Hello, everyone. Good morning. My name is Maria, and I'll be delighted to moderate today's Fireside Chat. So I am part of the SAP Amazes team. Proudly, can I say that? And really excited to guide you through a conversation on one of my favorite topics, loyalty. Now, loyalty is obviously not about collecting points anymore, right? It's really about building relationships, communities, and trust. And that is the real shift we're all experiencing. And to bring this to life, we'll be diving into the story of limango, a brand that actually evolved from a closed online shopping community into a leading e-comm platform. But before we actually dive into the discussion, we start with you. So. I quickly wanted to ask you to, hands off, show me your hands. Who was still awake after midnight yesterday? Anyone? Oh, that is actually more than I thought. Cool, that's awesome. Thanks for that energy. Because Aga and I have actually hidden a little surprise under one of your chairs. So if you would grab under your chair and find out if you're the lucky one. Maybe check also the chairs next to you. I don't know, just as a hint. Okay, so keep on searching, you'll get there. Let's get serious now, I promise you get there, so please show of hands again, who has actually a loyalty program in place? Please let me know, H&M, Zara, Adidas, who else? I mean, come on guys. All right, less than I thought. Thank you, though. Loyalty, guys, clearly a topic that touches many of us, right? And that's exactly why we're here today. And we've invited an outstanding guest. And I'm very delighted to be joined by Aga. Who leads the loyalty program at limango? She's been driving retention and gamification strategies for years and is constantly innovating how to basically keep customers excited and engaged, obviously. So today, she'll share unique insights on how to build loyalty that truly lasts. And don't worry about catching every detail on that presentation. We'll share that afterwards so you can dive deeper into the slides at your own pace. All right, so let's kick off things. Aga, for those who might not be familiar with limango, what is limango? One more time. Hello guys, and thanks Maria for having me. Limango is a private shop that is focused on the promotions that are running daily. We are a shop dedicated for families. We have up to 5,000 campaigns running per year, which is quite a lot. 2 million active customers in four different markets. So Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Poland. And yes, we are selling everything that you need for your family. So children's clothing, footwear, household items, everything you can desire. Awesome. Thank you. So this year, I'm honored to say that, even though I was not part of that team, you actually expanded your partnership with SAP Emarsys. So what were the biggest challenges you faced moving from silos to a unified solution? And how did unifying your data really change the way you engage with customers today? So for a company like limango, it's very crucial that we ensure that our customers are up to date with the daily campaigns. Because as I mentioned, there are campaigns that are running for several days, and we want to ensure that they know they are there. That's why it's very important to have one tool that combines all the communication. And I think in 2020, we started a partnership with Emarsys in terms of automation. Beforehand, we had multiple tools for different touch points. So for example, we have one for the newsletter, one for the in web, one push. So as you can imagine, it was really time consuming to combine everything into one seamless journey. So yes, once we started the partnership with Emarsys, we were able to put everything into one tool, one journey, and it saved us a lot of time. So, we are and we will be, I guess, very happy and when I started three years ago at limango, we are really doing quite basic CRM, I would say, so just the vouchers for a selected group of customers from time to time special action, that's all. But in the meantime, we saw a shift in a customer needs that it's not enough to just send a voucher and say: hey, make a purchase. So we in the meantime started to develop our loyalty program which we launched in 2023 for the limited amount of customers in Germany and then 2024 January for all the customers in Germany and as of last month I'm happy to say we also launched in Poland and the Netherlands which is amazing. And yes, it's a great steering opportunity because not only we are pushing purchases like with a regular vouchers, but we are also able to activate customers in a whole new different level. We can steer opt-ins for the newsletter, app opt-in, app login, add item to a wishlist, everything that you can imagine that would be perfect for the setup of the challenge. You can do it with the loyalty program. It was great. And of course in the meantime we started to work hard on the personalization, which we combined and I will talk about it later in more details and it brought great results. So I think in five three years we came a long way But yeah, we took CRM on a whole new level. