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At the beginning of November, as part of our continuing #GROWTH conference series, we hosted #GROWTH Summit London. The summit, held on 2nd November, brought together 70+ marketing professionals, product leaders and more, all looking for insights and strategies on effectively engaging with customers, building a customer-centric journey and getting retention right in today’s inflation-ridden market. 

The colourful Sea Containers turned vibrant with more and more high-energy attendees and speakers walking into the room, sessions were filled with impactful insights from our ten speakers, and networking was in full force.

With the five sessions from growth industry leaders, attendees heard about how they can engage with their customers to deliver delightful experiences that make an impact.

If you weren’t able to attend it, don’t fret! This wrap-up will help you tap into the valuable insights attendees were able to gain from the in-person sessions. To delve deeper into the sessions, you can check out the on-demand recordings available soon or the next in this series of blogs covering each session in detail!

Session 1: Customer Engagement Strategies in Today’s Competitive, Modern Market

If this session were a movie, the star cast alone would be enough to compel you to watch it!

Greg Turtle (Head of Growth of what3words), Aykut Subekci (New Channels Lead of Product Madness), and Hannah Scott (Group Product Marketing Manager of Infobip) kicked the event off by talking about what customer engagement means in today’s highly competitive market, new emerging channels and multichannel engagement strategies.

With attendee feedback like “It was a great event – very well organised – lots of food for thought – I am already starting to use some of the inspiration gained from the speakers”, there is no question on how valuably impactful this session was to the attendees.

#GROWTH Summit London | Aykut Subekci, New Channels Lead - Product Madness

#GROWTH Summit London |Greg Turtle, Head of Growth, what3words

#GROWTH Summit London |Hannah Scott, Group Product Marketing Manager, Infobip

Key Takeaways From the Session

We agree with Aykut Subekci from Product Madness when he said, “Customer engagement is changing for every platform you see. Be it Facebook or TikTok; brands need different strategies to engage with the same customer on different channels. It is very important for us because we want something meaningful. This session saw our panellists discuss what customer engagement means to them in the changing competitive market and what role multichannel engagement plays for their brands

• Customer-centric engagement: Customer engagement is changing. Until now, it was very campaign and sales-focused. However, marketers now have to think about the whole customer journey and every touchpoint they have with the business. 
• The multichannel approach: Multichannel engagement has become imperative to create habit loops that ensure each of your million customers uses your offering regularly. It’s all about reaching the customer where they’re present. Connecting online and offline channels is essential to ensure you’re engaging with them at every touchpoint. 
• New engagement channels:  Include channels like WhatsApp, SMS, Tiktok, and Snapchat to see what helps you best interact with your customers.
• Real-time, contextual messaging: The customer responds better to real-time conversational messaging. 75% of customers would like to engage with brands present on digital channels. An Infobip report based on an analysis of 153 billion messages states that customers using WhatsApp to communicate with brands has increased by 80%.
• 3 key learnings: The session ended with the panellists giving out best practices and predictions for 2023 on growth and engagement trends. Greg Turtle (what3words) emphasised the value of localisation and hyper-localised delivery of engagement. Hannah Scott reiterated the competitive edge conversational engagement would provide brands focused on customer-centricity. Aykut Subekci (Product Madness) said adapting engagement to channels like Tiktok and Snapchat and constantly optimising is key to succeeding in 2023.

Session 2: Owning Multiple Touchpoints to Deliver a Flawless Experience

When a speaker starts their session with a Schitt’s Creek analogy, you know the session is going to be good! Louisa Nicholls started by saying that most brands don’t have a holistic “customer” strategy in place; they have a CRM strategy but no “customer” strategy. She went on to walk the attendees through 8 actionable steps to building customer strategies and the secret to successfully implementing these. “What’s the secret?”, an attendee asked. She smiled and simply said, “be helpful to your customers”. 

Key Takeaways from the Session

• Step 1: Really know your customers: Talk to your customers. Ask customers, “What do you want to see from our brand?”, “What values do you want us to demonstrate?”, “What touchpoints do you want us to be on?”. She used Schitt’s Creek to explain how different customers are. There are Johnny Roses, and there are Stevie Budds and a lot in between.
• Step 2: Don’t alienate your core customers: In an effort to attract younger customers, don’t forget your core, loyal customer base.
• Step 3: Study the disrupters: Think industry agnostic. Monzo is disrupting the Fintech sector, Deliveroo is disrupting the food delivery sector, and Netflix is disrupting the media and entertainment sector. What these brands have in common is they’re all thinking about how they can be helpful to the customer.
• Step 4: The journey mapping crusade: Be there when the customer needs you, give them their space when they don’t.

