I am delighted to start to tell you a little bit about what our next session has to offer. You hopefully know about Gibson. I can't imagine you haven't heard their name. They are an iconic musical instruments brand that includes Epiphone, Kramer, and more, each with their own unique identity. And their customers range from beginners just starting out and wanting to play to actually well-known, renowned music artists. Over the last few years, Gibson has been diversifying their sales strategy and complimenting their wholesale business by setting up direct to consumer channels from the ground up and driving a new focus on customer experience. Exactly all the things that we have been talking about from the beginning of today. And I'm delighted to say that we're gonna be joined by Jonathan Martz, who's their CRM manager. He's gonna join us live from Nashville and talk about a bit how he's driving CRM strategy and customer engagement initiatives at Gibson. For the last four years, he's played a really key role in Gibson's shift into D2C and developed initiatives to strengthen customer relationships and really expand the brand's digital footprint. You're gonna see how Jonathan's really deep understanding of both the music industry and digital marketing. Allows them to create meaningful connections between brands and their audiences. And he's going to be joined by a member of my team, Stephanie Dymott, who's a product marketer here at SAP Emarsys. She's based in London. Steph has a wealth of experience or 10 years of product marketing that I know she's going bring to the session. So it's my great pleasure to turn things over to Jonathan and Steph. Thank you, Sarah, and thanks, John, for joining us today as well. Yeah, happy to be here. So I think everyone watching will know Gibson from either being interested in playing instruments or hearing their favorite artists reference the brand. I thought though, since the business is probably a bit more complex than they realize, you could start by just giving us an overview of Gibson and your customers. Yeah, Gibson has been around for 130 years now, 2024 last year was our hundred thirtieth anniversary. It was started by a man named Orville Gibson, who was just making mandolins in his little shop and has obviously expanded a ton since then. So started starting in the 50s and 60s, Gibson kind of hit its golden era and has been, you know, thriving ever since has been played by artists like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. To more modern-day artists like Harry Styles, Noah Collins, Sabrina Carpenter, and a lot of others. As you can see on the screen, Gibson includes a portfolio of brands. This ranges from guitars to amplifiers, pedals, and speakers, and professional audio equipment. So with that super diverse set of customers and products. And yeah, as was just mentioned, as far as business goes. The biggest shift in the kind of the past five years has been a focus on direct to consumer. So that is what we will be talking about today. So before partnering with SAP Emarsys, Gibson relied primarily on dealers to drive revenue. So, dealers like Guitar Center, Sweetwater, in the UK, Anderton's is another one. We sold guitars to them and then they sold them directly to customers. As we've expanded into DTC, that of course has included opening up an online store, so gibson.com and also our own retail channels. So, we have two storefronts now called the Gibson Garage. One is here in Nashville, and then we opened one in London, just over a year ago now, and are looking to open more. And so, yeah, opened up direct revenue channels, but also we've started to, of course, really focus on marketing and having a direct conversation with our customers. So really expanded into email marketing. We have an app which we'll talk about a bit later too, but yeah, really trying to open up direct communication line with our customer so that we can help drive not only revenue, but loyalty. At the same time, guitar buying is still primarily done in person. Dealers still account for most of the revenue for our business. And so, we try to be super intentional about supporting our dealers with our own DTC strategy. So, we don't want to fight them, we want to all work together, and you know, all boats rise kind of strategy. So yeah, and with that, as we mentioned a couple of times now, we have a really diverse set of customer personas. So we've really tried to focus in on personalization and with that is getting the right data. We've kind of focused on three main areas. One, using storytelling to drive cross-channel engagement, using automations and segmentation to drive that personalization, and then bridging that online and offline gap. Thanks, John. And to drive those connected experiences that you spoke about, can you help us understand what data sources you prioritize connecting for? So yeah, you'll see on the screen here, a list of different data sources that we have connected. Most are pretty self-explanatory, but I'll walk through it. Purchase data, this purchase data. Web behavior data is giving us what collections and products people are browsing and then powering things like abandoned cart. I mentioned our mobile app, so. It's called the Gibson app and it's a guitar learning app. So people can go on there and learn famous songs or they could learn different guides like intro to blues or intro to country. So learn both songs and techniques. So we have that connected