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. So in addition, during a previous speaking session at a local event, you actually highlighted obstacles that CRM is facing in your company. May you share how did you overcome these obstacles? Of course. I prepared some slides for you. Well done. We'll prepare. Thank you, thank you. It's early in the morning, so I got you guys. Within our team, but also I think in the company-wide reportings, we were able to notice four main challenges that are similar for companies like limango. So the first one, and I think the most burning one, is the decreasing engagement with our newsletters. And it's really alarming because as I mentioned, we need to ensure that our customers are up to date with our campaigns. They know that Birkenstock is starting tomorrow and they will run to limango to make a purchase. So if our customers are not engaging with our newsletters, we have really limited amount of touchpoints and communication channels that we can use. Another one, or actually two, they are quite connected with each other and to the activity of our customers: purchase frequency is decreasing, so it's hard and harder to ensure that our customers are remaining loyal to us, but again, it's not ideal. And the last, but not least, with all the personalizations and innovations we are introducing, It's becoming harder and harder to ensure that we our communication is seamless across all the channels. So it's not just one touchpoint that is personalized, but all of the communication is similar. To the giving challenges, we found solutions that are giving quite hopeful results, I would say. So first of all, new and existing touchpoints. So once we noticed that newsletters opt-ins are suffering, we had to jump in and find a solution. So one of them was to create a new touchpoint that maybe would not replace newsletter, but would give us a new communication opportunity. And the other one was to innovate and improve the existing touchpoints. The next one would be highly relevant automated triggers and personalization. So ensuring that we are contacting our customers only in the highly relevant moment with the highly relevant message. So as little spam as possible. And finally, our beloved loyalty program that is based on gamification. I think it's something that really combines everything and ties it together and ensures that our customers are staying active with our platform on a daily basis. So even if they are not purchasing, there are always challenges waiting for them. They are not always about purchases. But what worked for us is that only all these four solutions combined together are bringing the best results. You cannot just choose one. I would not say it would be the best solution. That is a perfect bridge I can build towards the next question when it comes to relationships over transactions, basically. So let us know, why do you believe that building deeper relationships and not just transactions is actually critical to growth today. That's a great question. Thank you. At the end of the day, we want to ensure that our customers do not just come for one purchase and leave. We want to make sure that they are coming back to us. When they think purchase, they think our shop. When they say winter clothes for children or going back to school, they say limango. That's our main goal. And of course it requires a grade. First experience from the very first login. We want to ensure that our shop is working seamless less and communication is also perfect. And as you can imagine, it's not only about CRM, it involves a lot of teams. So UX design needs to be easy to understand. Campaigns needs to relevant and promotions should be great. And of course, customer service. It needs to be fast and really, really helpful. And as for CRM, as you can imagine, it's very tricky. Because of our business model, we need to ensure we are keeping our customers up to date, which is very on the verge of spamming. And nobody likes spamming, so we need to insure that we are sending only relevant communication in a relevant time. Because Spamming customers not only will make them unloyal, it will also, at the end of the day, make them leave us, which is heartbreaking. I would say, I would that spamming is the biggest enemy for the loyalty. There is no bigger goal for e-commerce than a loyal customer. So that's, I think, my main job to ensure that we find this fine line. Thank you. And adding to this, actually, we're all seeing, obviously, that loyalty is becoming harder to earn, right? The fight for customer attention is tougher than ever. And in our soon-to-be-released customer loyalty report index, 86% of the customers actually said that they do feel loyal to a brand. But overall, loyalty has dropped 5% year on year. So may you please share how have you observed? Loyalty changing in retail and how or what approach actually helped you basically tackle these challenges? Yeah, I do see this trend already in our data. It's becoming easier and easier for customers to switch to a different brand based on price, availability, convenience, or even novelty of the product. And there is a rise of e-commerce platform and comparison shopping, which makes super easy to look for alternatives. And we do see it in our numbers. I mean, something that I've already mentioned. So newsletter opt-ins are decreasing, but also the activity of our customers, which is hard. And I think it's getting already harder and harder to turn new leads into loyal customers. But we did find that three main things are working quite well. So first of all, something they're mentioning constantly, personalization. We need to ensure that the experience the customer is getting is based on data, is highly personalized, and the offer is tailored only for this very specific customer. So for example, we can send push based on the brand affinity that says, today Adidas is starting, make a purchase above 8 euros and get 500 points. So here, we have information about... Adidas being your favorite brand. Also the amount of points that would activate you the best and also the AOV that would push you further from your outside your comfort zone but still will be within your budget. So yeah things like that are working quite well. The next thing would be seamless experience. So something that I've already mentioned but it's just like with every first encounter you want to make sure that you make the best impression. Not maybe leaving a gift under the chair, but at least some nice gesture. And we need to ensure that the first experience, there is no bug. We are