Retail's Holy Grail: An All-in-one CDP, Customer Data Platform to Measure Online and Offline Campaigns

Speaker A: The thing we actually did was like the internal project of building the new CRM, which would actually connect marketing to all sales activities.

Speaker B: One of the key words is omnichannel, Omnichannel experience, omnichannel execution. So many companies are still using different types of systems. Maybe they have systems for the online experiences and then they also have systems for the offline experiences. So for them it's getting more and more important to be able also to connect, as you said, the online experience and the offline experience. And in the meantime offering this data intelligence, supporting the data, uh, execution, the omnichannel experience.

Speaker A: What made us build completely different product specifically, uh, designed for B2Z for online stores.

Speaker B: And that's exactly what we do nowadays. Right. So with our software we are able to combine the online experience and the offline experience for those type of retailers in your company.

Speaker C: Welcome to Smart chickens, a creative B2B SaaS podcast where we try to hatch and explore new innovative demand strategies to drive revenue. In our episodes, we have authentic non scripted conversations with B2B SaaS founders and leaders where we cover deep dives into their professional journeys and uncover the strategies they use or follow in building and working within high growth SaaS companies. So Greg first and Daniel, thank you so much for joining uh, Smart Chickens. It's a podcast dedicated to SaaS companies around demand Chan and really we try to highlight thought leaders that are in the, uh, SaaS space making an impact, uh, both not only on product strategy, but maybe leadership strategy and sort of category design. And so when I think of what salesmanago, uh, is doing in the market, I wanted to get a little bit of your background, Greg, on what brought you there. I know that you had even worked for the largest, I guess sort of like the Google of Poland for some time as a CEO. So you are, uh, not new whatsoever to the world of SaaS, but coming from a, uh, country such as Poland, 38 million population, Krakow, less than a million or maybe a million. Uh, it's a pretty remarkable story that you've been able to grow the company at such a fast rate. So tell us a little bit, Greg, about sort of your background journey that led you into where you are today.

Speaker B: Uh-huh.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's nice. Probably my previous CEO from my corporate world would be really happy to learn that you are calling him like the Google of Poland. I think that when I was working there, actually he wanted to be like the IBM of Poland. The world has changed and I was definitely not the CEO, but I was the cmo of that company. Uh, and that actually brought me where I am today. I worked for 10 years in marketing, and really, you know, that was a B2B company. And I really struggled with, you know, what, what actually how marketing may bring value to the company. Right. So I was actually really bored by just, you know, by. I was, I was trying to be serious, man. And you know, just kind of perspective of all my life going to the trade shows and discussing about banner colors in newsletter was like, was really depressing. So I even like, I even like almost quit the job. And I. Then I had this very conversation. I actually. The funny thing is that I actually quit it. And I went to some, you know, kind of. I got sort of, uh, interaction with some headhunters and I got a position in one of the largest, you know, companies in Europe. I went on the plane to sign the disagreement, and on the same plane I met, quite by accident, my CEO. So. And he. And then we had a really serious discussion of what's going on in marketing, how can we change this? And I decided to stay, actually. And the thing we actually did was like the internal project of building like the new CRM, which would actually connect marketing to all sales activities, which would make, you know, cooperate, uh, those teams together. And then, you know, it's really funny thing because I think that there was a time really that. I think that was the early beginning of the new millennium. And I think that was really the time also when HubSpot was somehow conceiving its ideas of Conn. So I think there were just a couple of places in the world that, you know, kind of the people, some people just started to thinking like, you know, in a similar way, right. So we finished this CRM project that was extremely successful project. And then I was like promoted to some other, to some other very, uh, nice position in one of the largest Internet portals in Poland. And then I, after two years, I decided to just go on my own actually and use that experience to create my own company. And the story, the challenge from the beginning was actually the plan. The objective from the beginning was actually to create a serious software for marketing teams. And really the experimentation started with actually like, you know, like the CRM that would be equipped with like a little bit of execution, right? So that was the CRM with the email marketing. And then, and then we followed actually the path by actually adding to that CRM all this kind of behavioral analytics on the website and um, obviously adding the additional execution channels. But what was really, I would say something that we also did, we didn't really expect. Um, what happened is that we noticed at those times that was like 10 years after I started in this Polish Google, the company's name Comarch. Ten years later when I started to do this sort of project uh, on my own as a kind of objective of my company, I noticed that already in the States companies like Pardot, Acton, uh, Marketo existed and it was all called like marketing automation. But the thing was that those guys in the US were focusing on B2B2B companies. They were creating software for B2B companies. And it's still the case. And what was different here in Europe is that the uh, initial customer base were not B2B companies, they were B2C companies which actually, which actually completely would make us build completely different product specifically designed for B2C for online stores. And I would say because of the fact that at this stage you know the online sales were booming not just in Europe, uh, not just in central Europe but also in like in other countries that gave like a natural, extremely nice boost for the growth of the company. Right. So that was one very, that was one very important, I would say very important story here.