to the platform. We've incorporated email preferences and interests into our user accounts that we have on our websites to integrate that experience a bit more. And then we are wrapping up our retail integration with the two garage locations, which is super exciting. And then one that we'll talk about a bit later is warranty data or registration data. And looking back at how you pull together your customer data strategy, do you have any learnings or lessons that you can pass on? Yes, I would say being really intentional has been the biggest thing. So we, obviously there's a lot of data sources listed there. We kind of moved in like lockstep and at first focused on like purchase data and web data and then have expanded since then. Yeah, just really trying to be intentional about it and not move too quickly. I think if you try to integrate everything at once, then and everything is kind of done at like a 70% level, it's not going to be as effective as if you really focus then on things that are important and then, you know, kind of expand from there. So that's been our strategy that we've undertaken and it's been good so far. Make sense. And then next, I was hoping you could walk us through how you're using this data to drive personalization. Yes, so you can see a list on the slide there of different automations that we have set up since we've been using this data. Super broadly, they focus on different stages of the buying journey. So, you know, welcome series when they join, lead re-engagement as if they haven't opened or clicked an email for a while. How do we get them back into things? Back in stock wishlist and abandoned cart focused on right before purchase and then post purchase. You know, we have different ones based on what they bought. So yeah, trying to go kind of broad at first and just focus on those different buying stages and personalize it that way. And then Gibson being Gibson, what do you need to think about when adapting these strategies for instruments and music bands that other marketers might not consider? I think it's been two things. So one is that we have a really diverse group of products. So that ranges from strings to t-shirts all the way up to $10,000 guitars. So we started segmenting based on price point and product category. So a good example of that is an abandoned cart email. If you add a t-shirt to your cart and then you forget about it, maybe you get a pretty straightforward email. If you add a $10,000 guitar and you forget about it, maybe you get more of like a white glove experience where it looks like a customer service agent is reaching out to you and like helping you make that buying decision. So yeah, we try to not have like a blanket approach and kind of break it up that way. I think the other factor is that buying a guitar for most people is like a really long buying process, you know, people buy 10 t-shirts a year. Some people buy only one guitar a year, some people buy one every three years. And so there've been certain automations that we've either prioritized or deprioritized based on that. So one of those would be abandoned browse. We tried abandoned browse out and it didn't, for guitars, it wasn't that effective, honestly. People use our website as like a reference. A lot of times if they're just looking up information about a guitar or they just like, like to come and browse and just like look at stuff because it's cool. So yeah, we tried it, there wasn't a lot of conversion or revenue from it. So we stopped doing it for guitars. On the other hand, one that has been important and prioritized is wishlist. So if someone wants a guitar, but they don't have the money yet, they can put it on their wishlist. So monitoring that process, sending reminder emails or back in stock emails around wishlist has become important for us. That makes sense, because even though a Gibson guitar is a cool item, it's also a luxury item and needs to be sold using the strategies that reflect that. Then, with it also being an expensive purchase, I imagine a lot of people want to feel it in person, maybe then go back to researching it more online and then continue that buying journey. So how are you bridging the gap between online and offline? So for us, offline is actually kind of like two channels. So starting with that top row of a couple of dealers that I mentioned earlier, that's our B2B to C side of the business. So with them, it's two things that we're focused on. One, like I mentioned is like actually promoting them through our D2C channels. So, one concrete example of that is we do dealer spotlights where we literally feature dealer inventory through our email channel and are helping drive revenue for them in addition to us. The other factor that goes with our dealers is warranty slash registration data. So anytime you buy a Gibson, you can go to our website and register it, and you get certain benefits that come with that. So we're trying to really push that as that is like our main avenue for getting people from the dealer side of things until the D2C side of things, cause it's on Gibson.com. when they fill out that form, we get their data, we get to learn where they bought it, when they bought it, who they bought from. So yeah, that's kind of our focus with the dealer side of offline with our owned retail stores, the garages, it's a bit different. I think, for most businesses, at least how I imagine it, they are probably focused on driving online to offline. So