She gave out four more steps to delivering a flawless customer experience that we’ll talk about in our upcoming blogs!

Session 3: Customer Retention: How to Get It Right

A session that had both MoEngage customers and thought leaders like Nick Bottai (Foodhub) Nicola Fox, (Former Head of CRM for Missguided and Holland & Barrett), David Kohn (Heals and Snow+Rock)and Chris Emerson (Revoola) surely had a lot of promise and the panelists delivered!!

#GROWTH Summit London | Nicola Fox, Former Head of CRM for Missguided

#GROWTH Summit London | Nick Bottai, Marketing Director, Foodhub

#GROWTH Summit London | David Kohn, Multichannel Specialist

#GROWTH Summit London | Chris Emerson, CEO, Revoola

Key Takeaways from the Session

• When asked what a good customer insight for them is, the panel had a unanimous sentiment, and David Kohn summed it up beautifully. He said, “Customer insight is one of the most unfocussed areas in most organisations; marketers think they are getting insight, but they’re not getting actionable insights. To make sure you’ve got actionable insights, make sure your insight passes the “So What?” test. All this means is checking the implications of the insight you have.
• What does it take for a brand to be truly a customer-centric one? In answer to this, our panelist encouraged brands to ask two questions:
  1. What are you doing to enhance the lives of your customers?

2. How easy are you making the process for the customer to extract value from your offering?

• The session then turned to customer shopping trends during the holiday season due to the increased cost of living. Our next blog in this series will cover more insights into what our panelists shared during this portion of the session.

Session 4: Sweatcoin’s Rise to the Top of the Health and Fitness Apps

Sweatcoin is a health and fitness app rewarding their customers for walking by leveraging behavioural science to overcome physical inactivity. This session by Jared Harding, Head of Product for Sweatcoin, walked attendees through Sweatcoin’s remarkable growth story and how they achieved 120M registrations and 30T steps tracked and converted. 

Key Takeaways from the Session

• Go all-in on referrals: You can’t get the flywheel spinning without it + it delivers your best customers 
• Use incentives creatively: Use creative ways to incentivise referrals, e.g. prize draws, competitions and randomisers.
• Own as many channels as possible: Don’t become reliant on the media you don’t own. 
• Leverage spikes: High-intensity, targeted growth spikes can create greater organic multiplier effects.
• Org matters!: Product + Growth teams need to work as one.
• Experiment, experiment, experiment! 
• “Market to the heart rather than marketing to the head” is a strong message James Gold’s session stood by. He covered what customer-centricity meant to Skinnydip London and the most difficult challenges the brand faced as they’ve grown exponentially. The best strategy for balancing customer acquisition and retention.

Session 5: Fireside chat with James Gold, Co-Founder of Skinnydip London

“Market to the heart rather than marketing to the head” is a strong message James Gold’s session stood by. He covered what customer-centricity meant to Skinnydip London and the most difficult challenges the brand faced as they’ve grown exponentially. The best strategy for balancing customer acquisition and retention.

Key Takeaways from the Session

• What has been the most significant shift in consumer behaviour that you have witnessed, and how do you ensure that you remain current, relevant, and competitive?
• What do you believe your company’s greatest strength is right now?
• What are some of the moving experiences and life lessons you can share with individuals who are currently a part of brands in a growth phase?

Want to find out what answers James gave to these questions? Look out for the on-demand recording of this session in the next blog in this series!

About #GROWTH:

At MoEngage, we believe that creating communities, sharing insights, and learning from each other is the cornerstone to building a growth-focused business. #GROWTH summits bring leaders from different industries together as a community to share industry trends. We are proud to host and create a global community of growth marketers, product owners, and entrepreneurs.

What’s Next?

Inspired by the overwhelming success of the #GROWTH Summit London, we’re coming to Berlin to host another star-studded, insight-packed #GROWTH Summit. If you’re interested in speaking at the event or attending, please reach out to us.