
Those are some of the elementsI could, on a day-to-day basis,
I could witness, but there is alot going on in the industry,
from the AI model specific, forsure.
Michael Hartmann (47:37):
The feeling I've got is that some of the AI
ML kind of modeling capabilitiesare probably ahead of the kind
of customer capabilities, areprobably ahead of the kind of
customer facing platforms, right.
So, like most of what Iunderstand about where the
content management systems aretrying to do sort of truly hyper
personalized content in themoment, based on you know, a
(48:00):
number of different things goingon, not just attributes.
Right Is probably.
I mean, maybe somebody is outthere doing it and I probably I
always underestimate this, but Isuspect that it's really
expensive to do it, right, yes,so, but I, I mean, I think
that's, I suspect that's wherethings are going, right, I think
a lot of these, like, like you,when I was in the B2C world it
(48:24):
was I built a data warehouse,right, warehouse for connecting
with direct marketing.
We had data scientists.
Today they would be called datascientists.
They weren't.
Back then they were kind ofrestricted on what they could do
based on their capacity andhypotheses and things like that.
That's what I'm really kind of,yeah, interested to see how
(48:49):
things evolve is what happenswith these engines when they can
kind of replace some of thathypothesis generation, right, a
little bit right.
So, anyway, well, listen.
I I hate to cut it shortbecause this has been a lot of
fun.
I think people are going towalk away from this.
Going like all this stuff maybe a little bit scary.
(49:10):
I don't know if they knowwhat's going on when they use
their credit cards.
They should probably alreadyknow.
But anyway, this was a lot offun, pradeep, so thank you for
that.
If folks want to learn more,connect with you or hear about
what, you're doing.
Pradeep Manivannan (49:27):
What's the best way for them to do that?
Yeah, sure, so I'm prettyactive on LinkedIn.
I always call my LinkedIn as myFacebook, so I'm always active.
I keep it open for 24 hours.
So please ping me via LinkedIn.
It's pretty straightforward.
I haven't updated to my currentone, but you can see my
Nordstrom and humanityexperience there for sure.
And then I'm not actively usingTwitter, but I do check once in
(49:50):
a while, once in a week or so,but I can share my LinkedIn
profile.
And then I've written someblogs too, so I can share all
those blogs as well.
But I'm looking forward tocollaborate in the future and
then share some more AI-relatedstuff.
The one thing I'm learning fromthis AI thing is garbage in,
garbage out from the datastandpoint.
So there are a lot of datacoming and even at Academy
(50:12):
Sports we are like, hey, is thisa valid scenario?
Is this a valid use case?
So there is always thisconstant debate on this scenario
because of this third-partysystem, data getting ingested in
this platform and all thesekind of things.
And there are several otherareas involved.
So, that being said, ai isgoing to rule it and we are
(50:33):
forced to get into that, andmore and more companies are
investing there for sure, butyes, yes, sounds good.
Michael Hartmann (50:40):
Well, again, thank you, pradeep.
It's been a lot of fun, thanksto our listeners and viewers and
the rest of our audience.
Thank you for supporting us.
Thank you for listening andwatching.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
you can reach out to Naomi, mikeor me.
We'd be glad to talk to youabout that.
Until next time, bye, everybody.
Pradeep Manivannan (51:00):
Okay.
Hello everyone , welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the MoPros out there.
I'm your host, michael Hartman,flying solo today.
Today, we're going to be doingsomething a little different.
We're going to be exploring howcustomer journey mapping,
segmentation and omni-channelstrategy comes to life, with
lessons pulled from both B2C andB2B worlds.
(00:21):
As you know, we tend to get alot of B to B examples, so I'm
excited to get some B to Cexamples here.
So joining me today is my guest, pradeep Manavanan, martech
consultant at Academy Sports andOutdoors.
Among other things, he's heldroles at eBay, salesforce and
Nordstrom and brings a uniqueperspective that blends deep
(00:41):
technical experience withstrategic marketing operations.
We're going to dive into whatit really takes to build
journey-based experiences fromscratch, how to connect data
across channels and what B2Bteams can learn from
consumer-focused environments.
So, Pradeep, welcome to theshow.
Thanks for joining.
Pradeep Manivannan (00:56):
Thank you, thanks, michael.
Thanks for that introduction.
That's really helpful.
So, yeah, so just to let meintroduce myself, or let me give
some more context here about myexperience and then I'll
directly dive into the actualquestions.
Yeah, sure, so by this time youguys know my name, pradeep
Maniwandan.
So currently I'm a MarTecharchitect, slash consultant at
(01:16):
Academy Sports and Outdoors.
But, as Michael said, like I, Iused to work at Nordstrom, which
is a very luxury retailer herein Seattle Washington, and then
eBay Salesforce, mostlyproviding B2C kind of solutions
for all of our clients.
So during my Salesforce days Iused to be a market tech
(01:37):
solutions architect forMicrosoft and Boeing for the
World here in Seattle Washington, world here at Seattle
Washington.
And then, prior to that, I wasat eBay, where it was like I was
in the B2B business but we wereeven doing some consultations
or consultative service for B2Cas well.
So that was my eBay experience.
But prior to that I was atCisco and doing consulting at
(01:58):
Tata Consultancy Services andthat's how I built my
foundational experience.
And then Cisco is the one whichled me to dive into the smart
tech stuff and all those kind ofstuff.
So currently, post Nordstrom, Ithought let me try to get into
the startup world and dosomething.
And then I got into thehealthcare startup.
(02:19):
I was at Lumanity it's aprivate equity-based startup in
New York.
It's a private equity-basedstartup in New York and we were
trying to work with all thepharmaceutical companies, like
App-V, aweos, and then try tobuild an omni-channel system not
just a one-term solution to runa very scalable customer
journey campaign for all theHCPs, health care professionals
(02:40):
and doctors.
So I have a mix of B2C and B2B,but, as Michael said, at the end
of the day it's just customers.
I'm going to get into thosedetails, but right now it's for
Academy Sports and Autos.
I'm working for a veryinteresting project there where
they are trying to integrate allthe point of sale and digital
to the omni-channel system andthen we are going to run a very
(03:01):
kind of cross-journal journeysacross mobile and email and
several other digital channelsas well.
So that's, I just added it.
So it's interesting so far.
Michael Hartmann (03:13):
Yeah, got it.
