‘Ask dumb questions’, says 7-Eleven’s digital lead
Corporates across Australia have had to speed-up digital strategies significantly in the past year, according to senior executives at Adobe, Seven Eleven and Telstra.
“We are hearing that it has moved ten years further in the last year,” said Suzanne Steele, Adobe managing director, Australia and New Zealand.
Telstra Digital, executive director, Jenni Barnett seconded this saying that at Telstra, the digital and data strategy has been accelerated. “We have a first-party data strategy that we have accelerated in the last 18 months,” she said.
Jenni Barnett, Telstra
There are now approximately 4.4 million users of the Telstra app and 6.5 million digitally active customers overall.
When it comes to new customer acquisition, Barnett said that the digital pathway to sales was up from 2% 18 months ago, to 7-8% now. “Our biggest acquisition source, and where digital comes into the fold, is where we use the data and intelligence to offer relevant products to customers,” she said.
“We utilise the Adobe ecosystem on the data side to understand the customer journey and fall-outs. We know when we do it right and well, we see a five times uplift on sales volumes.
“More and more we are moving into a sophisticated AI to build out not just the next best conversation, but the next best experience.
Stephen Eyears
Stephen Eyears, general manager strategy and technology, 7-Eleven Australia said that the retailer had significantly increased its digital strategy in recent years, in particular for its first-party data.
“There are benefits in being late to the party sometimes,” he said. “Our digital marketing capability is somewhere between crawling and walking, with Adobe helping us through that transition. We are not worried about a cookieless future, as we did not have a cookie jar to start off.”
Throughout the digital transition he said that the key was to ask “lots of dumb questions”.
“We asked lots of dumb questions to Adobe, and they very gracefully answered those and this is one of the main things I would recommend to anyone, lean on your partners.
“Our technology investments are there to enhance our physical assets, all our technology is about adding to those investments.”
Both corporate leads agreed that as the digital experience for customers increased, and there was more data than ever before about customers it was important to ask for permission and to be transparent about the data that is held.
“For retention, cross sell, upgrades, all those things… it is very powerful,” said Barnett. “We will not on-sell any data, our data is for our use to enrich the customer experience.”
“If you are going to do anything, make sure you are transparent, make sure you ask for permission,” stated Eyears.
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Olivia Kruimel is the managing editor at Mumbrella. She has more than 15 years of experience in journalism, communications and marketing. Her journalism career began at Fairfax Media (now part of Nine) and includes various B2B publications such as B&T, Travel Today and ALB. As a marketer Olivia has worked for Standard Chartered and various global law firms.
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