not asking for too much data. That there is nothing that would be an obstacle before this very first purchase. Because simply, if there are too many obstacles, customer will not make this purchase and will never come back. So we need to ensure that once we deliver the first time, we will be delivering every single time because we made a promise to our customers to deliver and there is a trust and we cannot breach that. And finally, I would say that it's and continuous improvement. We are analyzing our data both for the loyalty program but also for our communication. We are trying to find the best way through the service with our customers, through A-B tests. Because just like customer preferences, we need to ensure that our tools and strategies are evolving constantly. That is a very great final answer, basically, to the question, because that leads to the next topic, which is called breaking silos, right? Because often, loyalty actually gets stuck in marketing. So what organization shifts have you actually done to basically ensure loyalty became a shared priority within cross-functional teams, right, and product, IT, operations, you name it. That would be really interesting to understand. So let's face it, loyalty program is a huge investment, both time-wise but also money-wise. So the key is to ensure that all of the teams involved have the clear vision and the goal, and also that there are frequent, very frequent, alignments between all the teams involved. So at limango, we have three different CRM teams and many, many, IT teams. So once we decided that we are up for the challenge with the loyalty program and also personalization, we had to ensure that it became a top priority for all the teams involved, not only CRM and IT, let's say. So for IT, it meant, for example, creating the sprints around it. And for me, personally, it meant that I had endless onboardings with different people, not only necessarily from the teams involved, but also, for example, teams that have a direct contact with our customers, because we had to ensure that everybody understood the vision and the goal. But yes, I can also say, for example on based on personalization. It's also the shift in the mindset. Once we decided to go with it, we need to ensure that we are switching from this approach with sending mass pushes to all the customers and making sure that personalization plays the key role. And of course, it sounds ideal and it's not easy, because as every innovation, it requires changes in a daily task. And to be honest, it's up to other team also and my colleagues to change the mindset and understand that these new solutions, new approaches are there for them to use. And they are starting to switch their habits and use it as much as possible. Talking about Pitches, shifting... Customer loyalty obviously has shifted, as we already heard that a couple of times, from discounts and points, basically, to building emotional connections, right? And you also mentioned personalization already a couple times. Would you please share how do you use personalization, automation, or even gamification might be interesting for some of the audiences here, too? To create those meaningful connections? And can you share an example in terms of which kind of approach did drive measurable growth? I prepared a slide for you, don't worry guys, I have you covered and as you mentioned I think the best example will be again personalization because there is nothing more personal than a highly relevant message that was creating just for you. So even a small thing like using a name, it brings much better results, then just amass and push notification for all the customers. So how we do it is that we collect a lot of data about our customers. And we try to understand the preferences. We analyze it extensively. And then we create communication based on it, together with the highly relevant automated triggers and ESL. How does it work? So for example, Maria, we know that you've been purchasing Trollkits, let's say, frequently. And so it happens that tomorrow, or even today, we are starting the new campaign for Trollkits. And I want to make sure that you will know about it. So we are sending you a message in a highly relevant time. So in the morning, just before the campaign is starting, because that's a pro tip, guys. It's when all the hottest products are still available. And we are saying Maria, your favorite brand Trollkits is starting today. Make sure to purchase your new favorite item. And I of course will. Of course you will. But we have several triggers like this. Also the wallet reminder or we know which items you put into your wish list and we can also use it. So for example, we know that you still have two euros in your limango Wallet. For you guys, it might seem like not a lot, but believe me, 2 euros is enough to trigger a customer to make a purchase. So yes, I'm sending you a message saying, hey, Maria, the item you put in a wish list is in a reduced price. Make sure to use these 2 euros that you still have in your wallet. Thanks for your reminder. Yeah, and believe me you will run for that. So the key here is really. That the message is highly relevant, and the more personalized you can make it, the better will be the results. And of course, when it comes to results, I mean, for sure, you think Aga sounds great, but please give me something concrete. And I have you covered, guys. So the data is quite new. For the push with personalization, we see 10% to 15% click rates. When as to the mass sent regular pushes, we see 2% to 3% tops. And when it comes to purchases based on the sent push with personalization, we see up to 10% increase. So I would say that the results are quite nice. Impressive, I can say, even not to be too modest. But the key here I want to highlight is data. I know it's a tricky, tricky topic, but let's not