Yeah, well, we were talkingbefore we started recording that
, because you thought I mightnot be aware of Academy, but
they're well-known here down inTexas.
It is that time of year whenthey are extremely busy.
You've got football season andhunting season all happening at
one time.
They get people doing both.
Pradeep Manivannan (03:34):
Yes, great Agreed.
They are pretty famous downsouth.
Their headquarters is in Katy,texas.
I usually travel there.
I was there until last week, soI'm going to travel next week
as well.
The leadership is great andthey have close to 310 stores or
something around down south, toCharlotte, pittsburgh,
(03:57):
pennsylvania, new Jersey, aroundthat area, so there is less
penetration in the West Coast,but they are aiming for a huge
growth in the next one or twoyears.
Michael Hartmann (04:07):
They are doing a lot of interesting stuff
there.
So for our listeners who arenot familiar where Katy Texas is
, it's a Houston suburb, houstonyes.
Yeah, so I'm in Dallas but veryfamiliar with them, All right.
Well, you said you've workedwith a lot of those B2B and B2C
kinds of organizations.
Why don't we start with this,Like, when are you?
(04:28):
Like you said, you knowcustomers are customers kind of,
and I tend to generally agree.
But what do you see as some ofthe major similarities and
differences between those twoenvironments, especially when it
comes to how you approachmarketing operations?
Pradeep Manivannan (04:45):
Sure, that's a good question.
So let me answer this one byone.
I think I'm going to talk aboutthe similarities first and then
the differences, and I'm goingto talk about the recent trends
happening in the marketingoperations side.
Similarities, as you said likein the sense, I think one thing
is whether it's B2B or B2C, thecompany is interested in knowing
(05:07):
who the customer is, kyc, knowyour customer, and then they
just want to make sure thecustomer is in safe hands and
then they just want to make surethe whole customer journey is
all plotted and then make sureeach of these touch points
whether it's B2B or whether it'san healthcare side of the
business or normal Microsoftkind of enterprise software kind
of a business Microsoft isinteresting.
(05:28):
It's more B2B and B2C combined.
So they just want to make sureeach of these touch points are
connected and there is amarketing, coherent marketing
messages happening between allthese touch points.
So that's one similarity forsure.
The other similarity is I'mseeing in recent times, at least
(05:50):
for the past three, four years,more and more companies,
especially the leadershipC-suite.
They are trying to invest moreon the marketing technology and
marketing operation side.
But there's always thisconfusion of hey, is it just
creative madman kind of a world,or is it just creative madman
kind of a world?
Or is it just art and sciencecombined kind of the world right
now?
So I think it's smart tech.
As the name says, it's bothtechnology and marketing
(06:12):
combined, so it's more art andscience combined now.
That's one thing, and thenleadership is trying to
understand hey, this is notmundane campaign operations or
something.
There is a strategic elementthere and whether it's B2B or
B2C, I see that as a commonelement and that's something
(06:36):
happening both in the B2B andB2C world as well.
I think that's on thesimilarity side.
On the difference side, b2c oneclear thing as I come from as a,
as a, you know I started as acampaign operations person.
So for b2b, every singlecustomer is precious and they
are like the for an healthcareside of the business.
If you're losing one doctor,you might lose close to at least
(06:57):
500k to 600k revenue, whetherit's a cancer away of
pharmaceuticals, for example,like their list is like 10,000
or 15,000 doctors.
But if you lose one doctor forsome reason, because of the
email fatigue or some sort of athing, you lose the doctor and
then you lose the revenue.
So B2B is very sensitive inthat case.
B2c for example, nordstrom weused to run multiple campaigns,
(07:21):
bogo and all those kinds ofstuff flash sales, merchandising
sales, errand sales and allthose kind of stuff flash sales,
merchandising sales, errandsales and all those kind of
stuff even if a customer optsout, there is there.
There is not that muchsensitivity towards, uh, the b2c
thing.
But b2c is like they want totap into how the real life
customer behaves, gen z's andgen x and all these different
segments at the top level, andthen like exclusively for men,
(07:43):
women's, fashion, watches andall these subcategories involved
as well.
So B2C is even more deeper.
And then they go to the actualtail end and make sure that the
customers are there and then weare trying to bring them to the
digital ecosystem or offlineplatform or brick and mortar or
whatever, and they just want tohave this omni-channel
experience, because that's oneportion as well.
(08:04):
So that's the difference.
And B2B there was always thisbudgeting discussion there.
Banned those days.
Budget.
Michael Hartmann (08:12):
Oh, right, yeah, okay, Like the client or
customer budget.
Correct, correct customerbudget.
Pradeep Manivannan (08:18):
And then let's say, if you're trying to
sell enterprise software orsomething like that, you've got
to talk to VP of sales andthere's the usual nurturing
element.
And then there are the userswho are actually using the
software or product or whatwhatsoever.
And then we need we may need tojust have a one-on-one sales
calls or something like that toget to the platform as well.
(08:38):
That's all in the sales offside.
But marketing's job is to makesure from the top down hey, are
we trying to have a rightmessage at the b2b platform?
The value, prop and everythingis clearly communicated so that
our enterprise software userscan come to our platform and get
a one-stop shop answers for allthese questions.
So that's the difference in theb2b.
(09:00):
But trying these two things,what I'm seeing is there are
more and more marketingoperations, technology person
people are hired in the company,for example, even Academy
Sports.
They're like hey, we are notjust CDP.
They used to call themselves asa CDP team.
Now they're like no, we are aMarTech team.
They're trying to advertisethemselves or trying to
propagate that message so thatwe are not just CDP.
(09:23):
Having a treasured data andtying the stitching, the data ID
resolution, we are doing morethan that.
We are trying to connect tomarketers and trying to promote
this and display the attributes.
We are going to work with theSMS partners, list track and all
these several other partners,the digital partners too and
then making sure that, hey, ourdecentralized team is going to
(09:47):
help you for any sort of martechneeds, whether it's pure
creativity-based landing pageupdates or anything of that sort
, or the actual data reports orany sort of fanatical reports as
well.
So that's, something happeningin the industry for sure.
Michael Hartmann (10:02):
So it's interesting to me.
One of the first points youtalked about essentially is one
that I see is like the scale,right, so the big difference,
one of the biggest differences.
