Episode summary

The pandemic changed everything in our lives — from how we communicate and work to how we shop. COVID-19 brought millions of people into a new working environment; the home office has become a universal reality. Digital is a core part of most businesses.

While some companies successfully adapt to digital transformation, others get left behind and struggle with adopting new tools and processes. Customer needs are constantly growing, and to keep up with them, developing a change management strategy and a digital transformation strategy is crucial - these are some of the challenges of going digital.

In this episode of CX Education, Heather Garand welcomes Brian Walker, Chief Strategy Officer at Bloomreach. Heather and Brian get into how the digital experience impacts relationships, explain the importance of personalization and optimization of the commerce experience, and discuss changes in data privacy protection.

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Guest-at-a-glance

💡 Name: Brian Walker

💡 What he does: Brian is the Chief Strategy Officer at Bloomreach.

💡 Company: Bloomreach

💡 Noteworthy: Brian is a long-time member of the e-commerce and digital marketing community that started when e-commerce began. He was a part of the team that launched eddiebauer.com many years ago and has been in many different roles across the industry. Today, Brian leads the go-to-market strategy at Bloomreach.

💡 Where to find Brian: LinkedIn | Website

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Key insights

⚡The three pillars of the commerce experience. According to Brian, Bloomreach provides different standards for customers to use diverse combinations of their solutions and the solutions in the market. "The first pillar is discovery, which is where we power search merchandising, product recommendations, and personalization on sites. It's an AI-driven solution. […] The second pillar is content, and it speaks for itself. It's the experiences that we, as consumers or B2B buyers, are interacting with. We power the sites and applications of customers with content solutions, and, again, we are doing targeting and personalization through that product as well. And then, the last is engagement, which is, of course, where we also partner with Sinch. And engagement is an AI-driven engagement solution focused on marketing automation, channel optimization, and marketing optimization. Again, focused on personalizing the channels, the content, and the marketing that a customer receives through email, text, in-app notifications, social, and advertising."

⚡ Digital is a critical part of the business. With COVID, everything changed, and digital became more present. Brian notes that digital grew as an important piece but not necessarily the prime driver. "The trends that we now see really playing out in a more important way were already happening pre-pandemic. The pandemic dramatically accelerated the importance of digital as a way to engage with, inspire, and convert customers. And obviously, there was a point during the pandemic when it was essentially the only channel, and businesses that really hadn't focused on digital, of course, had to accelerate the way they were leveraging those channels dramatically and then, also link together their channels more effectively."

⚡ Customer acquisition has become a lot more expensive and less effective. The pandemic and changes in data privacy protection led to massive changes in marketing strategies. Brian explains how these changes impact acquiring new customers and building relationships, and he notes that bringing in new customers today is more expensive and less effective. "There's been a pretty profound shift over the last few years. The combination of those factors is propelling a&