like, hey, there's a store in your area, go shop it. Like those are the type of emails I get from companies like Allbirds or something. For us, it's actually been the inverse. So Nashville and London are really big tourist destinations and so what we've actually seen is most of our customers and people that walk through the doors are from out of town. And they have a trip planned in Nashville or London and they want to like also go experience Gibson because they're a huge fan so it's like their way to like interact directly with the brand and yes we of course like sell guitars but also we sell a ton of like L&A t-shirts and you know whatever other fun stuff people can just pick up as like a souvenir. So we're trying to capture that data and then drive them to our online e-comm business since they live elsewhere. So yeah, it's like an interesting inverse that is maybe not as common, but. Makes sense. They look amazing, like amazing stores with like music events and Yeah, and we try to focus on like experience, not just like, oh, sell this and that it's like you get to come and experience the brand we have displays like recently in the Nashville garage, we had guitars that were in the Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown that they played in the movie and they were just in there. So super cool. So yeah, you get a come and just see fun stuff. A lot of companies are also using mobile strategies to bridge the gap between online and offline too. So I was hoping you could also tell us a bit more about the Gibson app and the value that it delivers. So I mentioned it a bit earlier, but our app is a guitar learning app. I think for us, there's kind of two different areas of value, one, because it's focused on guitar learning, it captures a different customer segment than maybe the classic Gibson customer. It's capturing people for the most part that are like early in their guitar journey. So in that way, it actually, weirdly maybe aligns with like other brands we have, like Epiphone that also have like products that are more served towards early stages of the guitar journey. So yeah, we get to capture those people early on, of course, for any brand, you want to capture people when they're early in their journey and be with them for the rest of their lives, hopefully. So that allows us to do that. And then... We're also looking towards the future and viewing it as another like marketing engagement tool. So imagine you like go walk into the garage and you scan your app and you can get like, I don't know, maybe get like a free beer like or whatever. Or like your our wish list is like also in the app and more incorporated into like our ecom performance. As we look into like loyalty and things like that in the future the app is definitely like a sleeping giant that we see a lot of opportunity with. Amazing. And then also, how are you driving engagement to the Gibson app? Yeah, so as far as like normal marketing, we are running push and in-app and then also sending email to those, to app users. So we're kind of using push and email and like playing them off of each other, right? And mainly just pushing new content that's in the app. So just drop the song, just drop this course, this guide. It's also being more incorporated into the actual buying experience. So on the retail side, every guitar case has a little pamphlet where you get a free trial. We are a bit more in your face but in a good way with that, with our owned channels, especially e-comm. Um, on all of our PDPs, we have a little badge that advertises the free, trial and you're automatically getting emailed that code, when you buy. Becoming more integrated into the e-comm ecosystem. And then you're also getting that customer data through another source, which is amazing. So it's clear that in a really short time, you've set the right foundations to continue scaling these experiences to your customers. And then what type of business results have you seen off the back of this? Yeah, so I won't read all the numbers off of the slide, but you can take a look at them there. I think the the main themes have, of course, been revenue growth. For context, we before SAP Emarsys, we were like we had email divided up between like two people in the business and we're like using MailChimp. We were little babies. So, yeah, we've seen tons of growth in terms of email or in terms or revenue. And also in terms of engagement, there has been, as we've talked about, a shift more towards automation. So we've been seeing a growth in revenue through our automations. And then finally, that one down at the bottom, as far as the impact on the business overall, email's really been growing. And it's been really good internally as honestly, like other, like business stakeholders and like people higher up above me have like realized the opportunity, not within just email, but CRM in general, and one of the. Well, we may talk about it in a future question here. But I think one of the things that's really concretely led to has been a greater focus around a loyalty program as we start to think about that internally. What would our goal be with loyalty? What would that look like? We already have use cases that we can point to that we've generated through SAP Emarsys and email. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. And Sarah, back to you. Thank you both. That was fantastic. I do have some questions, John, if you've got a few more minutes. I think you prompted a few things. Let's start with online/offline, if we could, because there are a lot of brands that still think about the store engagement as completely separate from everything that's happening in the digital world. And I don't think that's something to think about at all. So maybe you can help explain why when you're really creating a holistic customer experience strategy, you need to be thinking about both, not one and then the other. Yeah, I think one like kind of nugget that I've pulled like, or like thought that has like popped into my head as we've done this work has been like, for us, people that are like showing up to a store are actually like our most dedicated people, right? Like if you're traveling from out of town somewhere, and you're like making the effort to go here, like, those are our highest value customers. So why would we not want to like integrate that into the rest of the things that we're doing, right. So yeah, I think it's not as simple as like one sits over here and once it's over there, I thinking today's world, there's so much crossover between them, and like I said, for us, it's, those are quite really our most valuable people. So why would we not want to integrate that? And then we have a unique case, of course, with like people coming from in and out of town and being able to like open up e-commerce to them. Yeah, I mean, if you go to, especially these days, if you go a store and like take the effort to do that, like you're probably pretty dedicated to a brand. Yeah, and why wouldn't that brand want to keep the conversation going because you can't be in it. There's so many things you could be doing, you know, particularly your guys with your flagship stores, right? There's only so, unless you happen to live in Nashville. You're not probably going to be going - you're not the corner store that someone could go to every week, they're consistent. Consistent interactions and conversations engagement are gonna have to happen in multiple channels aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. And like I said earlier, like some most people only buy a guitar maybe once a year, right? So 95% of our interactions with someone are outside of that, like purchase consideration or actual purchase. So how do we send them valuable content about gear and demos and interviews with their favorite artists? Yeah, we're really trying to get more intentional. I think we haven't talked about as much in this presentation, but we have been really intentional about trying to, um, think about the rest of the journey. That's not the purchase decision and how do we like keep people engaged throughout that, which is more important for us than the average brand. No, I could, or should I could put? Could we talk a little bit about AI? That's something that we've talked about a lot before. But when I kicked things off earlier today, I talked a lot about the fact that there was a lot of AI strategy last year, and really, I think, started to see AI practice this year. And I know that you have embraced it and taken advantage of it. But I also know people still look at it, and I think their eyes get a bit big, and it seems so powerful, but it's complicated. How do we do it? You've got some practical things that marketing and CRM teams can think about in terms of how they can actually start to make AI work for them on a daily basis. Yeah, I think one of the main ways I view it is like making your processes easier. Like I think maybe the stereotypical or like default way people like view AI is like, oh, it's going to take over my job. Like it's gonna send all my emails for me. I'm like, no, like I still need to like do that work. But there are like ways that you can use it that make your day to day life easier. So one that is super tangible is like copywriting for emails, like Emarsys has the AI subject line and preview text generator, which has been super helpful, but also for the body of the email itself. I want to say, I mean, quote me if I'm wrong here. I think that's being worked into the into the platform at some point. I feel like I read that somewhere. But for now, like you can use like chat GPT and just like have it summarize. Like, you know, if we go to like our website and we copy a big block of copy and it's like shorten this to like two sentences that work well, you know, like you can use it to shorten things, but then also like use your own at the end of day like. I know guitars and how to market them better than a machine does. So I can use it to make things easier and then view it through a more critical lens and tweak things. But the upfront, 70% to 80% of the work can be shortened through AI. And then the other thing I was going to mention that's super tangible in the platform itself is like. I think AI stuff was already there, but we just weren't calling it AI, like product affinity segments, like that when we signed up for the platform, that was one of the things that I was like super excited about was like, it looks at what people are browsing on the website and do they have an affinity towards a certain category of products or not? Like that's AI, but we just were calling it a AI, right? Yeah, I think, I mean, thank you for that. Emarsys has absolutely had AI baked into the platform for over 10 years. So absolutely, this isn't new for us and thank you calling it out and noticing that. We appreciate that without a doubt. I just want to touch on something you talked about