Obviously, like the volume ofstuff, right, and B2B tends to
be relatively small compared toB2C and it's more complicated,
right, the relationships, theconnection points.
(10:23):
There's a somewhat of asimilarity between, like buying,
complicated, right therelationships, the connection
points.
There's somewhat of asimilarity between buying groups
on the B2B side versushouseholding in the B2C side,
right, but in general I thinkB2C is simpler from that
standpoint.
There's a little more of adirect tie to purchases.
I know it's not completelydirect, I mean maybe more so
(10:43):
with e-commerce is.
I know it's not completelydirect, I mean maybe more so
with e-commerce, but I thinkit's interesting that maybe I'm
just sort of hitting on it.
I liked your point about, in theB2B world, losing one potential
prospect.
There's a pretty significantcost or potential revenue loss
that is associated with that.
(11:05):
It's an interesting way ofthinking about it.
It hadn't really occurred to me.
The other one, which is towardthe end, there it feels like and
I think it picked it up becauseyou said that team at Academy
had initially talked aboutthemselves as a CDP team, right,
which is basically atechnology-first mindset, which
means like, are they?
I would assume then that iswhere they kind of come from,
(11:26):
where they like embedded in itmore so, which would make sense
with the volumes of data thatcome with B2C stuff.
I am sure, like it's a heavytechnology, uh, storage, right,
moving data, around, processingit, right, it's.
It's much more significantthere.
Pradeep Manivannan (11:44):
Yeah, so let me put it this way.
So I think that's a very greatquestion.
So an academy?
So MarTech is still under thetechnology umbrella.
So Nordstrom had this debate.
Before I joined Nordstrom,martech was under the marketing
umbrella and then they came toknow that, hey, this is not just
(12:07):
running campaigns and creatingHTMLs and anything of that sort.
We are trying to talk to ourmarketing operations team plus
the actual data science team andcentralized content
merchandising to several otherteams, to our marketing
operations team plus the actualdata science team and
centralized creative sorrycontent merchandising to several
other teams.
And then we were trying to, uh,like I think at dot storm there
are like close to 125 to 150attributes from data science at
(12:30):
a very deeper level to know thecustomer so that we can go to
the salesforce or any ecosystemto send a campaign.
So they slowly move the marttech to the technology umbrella.
The similar thing is happeningin the academy sports to your
question.
It's on the technology side,but they don't want to restrict
themselves to just CDP assets.
They just want to make surethat, hey, we are more than CDP.
(12:52):
We are trying to do the digitalonboarding at the same time
trying to integrate to theactual real-time prescreening
and all these kind of stuff withour third-party vendors and all
those kind of stuff too.
So just for an example here soAcademy Sports, let's say, this
is like Amazoncom, so if you'regoing and trying to buy
something online or offline,they just want to make sure
(13:13):
their customers are coming tothe platform.
They're getting someAcademy-specific credit cards
and there is a pre-approval,pre-screening checks and all
these things are happening.
Sure, okay, there are morecustomers coming to the platform
and there is a loyalty base.
They are trying to grow up.
So what I'm seeing there is uh,the technology is there, but
there is.
There is this constant umcombination of both.
(13:39):
Hey, marketing is trying to tapinto this technology side.
Plus, they are like hey, wewill do more than that.
We are trying to do proof ofconcept on several other
platforms, not just email orpush SMS or several other
platforms as well.
So what I'm seeing is it's acombination of both uh,
technology, plus there are a lotof innovative element happening
(14:01):
there, and that's the reason itis like it's no longer on the
marketing side.
They are trying to.
Hey, we are trying to, we aregoing to go into this one mail
champ or mobile link and allthese things.
So now we have become aone-stop shop there.
So that's the culture whereit's very open-minded and trying
to do this innovative stuffthere.
Michael Hartmann (14:17):
Yeah, I mean I don't know that.
I mean I probably have atendency to lean towards wanting
more control over it, tied tothe marketing right and the
experimentation and all that atthe same time.
I think it almost doesn'tmatter if you've got the right
structure.
It's kind of like the decisionabout where, where do BDRs roll
up into right, do they roll upto a marketing function or a
sales function?
(14:38):
And it kind of depends on wherethe best person is to manage
that team.
Who has the best experience andbest chance of making them
successful.
I think the technology formarketing kind of probably fits
in the same thing.
Right, if you've got a strongIT team.
And I mean just knowing what Iknow and it's a little bit old
about the technology that isrequired for the volumes of data
(15:01):
that are out there withconsumer stuff, right, it's just
it's huge Right, and justmanaging that is is a heavy
technology one, as opposed toyou know what you do for B2B
standpoint, which has a lot ofdata but not even close.
B2b standpoint, which has a lotof data but not even close.
So I want to get into a littlebit more.
(15:22):
I mean you've sort of touchedon this and I think we talked
about it in the context ofNordstrom when you were there
when we first talked.
But you've done work whereyou've done customer journey
mapping and then segmentationkind of related to that.
Maybe two parts right parts,right one.
Maybe you could do it in thecontext of the nordstrom one.
But, like, what are some of thethings that, um, you know, why
(15:45):
do you think that's importantfor marketers and maybe
marketing ops teams to befocused on and what do they like
?
What are some of the thingsthat maybe cause them to not do
it?
Well, I mean, I I suspect a lotof people say they want to do
custom journey mapping and theydo something that is maybe not
as useful as it could be.
(16:05):
I think the same thing happenswith personas, because there's
so many different meanings ofwhat that is.
I agree, yeah.
Pradeep Manivannan (16:16):
So let me try to synthesize this.
So I think the question is whyis customer journey important?
And how is MarTech Maroff'steam is going to help you to
design a campaign or to designan omnichannel kind of a journey
for a customer coming into thisretailer ecosystem that's now
stronger than Academy Sports.
Yeah, so to the first thing, tothe's Nordstrom or Academy
(16:37):
Sports, right?
Yeah, so to the first thing.
Like to the first point, likewhy is customer journey
important?
So I'm going to come up with anexample instead of vague
explanation.
So at Nordstrom, there are likeclose to 35 to 45 million or
something like that, nordstromrack and Nordstrom full price
active customers I'm saying justactive customers, so they are
(16:58):
most of the customers atNordstrom Rack and Nordstrom
Full Price.
Act to customers.
I'm saying just act tocustomers, so they are most of
the customers at Nordstrom havethese different tiers called
ambassadors, icon influencer andmember for all the customers
there.