Speaker C: Right, Yeah. I was checking out Greg and I'm going to get to you to do to you Daniel as well because I think what you guys are trying to do and enter into the US market that there's obviously two ways you could either do direct, right? So like literally open up shop here, have a direct sales team inside, outside regional, you know, territory by industry, et cetera. And I, I funny enough I did that for uh, I was part of that for a company that was in out of Finland that I spoke with Daniel about called Happy or Not. They're more CX so they're not a marketing automation platform. Uh having said that I looked you up Greg on YouTube and I found and I came across a very interesting conference you did back in 2015, 2016 which was Noah in London for startups and uh, you know it was a seven minute segment but you had a lot of uh, interesting information to talk about which was one a little bit to what you're saying. Now Europe, uh, the US is very saturated with Martech, especially marketing automation platforms because of the hubspots of the worlds, the Pardot, all the acquisition that has happened, the smaller mid size that have been bought out, uh and they are very much for the most part I would say 85%, 90% of the market is B2B when it comes to marketing automation. Where I see that you and uh, I guess Deliberately through your investors. I forgot the name of the investors. It was like an acronym, CDC or tdc. You mentioned them three T. They were happy with you guys doing burn rate, uh, because they knew that you guys were more a sales organization versus a software. Not that you're not, you're obviously software. You guys have programmers, uh, code and automation and AI that's built into your uh, your sort of like all in one CXN CD platform. But huh, take me back. So that was 2016, now you're in 2021. We all can talk about the big elephant in the room which has been the pandemic and what that's meant to retailers that are more to B2C. I find that you guys are in an interesting space in that your software plays into mid size and enterprise. So Those years of 2015, 2016 from that conference was more uh, smaller I guess, I think customer uh, base. But it helped you grow. And with that growth you guys were able to mature your software and get into an industry sort of niche, which is this B2B to C. I would say because you're selling. I know with Daniel. Conversation I had with Daniel, you know, trying to get into mid size, sort of enterprise level, long sales cycle, very competitive. Having said that, their end game is that they want to do right by their customers. Right. So when I look at the logos that you have on your company, it's incredible. And congratulations on Crocs. Uh, my kids love Crocs by the way. So I know you guys signed up Crocs recently, right? The Crocs of the world, right? The uh, Victoria's Secret. All these others that you have that are global brand names. End of the day they're a business doing business. But they have that interaction with the consumer and really the consumer more than ever I think these days it's a, you know, they have all the power, right? So they can shop online and do 90% of their buyer experience, shopping experience, uh, even before they get into your retail uh, store, if they want to go to retail store or they may just go to the retail store, do window shopping and then go buy online. So we're living in this, in this I think, uh, you know, uh, supply side economy. Right. And it has been for some time where the customer has all the power. So tell me a little bit and maybe Daniel, you could interject what has, you know, the sort of the roadmap that you guys have developed and the strategy that you guys have in terms of coming out strong with the cd, you know, the no Code, uh, really, uh, kind of like the all in one CX CD platform, the CDP platform. How has that all really evolved? And has the pandemic, did that help accelerate, which I've heard a lot of different people talk about accelerations because of the pandemic. Um, and is that maybe a reason why you guys are looking to penetrate the US market uh, in these times? I don't know if Daniel, you want to take a crack at that a little bit and then get Greg's point of view.

Speaker B: Yeah. What I can say, as Greg said for sure we are right now focused on online businesses, e commerce businesses as well. So for sure the kind of pandemic boost a little bit also the trends. Uh, so many retailers are trying also to get online or those who were online and they were also trying to kind of increase their presence to get stronger there. And in order to do that you also need a good solution. Good software today is one of the key word is omnichannel experience, omnichannel executions. And so many companies are still using different type of systems. Maybe they have systems for the online experiences and then they also have systems for the offline experiences. So for them is getting more and more important to be able also to connect as you said, the online experience and the offline experience. And in the meantime you're offering this uh, data intelligence, ah, supporting the data, uh, execution in the omnichannel experience. And that's exactly what we do nowadays. Right. So with our software we are able to combine the online experience and the offline experience for those type of retailers companies. Right. And I remember that, you know, and you and I, we had this conversation Johnny, a couple of weeks ago about uh, uh, what's the difference between an end to end solution versus a Frankenstein type of system? And that's exactly where we help the companies because so many companies nowadays they have this Frankenstein type of solutions and it requires time to learn different type of systems. It requires also the type of know, uh how from different people in the companies. And at the end of the day you still have those type of, you know, data silos. Right. So what we are trying to do, we are trying to kind of eliminate that by offering these end to end solutions and going back to the expansion of the market. Of course Greg is going to tell much more about that. But we felt like 2021 was absolutely good year to expand strongly in the US because we are ready in terms of solutions, we are ready in terms of technologies. And we noticed that even in the U.S. uh, even if it's uh, absolutely competitive market still. There are so many companies that are doing it in the old way, the old fashioned way. That's why there is a need also in the US to come up with a Omni challenge end to end solution.

Speaker C: No, absolutely. I think you guys are definitely hitting um, a business pain which has existed for a long time. I know all of us here are kind of seasoned marketers and have our business acumen. I've got some gray hairs, you can't see them, but I'm on the fourth floor. Guys. I'm 46, right. So I believe uh, we're called for some of us that are in that age group. Greg, maybe you are my contemporary. We're uh, analog digitals, meaning we had one foot pre Internet, pre Jeff Bezos dreaming of Amazon. When there were things like literally going to a store, there was not really online to. Right now we're fully 100% hybrid mode immersed. Anyone wants to buy anything, they just go to Amazon.com. my 4 and 7 year old already know what Amazon.com is because mommy buys things. And so they're like, just buy it on Amazon. Right? I think we're living in very fruitful times when it comes to SaaS. Technology that can uh, be accelerators and efficiency drivers. And one thing that I think that you guys are talking about and I'm seeing on your posts and I'm seeing on the wins, obviously the logos you guys are getting is probably because of that. Meaning there's already an industry that's very mature, which is retail. They were sort of a little bit, not always, but laggards to software, uh, they're on legacy systems. Uh, sometimes change management at these large organizations is not easy. Right. Selling to enterprise we all know could be easily 18 months to two years. Uh, sometimes you might get tired of hearing your sales guy say, we're this close, you know, just one more committee meeting and hopefully the board will be okay and we can sign this contract. Right. Thinking about what Forrester, uh, I was researching and for example Forrester, you know, did a research paper back in 2020. So around the pandemic capabilities of CDPs they need to deliver value for B2C marketers was a report. I found it interesting because we all know silos are bad, right? And I would argue that most organizations try to do away with silos. But unfortunately sometimes, uh, it's just a lot of lip service. It's something that sounds great to talk about in a meeting, but then trying to go through an actual transformation and implementation of A software that's ripping out what 10, 15 years of either internal IT sort of Frankenstein solution has, has turned into the core CRM if you will. It's not an easy thing to do. So they were talking about uh, this is what the IT sort of dovetailed into Greg what the NRF CEO, NRF for the National Retail Federation said Matthew Shea the combination of the vaccine is around because of the pandemic vaccine distribution. Fiscal stimulus here in the US and private sector ingenuity have put millions of people and Americans back to work, which is good. While there are downside risks related to work shortages and overheating economy because we're borderline inflation, tax increases and overregulation overall households are healthier and consumers are demonstrating their ability and willingness to spend. The pandemic was a reminder of how essential, and this is I think is very true, how essential small, mid size and large retailers are to everyday lives of Americans in communities nationwide. So to me if I'm a person sitting uh, in your shoes, I'm seeing this as uh, all hot signals to this is a great time to enter the US market. Right. So talk to me a little bit about that. So now that you guys are looking to enter the US market, sort of what are the strategies you have in mind? What is the sweet spot that you guys are thinking about? Greg? Um, I'd love to understand sort of that, that, that you know, what frame work you guys are thinking about executing here.