be too scared about it. I think in CRM, it is really the key. How we are collecting the data to, for example, know about brand affinity. We are ensuring that our customers are adding things to the wish list, like Maria is always doing, of course. That's why we know about the trollkits, but also the brands. And we did several special actions to incentivize that. From our customers, and it really, really paid off. So we see more and more data. We are also working on the long-term brand affinities. And yes, there are so many opportunities. Thank you, Aga. Talking about paying off, return, and return on invest as a buzzword here. May you please share a loyalty initiative that you have basically executed with your team that did have a clear, measurable effect, basically, on your business outcome. I mean, obviously. What made it successful. I'm not taking the buzzwords here from you. You can use them. I want to use one. Thank you. I think one, we established the base with the personalization and triggers. We saw a great opportunity within this setup. And the first thing we did with all the data, we've noticed it would be great to actually segment our customers further and automatically assign the challenges. So not manual work. Again, everything automated. It required a lot of work from IT to analyst and CRM, of course, but we sped up A-B test process much more and I think it's much faster because beforehand we were able to maybe test two different setups, two different points that were available for you or difficulty. So I would say, I have eight logins. You have 10 logins, I would get 500.7. That's it. But with automated approach, we were able to speed it up. And now we are doing, let's say, eight different segments and different challenges. And talking about speeding up, I can see the clock here. We have less than four minutes. Two more questions, eventually some questions for you as well. So let's move ahead to the next question. Obviously the DMEXCO's theme, as you all know is: "be bold, move forward". Looking at H2 2025, 2026, please let us know, how do you see AI actually redefining loyalty in your industry. I think loyalty already to the great extent, but I think in the future it will be more visible, is a great tool for giving us more insight about our customers, about our customer behavior, analyzing data and giving us the hints about the next steps, A-B tests and things like that. Of course, it's right now already a great tool for the mundane tasks, for example, when we need to set up the same automated journey. Or for example create the content. Because believe me, guys, after three years, I don't have much more creativity when it comes to establishing a push about the purchase. So AI is a great tool here. And of course, for us human, it's going to be more a strategic role with the insights from AI. And obviously, at SAP Emarsys, we don't just use AI to create content. We put it all, yeah, we put the full power of AI together for you as marketers because that's what our platform is there for, right? It's built for marketers. So to make every customer interaction sort of acting impactful, ideally. And it really begins with advanced calculations where intelligent models surface. Performance insights that guide, hopefully, to better decisions. And from there, targeted AI really transforms those insights into personalized recommendations, into predictions that are tailored to each customer. And to speed up campaign execution, it's really about generative AI, as the name already says it. It's about helping teams generating subject lines, pre headers, product recommendations, you name it, to keep content relevant. And finally, conversation AI brings it all together, boosting productivity, you know? But in summary, and I'm needing to speed up here a little bit, our AI capabilities empower you as marketer really to run data-driven, customer-first strategies to deliver great experiences basically at every touch point throughout the funnel. The final question, dear Aga, and I really think you guys need to listen to that too before you go. If another leader in retail would start from scratch on loyalty today, maybe not just in retail, but in commerce in general, but what advice would you actually give them? First of all, it ain't cheap, but it's damn worth it. Um, so once, just to be serious for a second now, once you decided to do it, you need to ensure that it's your number one priority and everything and everybody is on board with it. But if I will have to give you three main advices would be what I've wrote on slide: first of all, loyalty is not anymore about throwing incentive at a customer. It's about message, timing and the high relevance of the person and also the time. Another one would be that communication needs to be based on data. There is no way to skip it. And also the shopping behavior of our customers. So again, high relevance of the message. And lastly, I would say that Customers should feel that this message was created just specially for you. There was not millions of other customers. It was just you. And I actually might have one bonus advice just for you guys. Make sure that everybody understands the goal and see it as a great opportunity. Because as I mentioned, it's not cheap, but it really pays off when everybody is on board with it. Thank you so much. And I'm pushing forward to this one here. And I want to thank you, Aga, for these great insights. Thank you for listening, dear guys, for today's masterclass attending. And as our exclusive guests, we actually do have, you're actually the only ones who will be having access to our customer loyalty index report, which is not officially launched. It will be launched on October 9th at our SAP Connect Event in Las Vegas. So if you do, feel free, scan the code, download the link. Happy reading. Thank you, guys. Thank you.