So ambassadors are the ones whocreate all these.
They are the ones who generatemore revenue to the Nordstrom
ecosystem, whether it's digitalor brick and mortar, and icons
fall next.
Now what happens is Nordstromecosystem, whether it's digital
(17:18):
or brick-and-mortar, and iconsfall next.
Now what happens is.
Nordstrom has this interestingcustomer option where they can
purchase a Nordstrom credit cardand if you purchase a Nordstrom
credit card, you can shop atNordstrom stores and they get
extra discount.
And you can like a Costcocredit card.
You can shop at any other placeas well, so Nordstrom credit
card customers can shop at anyother place as well.
So non-strong credit cardcustomers have an option or a
(17:39):
luxury to get into the previewof all the early sales and
anniversary sales, thanksgivingsales.
They get a privilege, they getthis red carpet kind of a
privilege where they can accessthis not strong thing and then
they get a lot of discounts.
Plus, there is a specialtreatment there, and not strong
is famous for customerexperience.
It's the one absolutely yeahsure, right.
So that means that.
So the customer journey, thepuzzle we were trying to solve,
(18:03):
there was, I think, some of thecustomers who were purchasing
not strong credit card.
There is an active churnhappening every two, three
months.
They're just signing up, they,they, they use the credit for
for a month or so and then theyare no longer seeing any values
and they are like trying to, youknow, trying to call the
customer support and they'retrying to, um, disconnect the
credit card or, you know, justdisable it.
(18:23):
So now that there is a loss,there is a churn happening and
then we just want to make surethat we are going to fix that
leaky bucket there, leaks there.
That's one thing.
And then second thing is wejust want to make sure that our
loyalty platform or loyaltycustomers sorry, loyalty
customer base is growing andthen that's going to help the
Nordstrom in general, becauseNordstrom got into the different
(18:44):
kind of a business handbusiness as well, nordstrom
merchandising kind of a platformwhere Nike shoes can be applied
to the Nordstrom platform aswell.
That's a kind of a differentchannel, different experimental
approach they tried.
So you just want to make sureall these top tier customers are
into this path.
So to your question here nowearlier the project like before
I joined RN and the projectbefore that the before image was
(19:08):
we didn't have any idea aboutthese credit card customers.
Why the churn is happening?
Because this was all managed ina different department and this
is all managed from a differentsystem called Chase and Fiserv
and all these kind of redfinancials and all kinds of
systems.
Now Nordstrom at the centralthey're like hey, whether it's
Nordstrom Rack or full price,I'm going to see how can I bring
(19:28):
this to the actual centralizedecosystem and kind of tie it up
to the actual campaign we havehere so that we can reduce the
churn.
I still remember the numbers.
I think 29 percentage of thecustomers do disable the credit
card within three months or so.
And then our vp.
(19:48):
They were like they came upwith this interesting demand
impact number which is like forevery month if you tap into this
customer base, at least one ortwo percentage from this 29%
slowly, like I think within oneor two years, they found out
like close to 300 to 400K EBITjust for a month or so.
So there is a huge potentialhere for this credit card
(20:10):
customers because Nordstrom hadthis ambitious plan to tie all
these digital offline stores andthen they just want to make
sure credit card customers getthis privilege too.
So think, in that case, to yourquestion.
Tying back to the originalquestion, we didn't have any
idea.
It was a totally black box tous.
Why are these customers gettingchurned and what's happening
there?
So we just want to make sure weare building the centralized
(20:31):
ecosystem, not running a usualwelcome journey or a warm-up
journey.
We just want to make sure.
Hey, these are some of theprivileges we have here.
These are the early previewaccess to the Nordstrom platform
and there is the actualtailoring shop available in
Nordstrom where you can go andtap into.
So we were trying to treat themin a different way.
At the same time, we weretrying to mix them with other
(20:53):
kind of customer segments andtap into those kind of
attributes and then run a verypersonalized, hyper personalized
campaign there.
That's, I think, in from thatstandpoint, customer journey is
very important.
We can, so that way we canunderstand how the customer and
the day in the life is going tocome into this ecosystem and
what are the attributes we cantap into for journeys first.
(21:13):
One second thing is we have allthese system.
Our vp always says thatsalesforce I think, uh, it was
12 million dollars for threeyears or something like that.
That was a contractual value orthe amount we used to pay for
salesforce.
So we just know that we tapinto that value and then get
these customers and then makingsure the marketing message our
(21:34):
systems are going to enable themand then so they are the
customer life cycle value.
The cltv number is strongerenough for these kind of newer
customers so sure, yeah, yeah,there needs to be a financial
type.
Michael Hartmann (21:47):
So I've still I guess I'm missing the a little
bit.
So I get right, you were tryingto, if I, if I summarize it a
little bit you were were tryingto identify what was the journey
for those who eventually becamecredit card customers.
And then why did the ones thatchurned quickly?
(22:07):
Why did they churn quickly,right?
So did you go through a processof mapping out that journey?
Is that what you did, to try toidentify where those leaks were
happening, as you said?
Pradeep Manivannan (22:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So now what happens is whenevera customer buys a credit card,
now what happens is for thefirst two or three weeks there
are some discounts given to thecustomer and after a month or so
it becomes dried up and thenthey are like hey, you know, I'm
not seeing any values out ofthis credit card stuff, so I'm
going to disconnect or disablethat.
That's one thing.
And then how do we find out allthese stuff through the third
(22:38):
party?
That's a good question.
Sorry, I missed that part.
So from Pfizer and Chase thereare two different credit systems
.
We were trying to tap into allthose data and then store them
with the credit card databrowsing platform there.
So we were trying to get intothose kind of platform and then
the data attributes, trying tosee hey, when is this credit
(23:00):
card customer signed up?
Is there a real-time pre-screenor all those things showed up.
If that is the case, why thereis a delay?
Why did the customer again callwithin 15 or 20 days, so that
it's a zero percentage, one zeropercentage interest rate and
all those kind of stuff?
We were trying to have a surveyfor all those kind of dropped
customers and then trying to tapinto those values, unstructured
(23:21):
data, and then get into thisNordstrom ecosystem to make sure
that we are running somefilters on top of those kind of
survey data so that we can runan omnichannel journey based on
that.
So, that being said, I think toyour question.