Speaker A: Yeah, you pretty, you know, right. In sort of understanding. You know I would agree with everything that you say in terms of, you know, in a good sort of position in uh, you know, kind of waking up in a world that is kind of facilitating the potential growth. However, to be honest, I mean when I set up the company I also like, uh. You are also like kind of, you know, thinking that way because I think if you sort of, if you are uh, kind of accustomed to this kind of approach, you probably would always see like this sort of signs, you know, or it's just about saying, you know, opportunities for yourself. I would say it's not pandemic would give like a global sort of opportunity for certain businesses. But my approach is really is to see opportunities wherever you are, um, whenever you are, wherever you are. I would say that our kind of approach from the beginning was because we were in Poland, here in Krakow, you have great IT guys, great software people and because nobody knew what CTP 10 years ago here in central Europe, what's marketing automation? Because we really built m those categories here. So we were sort of blindly, I would say following the ideas of the customers. So if we like, you know, had like some initial kind of ctp, then we were just adding to that natively, you know, everything they actually wanted. Right. Some stage, you know, turns out to be really hard because managing those kind of really, um, really variety of features, multitude of solutions, it can be, you know, is a challenge. Right? But then, you know, then, then we, and obviously we, you know, in Europe it's like building markets from the scratch. When you look at our sales processes, 80% of our sales processes are run just, you know, around sales managing. There's not no competition that is the customer is, would sort of benchmark us against. Right, so that's, that's Europe. Right? And then, and then you know, when we started to look uh, at the US and we started with Daniela, uh, to talk with, with the partner with partners, which is actually our primary method of giving sort of reaching out to new markets. We noticed that, you know, that the, you know, the US as very, very mature market, you know, and you know, being you know, around you, uh, are you living in an environment which is created by you know, well financed global companies that actually push, have been pushing to marketing teams, you know, separate solutions for everything. You know, that, that made actually that resulted in, you know, in a lot of companies having this kind of, you know, stacks of unintegrated solutions. And now everybody's talking about hey guys, just you have to power that stack with customer data, but you have to add, you know, customer data platform to that. And now and that, that seems like a big really challenge and that uh, and I think that just completely by chance, by accident, our kind of approach of having end to end platform with natively integrated all execution channels turns out to be very appealing to a large group of marketers that we are just in contact right now in the US And I think that this is really a uh, strategy we would like to follow in the U.S. we are. Our primary kind of strategy of entering new markets is always through partners. So why is that? You know, because we, because you know, um, the truth is that you know right now we are like 25 million ARR. Uh company, right? So like quite nice SaaS company, right? Growing by like 50% annually. And this 25 million of us uh dollars of revenue of arriving, uh, we are achieving with only 5 million of investment, right? So you don't find, will not find any other company in the world in the SaaS world at this kind of level of effectiveness and that level of effectiveness has been achieved by mastering uh, of work with the partners which basically hugely reduce the potential needed investment in like enterprise sales. Right, right. Uh, and it's great just for testing new markets and so on. So that's primarily a strategy we want to follow for the, for the US and um, I don't think that you know that I would say pandemic for us. You know everybody like one year and a half we just got, everybody got crazy about that and we were completely sort of in uh a position of uh, uh uncertainty like everybody else. But firstly because we are like self financed and we are re running company with like in a very conservative way, very rational, not overspending. So we were just new. We knew that we are kind of ready for this kind of you know if it's gonna last for like half a year or even a year. We are just ready to survive. But then obviously then it turned out that it was a great, it gave like a huge boost to E commerce. But I would say it's not this boost, this increase in E commerce activity. Uh we would not observe that uh, in like I understandly having uh, thousands of new customers because just switching from this traditional model to like online model for like smaller companies is a tough really thing. So what we notice is that we noticed that those mid sized customers, they are, that already knew what's going on, how to run um like E Commerce. They were experienced, they were experiencing huge really growth. Right. So that was something that we experienced uh as a positive impact on our business. Right. And then we sort of positioned ourselves in this mid market segment right now because we started when you build by the company by bootstrapping. So our natural kind of solution was to start offering software to smaller companies. And but then we you know over the years we've learned that those working with those smaller companies is uh, is nice because there's a quick decision making process. But it's not just the quick decision making about you know going in but it's also quick decision made making about going out. Right.

Speaker C: So you gotta, you gotta worry about your net retention numbers.

