#GROWTH Summit Dubai: MoEngage Hosts 250+ Brands and Marketers

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There was a sense of deja vu when we hosted our #GROWTH physical conference in Bengaluru after almost two years! The audience loved it, our speakers enjoyed it, and we were overwhelmed with the response.

To continue with our efforts of fostering peer-to-peer learning, stitched with real world examples, we conducted our first ever event in the Middle East region.

About the #GROWTH Summit Dubai

On 19th May, 2022, we launched an invite-only, insights-led engagement conference, #GROWTH Summit at Hilton Dubai The Walk.

The networking event brought together 250+ consumer brands and marketers under one roof to discuss and learn about new trends in customer engagement, retention, segmentation and personalization.

The idea behind #Growth Summit was to enable our audience to:

• Meet and network with industry peers
• Listen to experts on how they scale growth
• Understand recent trends aiding growth initiatives
• Learn what’s hot in context of engagement, retention, and personalization among other aspects

#GROWTH Kick off with the Keynote Session and Product Announcement

The #GROWTH conference kicked-off with a keynote session around the theme “From Lebanon to Nasdaq” – Anghami’s BIG growth story. Mohammed Ogaily, VP Product at Anghami spoke about the journey of the streaming and distribution platform.

He emphasized on the importance of localization being at the heart of customer-centricity and impact of data on key metrics like increase in number of users and higher customer retention percentage.

Next came MoEngage’s product announcement. Our CEO, Mr. Raviteja Dodda talked about the presence of MoEngage in the Middle East and announced the launch of new products like Proactive Assistant and WhatsApp integration.

With proactive assistant we want to take away the grunt work from marketers and enable them with proactive insights on what’s working and what’s not so you can address it and act on these insights as early as possible, mentioned Raviteja Dodda.

Insightful #GROWTH Discussions with Real World Nuances

Post the keynote and MoEngage’s product story sessions, various insightful panel discussions and fireside chats took place, featuring marketers from Landmark Group, SWVL, Careem, Etisalat, Virgin UAE, Batelco, Mashreq Neo, MDL Beast, Holiday Factory, Sympl, Rain, 6thStreet.com, Damac Properties, and AsterDM Healthcare sharing shared their thoughts around insights-led customer engagement.

The first panel was themed around “How to build and leverage customer 360° view to hyper-personalize engagement/increase LTV”. Speakers from AsterDM Healthcare, Landmark Group and Alghanim discussed why a comprehensive 360 degree customer view was important and how it defined customer-centric campaigns.

“I think customer relationship value is going to replace lifetime value as a key metric that brands are going to measure. This will define what an acceptable CAQ is in the future.” – Aaryan Kapur, Head of Digital Marketing, AsterDM Healthcare.

The second panel discussion was telecom vertical focused and themed around “How Telcos are engaging customers using data and digital channels”. Marketers from prominent brands like Batelco, Etisalat and Virgin UAE spoke about the need for leveraging the right data and why omnichannel is important.

The discussion also consisted of futuristic use cases like Metaverse.

“Enabling retail and giving them the right incentives is just as important as digital channels for a holistic omnichannel  strategy to drive growth” – Bilal Adham, Chief Marketing Officer, Batelco

The Head of Digital Center of Excellence at Etisalat, Shafika Houcine also emphasized on customer experience. She mentioned that, “historically telcos invested in building fast networks, but it is just as important to build great customer experiences across all touchpoints”.

The next power packed session hosted speakers from consumer brands like Damac Properties, MDL Beast, Holiday Factory and 6thStreet.com. Themed around “Acquisition v/s Retention – what matters and when?”, our experts deep-dived into various strategies of striking a right balance between customer acquisition vs customer retention and how brands can capitalize depending on their business model, stage of business and a lot more.

“Selling to a new customer is 5X more expensive than to an existing customer and focussing on retention provides a lot more revenue increase” – Shaily Verma, Director of Data & Insights, Damac Properties.

The acquisition vs retention panel was followed by a BFSI panel themed around “Reimagining Customer Engagement: Blending high-tech and high-touch approaches in financial services”.

Digital native brands like Sympl, Mashreq Neo and Rain contributed to the discussion with insights around various engagement strategies and the role played by technology at critical touch points of a customer to drive personalized engagements.

Key anecdotes from the session are as follows:

• “We segment customers based on their engagement and  assign different teams to become the sole communication point to ensure they’re not spammed and get the most value” – Mashreq Neo
• “Being very local and home grown can be key for local players to compete with global players in cryptocurrency.” – Rain

After an insightful panel discussion around engagement of customers, the focus shifted towards a fireside chat discussion around “What is the Future of Data and AI in Customer Engagement”. To provide nuances and anecdotes, consumer brands Careem, SWVL and Altibbi discussed the pivotal role played by AI and Data analytics to drive personalized customer experience and create ‘segment-of-one’.

The speakers from above mentioned brands spoke about the role played by a unified platform, and how superapps can utilize insights-led engagement platform to create a segment of one.

The panel discussion and fireside session provided many fruitful insights to the attendees and also gave them the opportunity to interact with speakers and panel members.

Wrapping Up in Style

The closing ceremony of the day long event was a keynote session themed “Unlocking the future of customer engagement in a digital-first world” and the keynote speaker was Mr. Jad Hindy, SVP Marketing, Expo 2020 Dubai.

Mr. Hindy spoke about building the right team, engagement strategies during adversities and the role played by AI in personalization.

He concluded his session by quoting – “Post-pandemic, we rebuilt our entire app in 3 months to provide a better customer experience. Expect everything and be willing to change anything”.

In the post-event round up, a small networking session took place, where marketers and brands interacted with each other and unwinded themselves after a day full of learning.

The #GROWTH Summit Dubai edition received its fair share of appreciation and traction on social media.

Here is a quick peek for the same:

MoEngage is laser focused on building insights-led engagement powered by the community and we promise to bring them to you through various events in the future.

To stay updated with #GROWTH events in your region and tap into the collective expertise of the community, join our #GROWTH Community.