I think we were trying to getthis data from survey through
(23:41):
third-party system andeverything through Fiserv and
Chase and then tying it up withthe actual purchase data and
transactional data andcentralized system.
Michael Hartmann (23:50):
Okay.
So what did you end up doing?
Did you build out some new likechange something about how that
onboarding and posts?
You called it a purchase butlike post sign up, I guess for
the card.
How that happened.
Pradeep Manivannan (24:08):
Yeah, so that's a good point.
So I think what we were tryingto do is this was treated pretty
independently, michael, likethe Nordstrom credit card
customers.
They were not into thisecosystem, so Nordstrom had this
terminology called nordic clubfor all the loyalty customers
yeah.
So they are like hey, you know,first thing I'm going to try is
this is again a combination ofbusiness, both more of strategic
(24:30):
decisions.
So they just want to make surethat, by default, if you're
buying a credit card, you'regoing to participate at the
nordic club.
That's one thing.
And then there was a welcomejourney that was going in, and
then there was another.
As part of the welcome journey,we didn't want to do just a
mundane a welcome to thisNordstrom platform because it's
a Nordstrom retailer thing andjust 15-person sale or something
(24:51):
like that.
We just want to educate themand give them several other
privileges, like hey, you get anearly access to the anniversary
sale and the account privilegesand all those kind of stuff.
So, in a nutshell, we wererunning a 30-day customer
journey, email and push combined.
This was developed inSalesforce Marketing Cloud
(25:12):
Journey Builder.
So I was the one who wasworking with the credit card
Nordstrom credit productmanagers and then the actual
marketing strategy directors andleadership here and then the
content team in terms of how canwe make sure that the the
actual credit product plus thecontent content is king these
days plus the strategy alignedfor these newly joined credit
(25:36):
card customers and run a verysmooth 30-day journey.
I think we had seven, sixemails one transactional email
just for the six promotionalemails, one transactional email
if a credit card customer goesand activates the card and then
couple of push push messagesalong with this.
So this is purely omni-channelemail plus push combined.
(25:58):
Plus there is a transaction.
Michael Hartmann (26:00):
Push meaning SMS, text Mobile push Mobile.
Pradeep Manivannan (26:04):
Push, not SMS.
Michael Hartmann (26:06):
This is the usual, oh, mobile app messaging.
Okay, got it Mobile appmessaging one.
Pradeep Manivannan (26:12):
That is how we started and this was an MVP
and then the initial numberslook good.
My collect in the after twoweeks, what I'm trying to say is
at the end of sixth week, whichmeans we'd have done with one
month of campaign and then thesecond week of the next one.
We were trying to do thisreadout to the leadership team
(26:32):
and we were just going with thisactual metrics.
So this is an interesting one.
I just want to bring this uphere.
So we were looking atunsubscribed rate, all these
kind of things, but these arevanity metrics.
But we just want to make surethat how many of these credit
card customers are just actuallygoing to the click or whatever,
the CDA button and they areactually going to the ecosystem,
(26:54):
notstromcom or notstromradcom,and doing this purchase, so that
all the URL variables,everything connected and same,
or even brick and mortar, notfrom the actual point of sale
and then doing transactions.
So the numbers where we werestruggling to connect those dots
, but we were there trying tosee how the actual conversion
(27:15):
numbers are going to look like.
But the goal is to reduce thechurn from 29% to 26% or 25% in
the next six months or so, sothat I can get into this EBIT
value there.
So we did this combination ofboth strategy plus the landing
page sorry, the content portion,as well as the email.
Why six or seven emails?
(27:37):
Why not 10?
Why not six?
There were a lot of interestingdiscussions happened, so that
we don't want to bombard themand fatigue them At the same
time, we want to make sure thatthey are on this platform and
doing active business.
Michael Hartmann (27:48):
Gotcha.
So you talked about tying thatreduction in churn rate to EBIT,
right?
So EBIT meaning earnings beforeit comes in tax, right?
Yeah, okay, I'm just trying toremember my finance terms here.
So, when you were reporting onit, like, how did you like, did
you even talk about, did youtalk more about, the financial
(28:11):
impacts of the work done?
Or did you talk about thechange in churn?
Or did you talk, like youmentioned vanity metrics, which
I kind of recoil at these daysbecause I actually think that
they've been given a bad namebecause people call them that
and I think they're still usefulin the right for the right
thing.
Right, they're not ones I wouldgo present to executives, for
example, necessarily, but, um,but, like, talk me through.
(28:33):
Like, how did you connect thedots from here's, what we did to
here was the outcome?
Uh, especially how youcommunicated it to, like, people
who are less familiar with, um,what you were doing, or what
marketing, like, whatmarketing's role is, I guess
even yeah, sure.
Pradeep Manivannan (28:49):
So I think I have some numbers here, so I'm
going to I don't want to rushthis one up, so I'm going to
slowly walk you through thenumbers.
So, vanity method like sorry,yeah, so the click-through
metrics unsubscribe rate isstill good, like, uh, we don't
want to it's.
It's pretty directional, likeit's going to give some some
directions, and that was reallyhelpful for sure.
And then this is how thenumbers were, michael.
(29:10):
So, on a daily basis, onaverage, we were seeing close to
700 to 800 customers joiningthe credit card 700 to 800
customers.
I'm leaving the peak seasonslike July, august, anniversary
sales or thanksgiving sales onan average, 700 to 800 customers
across 310 stores.
(29:31):
That's kind of an average, uh,per year.
Now, okay, after this campaign,within three, four weeks, this
campaign was running for a monthand then at the end of the 30th
day we were like, okay, solet's try to pull some numbers.
And then we had to wait for twoweeks to get all these numbers.
And going to the actualcentralized system we used to
call it as nap, not stronganalytical platform that's where
(29:54):
all this camping data goes backand there's a semantic layer
there where we can pull tableaureports and all those kind of
stuff okay, so it's like a datawarehouse data whatever data
lake, whatever.
Michael Hartmann (30:04):
Okay, exactly, uh, it's.
Pradeep Manivannan (30:04):
It's like a data warehouse data whatever
data lake whatever Exactly, it'slike just a one-liner
definition of NAP.
Nap is more of an in-house CDPbuilt by Nordstrom leadership.
Michael Hartmann (30:17):
Nordstrom.