Speaker A: Yes. So turn that retention, you know and then like the general mechanics of lifetime value made us slowly year by year kind of switching to bigger and bigger customers. And this is the constant process we are in. Uh, and it's also again a nice sort of coincidence because we came right now to the place where I think thanks to that approach we right now perfectly understand where we are in the market because we are somewhere between companies like Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign which offers you know like I would say smaller easy solutions to smaller companies and between like big guys like Adobe or Salesforce which work on like this very strictly, I would say enterprise, enterprise market. Right. And we, and our kind of sweet spot is this really mid sized B2C E commerce company that has kind of specific just they are moving out from those smaller solutions to our solutions which give them, them like the capability of already like quite nice customization of covering the processes the know how they already have that makes them unique. Right. And they are still very hungry actually to grow. So they would not go to bigger companies like Adobe because they want to stay rather with us because we, we are not just about you know having like a very nice flexible solution but, but we are the same way as they are hungry, we are hungry too and we are very, just very keen to sort of work on the new solutions with them that you know, help them build their competitive advantage. Uh too. Right. So that's I would say our, that story about marketing position obviously it's nice because we, what is nice is that quite a significant number of enterprises wants to work with us just because of the fact they are, they also want to be very quick and very you know, agile. And you know, I mean there's a group of companies that they would not say, they would not go for Adobe or Oracle or Salesforce because the implementation time there is like one year, two years. And here with sales Manago by you know just, just because of the fact that we have this really end to end solution, it happens in two months. Right. And everybody just loves it. Right?

Speaker C: Yes. Total cost of ownership, tco. Right. For especially when you go to mid market and enterprise as Daniel knows through some of your partners that's kind of where the rubber meets the road. Right. So they want to know what's my implementation time. Well, you know, also what reviews do you have about implementation? Because every sales guy will say oh our implementations are smooth. And then all of a sudden an integration or gutting out an old system and putting a new one, it's like putting in new plumbery in like an old Brooklyn subway. Right. Like it's not that easy. But having said that Greg and Daniel, I wanted to talk a little bit about you know, uh, the fact that you guys have a very omnichannel approach. Um, so, so Daniel, when you reach out to your, you know, how are you selecting your, your channel partners? And the reason I asked this is I was an early channel partner for HubSpot, uh and I have been an early channel partner for Drift. So I've got a good amount of experience on how some of these channel partners, uh, have rolled out and uh, I'm curious, I know we've shared a little bit about that, but I just wanted to get your take on how you're choosing, why you're choosing the type of uh, agencies or partners, uh, to help get into the U.S. market, uh, smarter and faster.

Speaker B: Yeah, as Greg said, right now we are in that position that for us is very clear what type of customers we are working with. Right. What we are expecting from our customers and of course also what our customers are expecting from us. So that being said for us, it's kind of, kind of easy to understand what sort of partners could uh, help us out, uh, you know, in finding those customers. Because we know that you know out there there are so many different, you know, media houses, digital agencies, marketing agencies, but those agencies, they're working with different type of customers. So what we do, we always try to, you know, to do a kind of selection and we try to work with all those partners that can bring values to us and at the same time we can give value to them. So the way we can then look for partnership is never like uh, one way thing, but it's always like a win to win approach. Right. So we bring value to the partners because they have the possibility to grow with us, together with us. They have the possibility to offer something totally different on the market for their customers. And on the same way, of course they are also helping us in getting into a new market. So our approach is we are experts in our solutions, we are experts about cdp, is about marketing, automation, omnichannel execution. But on the other side, our partners, they are experts in terms of the market they're working with, the customers they're working with. So whenever we kind of combine those two expertises, then this is where the magic happens because we are combining two different expertises which at the end of the day is going to achieving at the end of the day the same results. Now to being more specific, what type of partners we are working with. Generally we are working with different type of categories. It could be, as I said, media houses, digital agencies, marketing agencies, consultancy companies for different types of categories and organizations. As long as they are working and they are talking with those type of customers, we are eager to work with, it's totally fine. But as I said, we always try to do kind of selection. We see if our partners are working within the same industries, within the same markets, then of course we are always Eager to have a conversation. And we are always eager to kind of grow. Grow together.

