The esteemed attendees at the recently concluded EngageMint Riyadh were separated by sectors but united in their support for retention-led growth. The flagship conference, dubbed Asia's biggest retention and customer engagement platform, is organized by WebEngage, the marketing automation company championing brands' growing preference toward retaining customers through insights-led engagement. Co-founder and CEO Avlesh Singh, in his opening address, said that the widespread obsession with acquiring new customers while treating retention as a second-order problem needs fixing. Multiple studies concur. Avlesh's statement carries weight against the backdrop of rising customer-acquisition costs across sectors globally. Echoing that sentiment, Tuba Terekli, CEO of Avon Beauty Arabia, said the rising costs of acquiring new customers are leading to a strategic shift to retention. Tuba is among the new wave of retention-first thinkers harnessing data to derive insights and personalize customer engagement. Personalized communications, according to Saed Basseet, Executive Director of Lean Business Solution, is sought by 81% of all consumers from the brands they buy from. For a government company that works in healthcare, Lean Business Solution's viewpoint underscores the significance and relevance of marketing technologies (MarTech) across public and private sectors. In his keynote at EngageMint, Saed shed light on the uptake of MarTech in Saudi. As it turns out, about 96% of consumers feel loyal to brands that harness technology to cater to them meaningfully. About 84% of consumers are engaging with communications that are informed by and personalized through insights derived from AI analytics. Retention marketing demystified Retention marketing is a set of systematic processes a brand can undertake to retain customers. Big Data, which brands across sectors are in possession of today, is turned into insights using sophisticated AI analytics. Using insights, journey designers, and campaign orchestration tools, marketers can segment the audience and engage the right customer at the right time on the right channel with the appropriate message. As Majed Shahin, CTO of Global Healthcare Co., noted in his keynote, customers want the same experience regardless of what channel they are using. "Consistent omnichannel experiences make them more confident of the product/company they buy from." Brands can execute omnichannel customer engagement and personalization at a machine scale using marketing automation. WebEngage's Retention Operating System is a single-stack solution with all those capabilities, offering businesses a convenient and cost-effective way to collate data, analyze it, derive insights, orchestrate automated campaigns, and measure outcomes. "A tool like WebEngage helps us get back to the basics when we sit as a team. It helps us stay focused on customer pain points and journeys with real numbers/data and no assumptions. This is not easy in startups and, without a proper tool, you lose a lot of time," opined Abdullah Bin Shamlan, Co-founder and MD, Speero. Mohammed Khalil Al Maridi, Senior Marketing Director, Samasco Group, said that EngageMint enabled networking with leading marketers and CX experts in Saudi. "Customer retention is important because it helps foster loyalty with customers, drive sustainable revenue growth, and gain market share. Companies can choose the right partner like WebEngage, harness CRM and marketing automation tools, set effective KPIs, track progress and growth, and reduce their overall media spending," Mohammed added. "With better data awareness and measurement, you can create first-party data and drive social campaigns by feeding the algorithm with insights. Brands that will apply this will gain a lot of leverage in the region," explained Edouard Daou, Co-founder of Acquisit. Flagship event EngageMint Riyadh enabled WebEngage to contextualize retention marketing for regional businesses through local case studies, market insights, and best practices. WebEngage's decision to reprise EngageMint just a year after the Riyadh debut was influenced by an overwhelming customer response to the event and the retention stack in Saudi. Strong appetite for retention in Saudi WebEngage said the KSA operations are leading its growth ambitions in MEA — a statement inspired by the Kingdom's burgeoning digital economy and all the opportunities it presents for retention marketing. Saed Basseet of Lean Business Solution delved deeper into the statistics that paint a promising picture of the digital ecosystem: Household internet penetration in Saudi is over 99%; about 80% of the total population (29 million) use social media; and a Saudi resident spends seven hours on the internet across all devices daily, on average. In a resounding show of its commitment to the local business ecosystem, WebEngage announced its plans to create data residency in KSA by mid-December. This consequential move will see the SaaS company store KSA clients' data within the country, thus aligning with the government's localization laws. Co-founder and CEO Avlesh Singh asserted that about 30% of the steady-state revenue of clients will come from WebEngage, adding, "We are committed to building a community; not just providing software." WebEngage immediately followed through on Avlesh's statement by announcing that the next EngageMint in KSA would be in Jeddah.