Pradeep Manivannan (30:18):
CEO has this vision and they want to connect
all this inventory data, salesdata, point of sales and
everything and bring it to thisanalytical platform and do AIML
stuff and everything like that.
Because Nordstrom's customerbase is huge.
The data science attributes areclose to 125 to 150-ish
probably more than that rightnow.
So that's how Nordstrom wasplanning to do.
(30:40):
They had this ambitious visionand that's how it was.
So, going back to the numbers,right, so now 700 to 800 number
customers.
So I'm going to be very clearhere.
So, within like three to fourweeks from the day joined, let's
say September 1st, I'm going tostart this campaign and then,
every day, we are going to getthese kind of 700 to 800 ish
(31:01):
customers on board.
Now we could see out of, uh,like we could see, close to 80
to 100 customers are moving frommember to influencer status.
That is, this is all kind of aballpark demand impact number
from our finance team, so, whichcomes to close to 11%, and then
(31:24):
we could see close to, I think,18% of the customers this is a
big number where they weretrying to do greater than $500
transaction in a month, whichputs them in a different mode
which is nothing but like theymight get into the icon or
ambassador kind of a tieredsegment.
(31:44):
They might get into the icon orambassador kind of a period.
So, if you see this right, Ithink we I still remember the
day it went live.
This campaign went live exactlyon October 31st of 2022,
because that's the Q3 end date.
The Q4 starts from November 1and then it goes until Jan, and
(32:04):
then we want to make sure thatthis campaign goes at the end of
the Q3 so that we can reap thebenefits during Q4 starts from
November 1, and then it goesuntil Jan.
And then we want to make surethat this campaign goes at the
end of the Q3, so then we canreap the benefits during Q4, and
then we can have a good holidayseason numbers and then the
profits and all those kind ofstuff too.
So, that being said, if I justdo a math, I think there were
some numbers taken.
I think, if you close to when Isay 18% of the numbers, it came
(32:29):
somewhere around 1.8million-ish or something like
that for those kind of theoverall customers for that
particular month.
So that's the kind of ballparkwe got from the finance team,
but this campaign was a big hit.
We got from the finance team,but this campaign was a big hit.
And then, from the techstandpoint, we added two new
(32:49):
data science attributes, whichis A, how many of these RAC CC
credit card customers zero tosix months are doing some
transaction and not strong fullprice customers doing some
transactions?
And then, from the Nordic Clubstandpoint, this is where it's
getting interesting, where forevery dollar spent after some
certain threshold you get twopoints per dollar spent or
(33:11):
something like that.
So there's kind of a flywheel,if you see this.
There is this 700 to 800customers joining on a daily
basis.
Close to 54 out of 700, 800customers are moving from member
to influencer.
So that's a good jump.
And then there is a.
That's one number.
And then the second number islike close to 1.8 million.
(33:32):
That's an interesting one whereit's not just influencer, icon
plus ambassadors arecontributing.
That too.
So that is like within the Q4,we could achieve that number and
that's one interesting step.
So from the finance standpoint,we could see that there is some
traction happening there andthere is lesser churn.
Just because we released itpre-holiday season, that might
(33:53):
be one of the interestingstrategy as well.
So from the qualitativestandpoint, we were seeing more
stickiness where the credit cardcustomers are going to the
actual Nordstromcom and RAC andwe could see some optimizing
metrics there from our tech teamto find out hey, you know,
there are more stickiness forthese kind of credit card
(34:14):
customers because we add allthese reward on metadata, on
that, sure, yeah, and then,since we launched it pre-holiday
season, we could see there aremore stuff happening.
But in hindsight what I wouldsee, what I would do.
That is, I think instead of sixto eight different emails plus
push combined, we should havereduced it to close to five
(34:36):
different topics or sixdifferent topics.
I, I, I, I found out as anlittle little or a little little
, uh, overwhelming with theeight different topics and eight
different email contents andpush combined.
I think we should have reducedit to five or six different
topics.
But again, that is just anexample.
Michael Hartmann (34:55):
A little more specific to those.
So I'm curious so you'retalking about this revenue
impact.
Is there any?
I mean, it's hard enough in B2Bto do attribution with complex
sale or something like that, butso you've got the added
challenge here, where you've gotbrick and mortar retail stores
in addition to online purchasing.
(35:16):
Don't you have to go into a lotof detail?
But how did you try to connectthe dots between online I'm
sorry, in-store purchases withthose new customers or converted
customers?
Pradeep Manivannan (35:31):
Yes.
So the question is how do Iknow that these are newly credit
card customers who are doingtransaction, compared to the
existing customer?
Michael Hartmann (35:39):
Well, no, like , how do you know that they're
doing transaction in the store?
And I guess I'm thinking about,like, if they, obviously, if
they use their credit card Iassume their new credit card,
that's easily trackable but thenhow do you do it if they choose
to use a different form ofpayment?
Pradeep Manivannan (35:54):
in a store.
No, that's actually a good onetoo.
Yes, there is some percentageof data where customers do use a
different credit card althoughthey have a not-strong credit
card.
That's something, yes there.
Different credit card althoughthey have a not strong credit
card, that's something.
Yes, that's there is.
There is always that percentage, but I don't exactly recall
that percentage.
But now what happens is evenfrom the customer standpoint.
Michael, within 90 days, if youdo a purchase in general,
(36:15):
whether it's not strong creditcard, any credit card for that
sake.
I bought alaskan airlines.
I got, I received 40 000 milesif I spend some x amount of
dollars within the first threemonths.
So I did tap into that uh,reward stuff.
I got 40 000 bonus miles and Ihad a trip to.
So, likewise, I think,nordstrom and this is where, for
a nordstrom customer who areshopping during the holiday
(36:36):
season, the naughty club points,as I said before, for every one
dollar spent, there is likefive x dollars kind of returns.
That's one thing.
And then the second thing isfor non-strong credit cards.
Since there is this, I thinkthis is more of um chase flash,
uh, the finance side of thebusiness, where there is like,
uh, zero person, jpr orsomething like that connected to
(36:57):
it.
So they just want to tap intothat and then see sure, so well.
Michael Hartmann (37:01):
It sounds like the the connect connection
between the credit card and thatperson as a loyalty person.
That's the glue that can reallydo it Correct.
Pradeep Manivannan (37:13):
I think the first one point is more on the
finance side and I think, as anoutcome, we could see that, hey,
the naughty club points aregrowing for these credit card
customers.