Speaker C: Yeah, that sounds excellent. And I would say that based on my experience, you guys are sort of on this HubSpot trajectory. HubSpot also, many, many moons ago, right. Started uh, very cleverly with this B2B approach. But for small businesses, right, they were the solution. But as of late, especially right before the pandemic, I've gone to inbound their big conference in Boston for many years now. They were slowly but surely I could see how they were becoming like transforming, if you will, into a more B2B enterprise. Trying to eat a little bit of market, uh, share from Salesforce and other larger, uh, type of, uh, enterprise level SaaS, uh, CRMs. Right? And it's not even just a CRM. They got the sales. So everyone's trying to do the all in one. And that's been around for some time now in SaaS, right? The all in one is the one throat, you know, to choke solution, which in anybody, you know who's in marketing or sales, they kind of want to have that one vendor to go to, not 10. Having said that, you guys are also, I see that your playbook is also being open enough to have open APIs to the Magentos of the world, Soho Sugar CRMs. And that's obviously a, uh, very common SaaS kind of play to not, you know, to not lose business, quite frankly. Because if someone in that one of the logos that you guys have is also doing their E commerce side, not, let's say Victoria's Secret, let's say their E commerce site is a magento, which I don't know if they are or not, but if they're trying to get the best of your CDP platform, it obviously makes sense to be able to either do it through a zapier integration or through an integration that you guys have with these partners. Talk me through that because I know that when I spoke with, I was lucky enough to have the VP of platform ecosystems from HubSpot, Scott Brinker on my podcast, literally, uh, the month of our election here in the US Last year, I believe it was election day. So I don't know what the heck Scott and I were thinking. But literally on election day we're on a podcast and I'm like, okay, something's wrong with us, but it's okay. So, uh, I remember him, uh, telling me that he's sort of the godfather of Martech here. Scott Brinker has spent a whole career following Martech. He's got this one diagram that I call it the patent, the market. GIA, like Pangea, you know, like, uh, 8000. It went from 2000 martech logos of companies. Yours is probably in there now to 8,000. So that's an exponential growth. But what I was really curious about was what is his vision of the next 10 years of MarTech? Uh, right. And what he told me, and it's on my podcast, but there's a list. One of the ones that really stuck out to me was the no cop, no code. You know, no code is like the next. Like, we could all talk about AI and there's, you know, good, bad and indifferent views on AI. People don't understand it sometimes. And when you don't understand something, you fear it. It's not like we're going to have robots all of a sudden taking over the world. No, you still need what he called what a chai lite, the augmented marketer or augmented strategic marketer. So you're going to have to have a person, a Daniel, a Greg, a Gianni, behind those platforms, still talking to sales, still understanding what the customer journey is and how does your platform software solve their pain. Right. At the end of the day, I think any solution that's out there. And he was sort of talking about this, uh, he did this, uh, white paper with wpp, probably one of the largest, uh, agencies in the world. Right. And their findings were no code, augmented, uh, marketer. You know, basically, how are we leveraging sort of the AI to understand customer touches at the macro level and the micro. Right. Which I think is interesting because that seems to me what you guys are doing with your software. You guys have that Omni Channel, kind of like you can drill deep to see what interactions they had with email, what interactions they had with an offline promo that turned into online action. And so all those, you know, all those data points to someone who nerds out on the other end, that is, you know, being hired to look at the data and from that data kind of tell the story of, hey, guys, we're Victoria's Secret. Guess what? That one idea that we had about the, the Brazilian, the, you know, uh, thong. It's like right now that that's not working. They don't want it in pink, they want it in hot purple. I don't know. Right. It's at that level of decision making in the supply chain that big retailers are always looking at an advantage because the instant feedback that customers these days can give you is unbelievable. You know, right away they can, um, you know, text you after you do your purchase. They can start building a profile of. Gianni likes to go to H and M and buy funky looking shirts. Which by the way I do. So I went into HM the other day as a short story. Uh, that's a good one for you guys to go after. We haven't. And right away I could tell they're very with. They're very, they're with it, right? I buy my, I purchase my. They have a QR code for me to scan. You'll get 10% Gianni, if you just let us, you know, basically email you till the end of days until you unsubscribe. Right. So you die. So I was, of course I'm a marketer, I'm like, I'll support you. I did The QR Code 2 fields, email, phone number. They got me on text message, now they got me on email, right. What platform they're using, I don't know. But sure enough I'm on a cadence. Three days later. Hey Gianni, that shirt you bought of spongebob. Well, we have another special coming up that you know you will enjoy. So it's, that's at the level that we're getting, right? And this is me walking into a store. My wife actually I just helped her open up a little gift shop at a mall. So I'm seeing firsthand what these big retailers are doing right before the big season. Retail makes their money, right? They break even all year and then they actually go into, into uh, the positive, right into, into the black during you know, the last quarter. So right now I'm seeing how everyone's already getting into October Halloween mode. Like how can we get Halloween earlier so we can start having people get in that mentality that Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, spend, spend, spend.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: And it's interesting to see how the online uh, approach to offline as well as very traditional marketing which is you turn on TV now here in the US and you start feeling how the holidays are coming because of the way Target is positioning their ads, the way Walmart's positioning their ads. These are the big box retailers and you know that soon thereafter all the other middle to smaller ones are following, right? At the end of the day, data is king. Customer data now has some issues around it which I think might be interesting for you guys to talk about, which more and more now we're talking about customer data privacy, right? So you've got uh, big players like Apple that recently came out. Greg and Daniel, as you all know with the opt out no longer that you are almost forced to Click the yes, I'll accept anything, you own me, name my child, whatever. Right. What do you guys think about that? Because I think that you know there's the business side to it obviously which on the business side we need info. We don't want uh, cookies to go away. Even though we know that on the maybe uh, ethical side or on the human side it's sort of a burden and annoying for someone to track you to the nth degree. Can you guys both share a little bit of your point of view? And is salesman Aggo doing something to sort of maybe address both sides?