though because it's something I hear too and you've been very dismissive of it. AIs, you do not have in any view that AI is going to replace you. You have your own unique knowledge, your own voice. AI is there as a helper, but it's never going to replace you or your team. Yeah, I think that's like the easy trap to fall into, especially when you think of, like, I think AI video is like still like really bad, right? Like, so like you see some AI videos and it's like 'What in the the world...' like, come on, like at what point is like AI video going to replace someone like, so I don't know. I maybe have like a slightly different view than other people on it, but. Not that I am naive, but yeah, at the end of the day, we're the experts and AI is a tool that we can leverage to help make our jobs easier. For what I agree, I don't think AI can replace the unique voice of a marketer or a brand. It can help you express it better at some times and make you move faster as you've talked about. But I agree with you. I don't see that. It's a conversation we've had with customers, but actually, I also have a marketing movement, something that we talk about internally. So it's always interesting to hear how other people are thinking about it and their perspectives. Let me throw one last question out at you and then I will let you get back to your busy day. You alluded to loyalty, but what do you see next for Gibson? Is it loyalty? Is it something else that's on your plate? What are you, as you're looking forward, What do you, what do you see? Yeah, I think zooming in more day-to-day stuff, I think a lot of the personalization, customer journey stuff we've talked about, we're really focused on taking that to the next level. I think, weirdly, it was mentioned in the previous session that I got to get the last five minutes of. But yeah, really taking up journeys to the next Level. Is something for us as we have like a very, as we've talked about, very diverse set of customers. But I would say number one on the list is a loyalty program, and figuring out what is loyalty mean to us as a company? How do we want to approach it? There's so many different ways to do it. And then, yeah, focusing on that before we even really get to tools, but Gibson has such a already loyal fan base that it makes sense for us to do. We just need to figure out how to make it work. So yeah, loyalty is on the horizon. Let's let's stay there for a second because I think you said it, loyalty is one thing, but we've talked about consumers and customers a lot so far today, but you've used a really different word, which is fans and I think that's really important I know from a Gibson standpoint all the conversations we ever talked to you guys about that is how you think about it. Can you talk to people a little bit about that because I think thats that's exciting So guitar/music is, we say it's like an irrational decision or it's not... We're not solving a problem for someone, to be honest. Like, you don't need another guitar. Like, yeah, if you're a musician, like you need some tools in your toolbox. But like, for the most part, like, come on, like I have six guitars sitting over seven, there's another on the wall. I don't eat eight guitars, but I have them. I don't know, my husband and my son might disagree with that statement. They tell me that regularly. But all that to say is it's like we're in an emotional based like industry. Everything is based on emotion. It's not based on like solving a problem. And so when we look at our fans or customers like that's what fan means to me is it like an emotional connection to something more so than just like, 'I need another pair of shoes because it rains out and my shoes slip and I need some traction' like, it's about the emotion and the connection that, like, for me, I've played guitar since middle school. And so, like I grew up listening to these bands and seeing them play these instruments. And then, like I want to be a part of that as I grow older. So it's way more like personal for us than I think for an average brand. And so we try to be really intentional with our marketing to basically reflect that, right? Even like little things like how many times we email somebody. Like, I don't wanna... How many times do you really need to hear from a like guitar brand? Like I said, how many times are you going to buy a guitar? Like we don't want to annoy people. We want people to get the content that they really care about. We want to provide value to them and like really build that relationship. So yeah, it comes down for me fans equals like emotion. I love that. Thank you very much. I think that's a great place to wrap things up on. So I think I certainly learned a lot. I hope everybody else did and you've been inspired by what John and his team at Gibson are doing. I think it's really exciting. I loved how you talked about AI, about using music knowledge with technologies to build these relevant engagements. I think that came across really, really loud and clear. So thank you again for your time and the efforts. John's contact details on LinkedIn are on the screen. I know he'd be delighted to connect with any of you. And if you have any questions to follow up, thank you, again, John, for your your time. We appreciate your being here. And look forward to seeing you again and hear you about it. We'll be excited to hear about this loyalty program and how it continues to develop. Of course, yeah, thank you.