Plus we could see all thesestickiness happening, plus all
these purchasing behavior forthese newly joined credit card
customers.
So, yeah, it's spot on.
Michael Hartmann (37:30):
Yeah, it's interesting.
I mean, I know personally likethere's at least one retailer
probably more than one, but onein particular that I think of
when I think of this kind ofthing where, like, I get a ton
of value for the trade-off ofletting them know what I'm
purchasing and using it becausethey are regularly providing
incentives to me, right, yeah,discounts and points that go
(37:54):
towards purchases, and to thepoint where, like any given
purchase which I don't do a lotof, maybe once a month, once
every two months it's not superinfrequent, but it's not like
every day kind of thing, but Ican, I can get in some cases 20
off of a total purchase, likeany given one, like, yeah, it's
(38:15):
worth it.
So, and it's like, yeah, it'snot tied to the card I use, it's
tied to me being saying, oh,this is me, right, right.
Pradeep Manivannan (38:25):
Yes, yes, no , spot on.
I think I'm just trying torelate this to an example which
is happening at Academy Sportswhere I think, by default, we
are working in a situation wherewe are trying to auto enroll
customers into a loyaltycustomer base and then Academy
is also trying to come up withthis Academy-specific it's
(38:45):
called co-branded credit cardwhere they are trying to have a
tie-up with MasterCard and theytry to.
All Academy Sports cards, whichare normal cards, are normal
card customers are going to moveto this co-branded credit card
where you can use it anywhere.
At the same time, we just wantto auto-enroll them into the
loyalty platform.
(39:05):
So Nordstrom has a specialthing too For Naughty Club.
The way they treat the NaughtyClub reward points and
everything is very different too.
And then there is this it'smore of a gamification kind of
stuff, right, and even AcademySports, like, for every $500
spent, I think, we get a $25rewards or something like that,
where a customer can use,customer can share with their
friends, families Nordstrom isvery famous for that where you
(39:29):
get a lot of preview sales andeverything.
So that's, I think it was notjust so.
This is where it getsinteresting, where it was not
just financial metric.
They just want to align this tothis overall vision of customer
obsession and experience.
Sure, sure.
Michael Hartmann (39:47):
Yes, I mean it's interesting to me, like I
don't know why this popped in myhead, but I remember back in
the day when I was a consulting,I traveled a lot back and forth
to houston from dallas and sothe easiest way to do that was
on southwest airlines.
The southwest airlines back inthose days this is pre-911, so
it'll literally what you could.
Literally, they had so manyflights going back and forth
they still do that you couldliterally walk up.
(40:08):
They had kiosks, kind of likean ATM, where you buy a ticket,
like in person, right, you don'thave to have a reservation,
they called it a quick it, andevery one of those tickets you
know what it had on it A drinkcoupon, every one of them, every
one of them.
And if you were a loyaltymember, right, the rapid rewards
, uh, every time you had I thinkit's 10 segments you got a book
(40:30):
sent to you with another 10drink coupons.
Like I, I had so many drinkcoupons, like I would literally
like me.
I was traveling a lot with twoother, two other guys back and
forth to Houston to a clientsite from Dallas, and like we
would get to the airport onFridays and we would just give
people drink coupons because wecould never use them.
All you know, I flew.
(40:50):
I flew all my wife's friends into Dallas one time and they all
got sent a book of drinkcoupons because they flew.
That was when Southwestcouldn't fly.
You couldn't fly into Dallasfrom many places directly, so
they'd had to do stops and solike.
But it's great, like that.
So it was like for me it wasalmost worth it not to have a
(41:11):
reservation.
Yeah, right, yeah.
Pradeep Manivannan (41:15):
No, I think Southwest is famous for that.
I think they they were the oneswho came up with this
interesting stuff even beforecustomer experience.
And now now we are for stuffeven before customer experience.
Now now we are.
For the past 10 years we havebeen talking about this customer
obsession and topic.
Yes, amazon's goal was customerobsession from b1, but I think
southwest airlines were so outof the curve they were doing all
these kind of interesting stuff.
Uh, and right now, like I thinkI, I can see almost every
(41:37):
single company is trying to havethis kind of an amazon effect
where you know, I'm going to,I'm going to pamper the customer
and then put them into thisdifferent mode where they can
continuously come and shop andthey just want to have this
brand as kind of a mental tickmark in their brain.
Like, hey, for any sportsmaterial, kind of a shopping,
(41:59):
I'm going to go to AcademySports.
For anything luxury, not luxury, I'm going to put it any sort
of a good clothes and everything.
Michael Hartmann (42:06):
Like my daughter likes not strong a lot,
she continuously shops and notstrong yeah, um, I wouldn't say
I mean my kids do too, but uh,mine tend to go to uh thrift
shopping now.
So that's, I think, the newthing yes, I go to kohl's as
well.
Pradeep Manivannan (42:23):
I I don't have any preference.
But as an employer I used totake my friends to like, hey
guys, and my friends used tolike that a lot.
Then I used to tell them hey,you know, if you buy a not
strong credit card, you get allthese kind of.
And then they're like oh, weget these benefits.
And I try to.
It's not about promoting that,but I try to say that, hey,
(42:49):
there are several differentoptions here.
Most of them think that it's avery luxury retailer kind of
thing.
But Nordstrom Rack is foreveryone, for my kind of layman,
normal customers too.
Michael Hartmann (42:57):
We're going to have to wrap it up here, but
there's one thing we can'tignore, which is the impact of
AI in all this.
What are you seeing in thisspace?
That was what you talked aboutwith Nordstrom and now what
you're doing.
But how are you seeing what youdid then?
How do you think it would bedifferent now with AI in the mix
, or if at all, and where do yousee it going?
Pradeep Manivannan (43:21):
That's a good one.
So, michael, I'll start withthe very basic thing.
Like in the sense, I think, atnot strong, we were trying to
for most of the content.
This was the practice.
They tried to do ab testing.
And then we were running a, youknow, in a journey canvas.
And imagine, there is a canvaswhich does this customer journey
(43:42):
mapping and everything andthere's an automated camping
going on.
Now they're like, hey, I havethis flash campaign with these
kinds of apparels and the sameflash campaign with blue stuff,
whatever different kind of ahero image or whatever, and we
want the winning version to bedone.