Speaker A: Yeah. I will touch upon a couple of things that you mentioned in your, in your fragment. The first thing is reference to Scott Brinker. We obviously know the guy and we do appreciate his map of Martech actually so big right now that you know, maybe 10 years ago I could see you know, Seismaniago logo there uh, without the microscope. Now I have to use the microscope to do it. And yes, obviously you know, that's the, this is the pain for the marketer. I know that marketing teams are kind of getting more and more out of it budget but it's still you know, I think it's just impossible to you know just get a uh, you know get, take advantage of so huge amount of tools and integrate that ah, seems like really, really hard. So that's, that's kind of one argument for end to end platform which is like if it develops, you know, then obviously the promise is that you know, some new things will appear and the marketer will don't have to buy them from outside and integrate them with it, you know to, to their own, to the current ecosystem. Then there's obviously this no code, no code kind of approach for us it's quite natural because we were uh, growing, we grew out of very small customers. So very small customers, they just expect something which is very self service. So I mean in our kind of growth, tragic story, we managed to switch to bigger customers but still remain this kind of self service oriented to keep that self service orientation. So we give like really what our customers like that is that we you know offer quite advanced features which are you know, self service, you don't have to use the uh, your it to actually implement it, to configure it and so on. Right. So that's one thing. But I would mention here as you know that what McKinsey is because you referred to Forrester, I read a very interesting McKinsey uh, and company report um, on personalization. Obviously they notice that there is A huge potential of value creation in personalization in E commerce. That's kind of an obvious thing. But what was really striking is that the value creation that they notice is most, the biggest potential is in the work, in the sort of facilitation of work between CMO and cto.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So if you have the proper effect of proper personalization customer experience begins with the proper setup of the work between CMO and cto. And if you don't have a uh, technology that's actually taking that into account so that uh, the proper personalization customer experience project will never happen because they have no space to work together. They have to enable the data, pass the data to the marketing team and so on. Right. That's very, very important thing to understand about uh, where the value creation happens here. And obviously when you talk, we are m on this topic, uh, on the subject of customer data and obviously that's a big thing right now. It's directly connected with customer data, with making this data actionable. And obviously we are very, very interested, we are very interested in very, you know, um, intensively observing what's going on in the market. Well, our kind of approach is that we were never, our customers, they would never work on kind of third party kind of data. Our customers, they were always kind of focusing and also we sort of build that approach unconsciously. Um, uh, zero and first party data. This is what our customers are using. Right. So these are the data that the customers are voluntarily leaving to the online stores. And I think that I also read like uh, a great, I think uh, six months ago in the Economist. The Economist had a great, like a supplement about the commerce about and how commerce is changing. And the whole kind of, the whole supplement was called the revival of one to one commerce. And there was like a story of the, there was the story of. Can't um, remember one of the first Nike employees that was owning a shop. It was, I can't remember, Jeff, Jeff, the name was Jeff. And Jeff had one of the first store Nike stores and he was like selling shoes and he knew everything about their customers. I was like, you know, 50 years ago. He knew everything about their customers because he knew which runs they were participating in, you know, which injuries they had and so on. And he was, the people were just leaving him this data voluntarily. And now I think over the years we forgot and I think the commerce retailers forgot that if you have really great relationship with your end customer they are leaving you this data, ah, you know, voluntarily because they want to have a great, because they just because of the fact that they want to have great customer experience. Yeah. So I, even when I'm shopping, you know I'm leaving the data because I want to have you know, properly proper offers on my, in my uh, mailbox. Right. I want to, I don't want to. I want them, I want them to know about me, m everything. And then, and there are a couple of, and there are a couple of um, of research is made recently that show that about like 75% of consumers are absolutely relaxed to leave their personalized data uh, to the, to the commerce, to E Commerce, to retailers if they want, if they know what they are used for. Right.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So that's, that's, you know, that's, that seems very simple. And so what, what what the result on the side of uh, um, the technology is that CDPs and our kind of. And we are just making big progress here. Uh the CDPs and some of the softwares on our space are ah started to be equipped with something we call customer preference centers. Right. So uh, it's a much bigger concept than just gathering behavioral and transactional data about customers and using AI to make some guesswork what the customer might be interested in. M. But customer preference center actually I would say they even. It puts aside this kind of idea of AI and prediction because the customer, when you properly gather the zero and first party data in preference center that means that you don't need AI to guess, you don't need to guess. You have the information kind of on the table and you have to use it properly. Right. So that's how we think that we all evolve to own. I think that the winners would be the retailers, the commerces that actually built enough trust and confidence on the side of their end customers so that they live enough uh, their own customer data just voluntarily and they use it to customer experience.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's an interesting point that you bring up because uh, trust is a big factor obviously. Right. All the review companies that came out when E Commerce started really jumping maybe in like mid to 2015, 2016. Right. Started getting a spike. E Commerce you had companies like trustpilot, all these review type companies and actually not to go too far, G2 like G2 Crowd. I know you guys are reviewed by Capterra. Uh G2 Crowd has you there in a space with HubSpot against ActiveCampaign and others. I was on it earlier before we got on this call and I was like huh, I wonder what G2 crowd consider sales manago. Right. So they don't really consider you guys a CX or cdp, um, although it says that obviously on it, but they put you with HubSpot. So then for those who don't know like what you guys really do, uh, they would think, oh, this is just a marketing automation platform. So am I competing to pay dollars for Salesmanago's services and licenses and SaaS? Uh, SaaS, uh, platform versus A, you know, uh, G2 crowds comparison of you versus HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Marketo, Engage, Pardot, Sharpspring and others. I'm literally reading to you what I see. You know, so I think there's probably confusion there with G2 and not putting you in the probably the right category unless I'm wrong. But going back to what you're saying and what I've heard from, um, conversations I've had with Daniel, you know, the retail space in E commerce has obviously been growing at a like just ridiculous trajectory. Right. Uh, the pandemic was just an accelerator to that. It just kind of added a little bit more fuel. We actually had, I saw and read that National Retail Federation, uh, they put out their sort of like the state of national, you know, the state of retail. Right. Uh, back in June they did this and they have 4.6% rising slightly to 5.2% from previous years. 2018, 2019. Right. But they're really predicting uh, 4.4 trillion this year in the economy. As the economy is accelerating to recovery now. Yes, we have hiccups, uh, that damn variant doesn't want to go away. Then we got eco political problems like Afghanistan. So there's always going to be something. Right. That's going to come in. Having said that, retailers know, and they prepare both on their, you know, front their uh, online stores as well as their actual physical stores for this season coming up. Right. So is there anything that you know, salesmanago is planning to roll out on a roadmap or how are you guys looking to help, uh, retailers that are looking at this 4.4 trillion this year? And how can your solution help them better understand how to get a piece of that 4.4 trillion?