So I remember Salesforcereleased a feature called Path
Optimizer, where we don't needto manually go and pull the
(44:04):
results, do a readout and thenhave a forum to discuss that and
then say EA is the winningversion.
Let's do and bring the pictureof EA for the future sense.
Now Path Optimizer doeseverything through AI, like
where it can automatically goand collect the data and then
you can set it up, whether, hey,I want to go and choose based
(44:24):
on the hero image or for aparticular cta button or for a
particular time frame.
A lot of options are there.
And then that was one of the aifeatures.
I worked.
I started, uh, exploring duringmy non-strong days, and I think
we did that during my humanitydays as well.
So, path optimizer, uh, andthen the content, wise.
(44:44):
So this is a very broadquestion, the ai.
So what I'm seeing is um thereare more and more cdps coming, I
think.
That being said, I think when itcomes to the content side of
things, I'm seeing there aremore ai innovation happening
there.
Content is king.
So what I'm trying to say isit's not just dynamic rendering
(45:08):
of Nordstromcom for severaldifferent customers, it is just
trying to make sure that, hey,do I need to, based on Pradeep's
past purchasing behavior, do Ineed to put a Nike shoes in his
homepage or somewhere on thesite compared to my wife's
shopping behavior, wear jewelryor something like that.
(45:29):
I just want to make sure thatit there.
There is a lot of stuff goingon, and then this is going to
this there are a lot, there is alot of um burden reduced from
these kind of optimizely kind ofa platform where ai can do its
job automatically around theclock, whether it's holidays or
weekends or whatever it is.
From the CMS standpoint, thecontent management system
(45:52):
standpoint, that's one thing.
I can see there is a lothappening there, but from the
data standpoint, I think not somuch the ZIML kind of a data
science model.
Sorry, I missed that part, soI'll be very specific here.
So I think for each segmentsmen's fashion, women's, kids and
everything even and for men's,like for apparels, shoes and
(46:12):
everything they were trying, asI said before, like the non-stop
credit card is this customernon-stop credit card customers
zero to three months, three,three to six months kind of
purchasing behavior, so I couldsee for every single segment
they were having close to atleast 15 to 20 or even more than
that are kind of subcategorydata science attributes so that
(46:32):
we can use it, when I say wemarketing team can use it and
run a very hyper personalizedcampaign.
So there is a constant datascience model which is
automatically learning based onmy purchasing behavior.
This was all there in the past,but this is happening a lot
these days and these are kind ofcustom models too and we are
trying to tap into a third-partydata, like it's not just email
(46:53):
push Sorry, I was trying to.
There is a paid campaign fromVibram too, and there is a
direct mail campaign sent fromdirect partners Blue core for
triggered sense.
So there are like several othersystems involved.
Nordstrom was like, hey, I'mgoing to bring all this data,
let me do this ID stitching andthen do all these kind of a
continuous 24 hours kind of amodel and this model.
(47:15):
I think there is a huge datascience team doing all this,
bringing work there.
I still remember, and I thinkwe constantly get a request to
pipe in these attributes andthat's a very omni-channel
campaign.
Those are some of the elementsI could, on a day-to-day basis,
I could witness, but there is alot going on in the industry,
from the AI model specific, forsure.
Michael Hartmann (47:37):
The feeling I've got is that some of the AI
ML kind of modeling capabilitiesare probably ahead of the kind
of customer capabilities, areprobably ahead of the kind of
customer facing platforms, right.
So, like most of what Iunderstand about where the
content management systems aretrying to do sort of truly hyper
personalized content in themoment, based on you know, a
(48:00):
number of different things goingon, not just attributes.
Right Is probably.
I mean, maybe somebody is outthere doing it and I probably I
always underestimate this, but Isuspect that it's really
expensive to do it, right, yes,so, but I, I mean, I think
that's, I suspect that's wherethings are going, right, I think
a lot of these, like, like you,when I was in the B2C world it
(48:24):
was I built a data warehouse,right, warehouse for connecting
with direct marketing.
We had data scientists.
Today they would be called datascientists.
They weren't.
Back then they were kind ofrestricted on what they could do
based on their capacity andhypotheses and things like that.
That's what I'm really kind of,yeah, interested to see how
(48:49):
things evolve is what happenswith these engines when they can
kind of replace some of thathypothesis generation, right, a
little bit right.
So, anyway, well, listen.
I I hate to cut it shortbecause this has been a lot of
fun.
I think people are going towalk away from this.
Going like all this stuff maybe a little bit scary.
(49:10):
I don't know if they knowwhat's going on when they use
their credit cards.
They should probably alreadyknow.
But anyway, this was a lot offun, pradeep, so thank you for
that.
If folks want to learn more,connect with you or hear about
what, you're doing.
Pradeep Manivannan (49:27):
What's the best way for them to do that?
Yeah, sure, so I'm prettyactive on LinkedIn.
I always call my LinkedIn as myFacebook, so I'm always active.
I keep it open for 24 hours.
So please ping me via LinkedIn.
It's pretty straightforward.
I haven't updated to my currentone, but you can see my
Nordstrom and humanityexperience there for sure.
And then I'm not actively usingTwitter, but I do check once in
(49:50):
a while, once in a week or so,but I can share my LinkedIn
profile.
And then I've written someblogs too, so I can share all
those blogs as well.
But I'm looking forward tocollaborate in the future and
then share some more AI-relatedstuff.
The one thing I'm learning fromthis AI thing is garbage in,
garbage out from the datastandpoint.
So there are a lot of datacoming and even at Academy
(50:12):
Sports we are like, hey, is thisa valid scenario?
Is this a valid use case?
So there is always thisconstant debate on this scenario
because of this third-partysystem, data getting ingested in
this platform and all thesekind of things.
And there are several otherareas involved.
So, that being said, ai isgoing to rule it and we are
(50:33):
forced to get into that, andmore and more companies are
investing there for sure, butyes, yes, sounds good.
Michael Hartmann (50:40):
Well, again, thank you, pradeep.
It's been a lot of fun, thanksto our listeners and viewers and
the rest of our audience.
Thank you for supporting us.
Thank you for listening andwatching.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
you can reach out to Naomi, mikeor me.
We'd be glad to talk to youabout that.
Until next time, bye, everybody.
Pradeep Manivannan (51:00):
Okay.
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