Speaker A: Yeah, so we obviously our roadmap in our case is really important because as mentioned, if the customers are buying end to end platform, they also I think buy some sort of a promise that the platform will be delivered and that will still be uh, end to end platform. So that's obviously very important thing. And our kind of approach to growth of the technology is based on uh, actually using the knowledge from our customers. We have something we call Customer advisory Board uh, it's a group of about 100, our largest customers which we are in contact every month. Which each of them then we have a lot of um, gathering, opinion gathering and just research among them m To understand how the current needs are developing. And this is like mostly this is most. I uh, would say significantly influencing how we grow the platform. So we don't have really something like R and D team. Our R and D team is outsourced to our customers. Right. That's kind of approach we have here. And uh, we see, you know, seven years ago, 10 years ago, we would definitely, you know, understand what's on the market and we would really focus on kind of maybe getting up to this kind of sort of level that is already on the market. I think that since the last. For three years, two, three years. I think that you know, that we somehow came to some, you know, three years ago we came to sort of to this seller. No, you came to the ceiling, right? We came to the ceiling with. By kind of getting up to the, you know, what competition might have. And we started to think like creatively how to sort of escape that competition. I think that we have extremely dynamic software development cycle and that means that we are really developed. We are delivering two big features each quarter, right? Two big features each quarter. It's obviously a big challenge, but it's about education of the customers. Then very hard work on making sure that the customers are adopting that features properly. But if you look at our roadmap, um, then we definitely want to deliver a lot of value. The customer kind of preference center, this is one thing. Second thing is something that is, I would say that is approaching something you said before about this augmented marketer. So we want to make sure that our marketers know more than the other marketers by delivering them uh, a lot of additional analytics and information about what's going on within their data. So we call it, we already launched it, it's called marketing insights. So each user is actually getting automatic AI based kind of insights about the data, about the processes they use and so on so they can take up, make up the decisions much quickly without digging much, you know, too much into the data. So that's that second thing. So I believe that this kind of customer data and preference, the customer data preference center and this marketing kind of insights to be able to deliver like really something which would be more m. Like an intelligence platform. Right. I think that could address a little bit this kind of trillion dollar idea.

Speaker C: This uh, sort of leads me a little bit to I uh, have A rapid fire section, which I think you both will find fun, because I know that I could nerd out on SaaS. SaaS metrics and digital marketing and market animation with you guys for hours. But I'll respect your time, both of you guys. And so I'll go to the rapid section, but before that, maybe as a recap, you know, uh, Greg or Daniel, give me the numbers. Right, so I know back in 2016, November, when you were at that stage in London and you said, hey, we're burned. Our burn rate is great. They want us to burn more. We're a sales organization at heart. You are at 8 million ARR. Now, you just threw a 25 million ARR number to me. And this is, you know, November 2016. Now we're in September of 2021. Is that the actual number of AR right now for the whole company or is that a segment?

Speaker A: No, no, it's 25. Yeah. Right now, uh, we are 300 people. Uh, we are US$25 million ARR. We have. We are just kind of. We just run. We just published to our investors a plan to get to 100 million in the next five years. Right? So that's the plan. We want to be really one of the first kind of SaaS unicorns coming from central Europe. And we have very good plan for that. And we are right now working also, uh, on the new investor setup that would facilitate that growth.

Speaker C: And how many customers do you have? And right now I know there are more. Um, what percentage is US based versus Europe base?

Speaker A: Yeah, so. Oh, well, the Europe is just us is just beginning. I would say that right now it's 2,600 customers. That's our base database of paying customers. Um, and really 90% of that is East Europe. US is growing very dynamically, and we have a lot of confidence that we will have a lot of fun there.

Speaker C: And what is your average contract value, like your acv, and what is your CAC looking like right now?

Speaker A: Okay, so our current, uh, average MRR is US$2,000. Right. And the lifetime, uh, lifetime around 50 months. And CAC? Well, because we are based in Poland and you know, we sort of, uh, we. I think we benefit from sort of very attractive cost, company cost structure. So the cac, we get our CAC paid back in four months.

Speaker C: So, you know, I bet you. I bet you that's because in Krakow, not many people know this, but one of the best popes we've had in the world. I mean, listen, all of us here, I don't know if we're Catholic or not. I'm Catholic. Uh, a background Italian descent for many, many years back in Ecuador. Whatever. John Paul Pope second was from Krakow. So maybe you've got a little bit of that Holy Spirit helping you guys with your CAC and your nrr, which is important. Your NRR is pretty high and it's good. Right, because that's important too. It's one thing to keep your CAC low to grow to 2,600, uh, clients that are paying, but another thing is to make sure that they're sticking around. And the churn is. So what's your NRR look like on average? What are you asking for, like, net retention numbers?

Speaker A: Okay, net retention. Net retention right now is minus one. It's like minus 1%. Yeah. So we, that means that basically, basically the expansion that we have is. We make sure that the expansion that we have, expansion, mrr, uh, is always covering the loss.

Speaker C: Got it? Yeah. Your expansion revenue is more than, more than covering. Because if you're less than 1%, that's fantastic. As you know, in SAS, uh, when you're at mid market, when you're lower than mid market, your churn could be higher. That's most expected. But if your MRR is, uh, you know, the LTV is the right numbers, you're. You're always going to cover that. But, you know, less than 1% is fantastic. So that, that's a tribute to your team because you have a whole, you know, customer success team outside of the sales team that gets them to sign the deal. Then they go away like, okay, now customer support, you handle them. I got to go to the next guy. I got to go to the next client. Right. I get it.

Speaker A: We do it in a bit different way, actually. What we do is that, you know, uh, I think the primary sort of way of making sure that the customers are not leaving is to onboarding them. We sign. The standard way of signing a custom new customer is proof of concept. So the customer gets like a two months free, which automatically then transfers into like a license agreement. If the customer is not saying no after those two months right by, they always know what they are buying, you know, and they always know what to expect from us, uh, from our team. So I would say the sales team, in our approach, the sales guy is just, you know, sending emails. Right. We make sure that there's a lot of customer success during the sales process.

Speaker C: Right, right. Well, that's important. You know what, Daniel didn't clarify that to me that you guys have a very, very uh, robust two month handholding, onboarding. And as you know, in SaaS, you're doing all that work to acquire, uh, a client. And then at the final stages of a marathon, you don't want to fall because your shoelaces are not tied. So the shoelaces not being tied is having onboarding our customer support team that sort of just doesn't do their job. So that's fantastic. So now let me get to the rapid fire section. And so these are going to be questions for both of you. Maybe Greg, you go first and then Daniel, if you could jump back. I'm in my 40s. Right, the fourth floor. So I grew up watching Back to the Future. I love the franchise, but the original, especially if you could go back to the future. You're in that DeLorean with Marty and Doc and you speak to a younger Greg. What would you say to him? You know, would you change anything about your journey? Both, maybe in business or life? Or would you just, uh, leave everything alone?

Speaker A: No change at all?

Speaker B: Me neither. Me neither. Absolutely not. Not even a single regret.

Speaker C: Perfect. Okay, so now I believe that leaders are readers. I have some books now. Let me go books there in the background. I love to get knowledge from other people because I think that's the best way to learn for both of you. Name maybe one or two books. They don't have to be business books that have impacted you, your career, maybe your journey.

Speaker A: I don't read my. I haven't read M M many, you know, business books. The book I've read recently, which was very impactful was Patrick Dervies was French psychiatrists working with hundreds of managers and actually discovering the primary drivers of managers. Great book. Showing actually that the organizations are not KPI driven, they are emotions driven. And there are specific personalities which attract other personalities. And that actually makes some companies work completely different way than the others. Extremely fantastic book.

Speaker C: I love that. Just make sure you give it to me, uh, the title and I'll put it on the show notes. But I'm going to want to read it too. Is it only in French?

Speaker A: No, no, it's, it's, it's in English. I actually bought it on Amazon.

Speaker C: I mean, Jeopard Francis, but I don't know after that. I mean, I know that in Europe you guys are, are easily trilingual quadrangle. You guys speak like five languages. I have Spanish, a little bit of Italian, a little bit of French, and mainly English. Right.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker C: But I'll, uh, definitely put that one in there. Greg, how about you?

Speaker B: Daniel, on my Side, I would say probably I'm pretty, pretty much boring on that. But the book that kind of started all and that kind of marked the way I think and the way I do things, it was for sure, Simon Sinek start with Y. That was, you know, the one is a classic. I know. Uh, but that was the one that kind of, you know, uh, shaped my college career and my professional career as well.

Speaker C: That's excellent, man. I love that book too. 7. Why's keep digging deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper about. Okay, so now you know, is there any app? I mean, you guys are both tremendously busy. You're both tremendously successful in what you're doing for salesmanago. Um, what do you do to unwind? Is there an app you use? Is there a sport you play? What do you do to relax, Greg? Because you probably have packed zoom meetings day after day, meeting with sales, meeting with marketing, meeting with clients. So, I mean, what do you want to go first, Greg?

Speaker A: Yeah, I just, you know, keep running every day, like 10km. I wake up, I take my four kids to school, and I just, you know, I do. I like 10km, one hour round, and I get you. Then I, then I, you know, just come to work. That's my, that's my method.

Speaker C: I love it. I would say that just taking the four kids at school, that's a workout in itself.

Speaker B: Go ahead.

Speaker C: Daniel, what about you?

Speaker B: Outside my professional life, I'm a sportive. I'm all about sport. So I'm a basketball player. I'm also a, uh, runner as, well, not as, as, as much as the Greg. But yes, it's all about, you know, sport. When I'm not working, I love it.

Speaker C: I think that if you stay, uh, healthy in your mind and your, in your body and your spirit, it helps you in every aspect of your life. So I'm a firm believer. I get up, I go to the gym, I play soccer. I'm still on a men's team football, as the rest of the world call it, or an Italy calcio. I'm a huge fan of the sport and just in general that it's good to do something outside of being in front of a computer. So that's awesome. So now, was there, uh, you know, anything that I missed, guys, that we didn't talk about that you want to talk about or that you want to leave as a thought?

Speaker A: Well, I think that you. Well, that was great conversation.

Speaker B: I think that we covered it all pretty much.

Speaker C: Great, great. Well, then the last question I have for both of you is, what's the best way for someone who's in mid size and growing in retail and e commerce side, how can they get ahold of both of you or how they can learn more about sales Managle.

Speaker B: So definitely, you know, definitely they can approach me personally on different channels. For instance, Also on uh, LinkedIn, me and Greg, we are both on LinkedIn right? My name is uh, Daniel Morgo for sure. But also salesmanago.com you know there is so much materials there, so much resources, so many ebooks that you know, whoever, even if you're not considering right now to go with salesmanago for sure you will find so many resources on the website that you know can give you a hint or a sort of strategy to follow for your e commerces, you know, outside, outside of being with salesmanage or not. So for sure website salesmanage.com you know there are a lot of resources and of course whoever can approach me and Greg personally. Also on our, on our channel on LinkedIn for sure.

Speaker C: Okay, I'll make sure to put both your LinkedIn, uh, profiles on there. If you guys have Twitter or whatever your channels are, we'll add it there so that the next Victoria Secret, maybe their competition can reach out to you, you know. Uh, and that's, that's been uh, it's been a pleasure Greg, Daniel, thank you so much for your time and uh, I wish you nothing but the best of luck. Uh, it sounds like a very interesting platform with an incredible growth rate going from 8 million to 25arr in less than like 5 years almost is no easy task. The fact that you're global is also I think very interesting. I see that on your website. You guys have basically, you know, Poland, Germany, you uh, know in London. Now you guys are in the US So it's great to have a company that started in Krakow a little, well, not that little, but second largest city in Poland outside of Warsaw and has incredible vision to create something that five years ago Europe didn't even know they needed. So my hat's off to you guys and again thanks so much for being a guest on um, Smart Chickens. It's a podcast dedicated to SaaS leaders that are looking to innovate, create categories and help clients along the way. Thank you very much guys. Enjoy the rest of the week and day.

Speaker B: It was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for having us here. Very nice conversation, very inspirational. So thank you. Thank you so much.

Speaker A: Thanks for your time. Thanks for your time guys.

Speaker B: Bye bye.

Speaker C: Uh, make sure to follow and subscribe to Smart Chickens podcast at uh, digitechy.com smart-chickenens and all podcast channels. If you if you get value from our podcast content, make sure to leave a review, share and connect with our host, Johnny Quintana on LinkedIn.