Interview with Suvodeep Das – Head Marketing – Kaya Skin Clinic
PW: How important is technology for the success of the modern marketer?
SD: Technology plays a key role in marketing especially in a service industry like ours. Brands in the retail & services space have access to large amounts of customer data that can be leveraged as a part of the CRM and Loyalty programs. This also enables targeted communication to customers and offer customized solutions.
PW: What are your current marketing priorities & how does that translate to technology?
SD: Our Digital & Social media programs have been very successful and we will continue to focus on these areas. We also deploy extensive analytics to track customers right from enquiry up to the time they visit the clinics and bill. Thereafter they become a part of the CRM program. We will continue to leverage technology to generate greater insights into customer behavior.
PW: At Kaya how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?
SD: Digital as a medium is one of the largest revenue generators at Kaya. We are in the Premium skincare business and purchase decisions in this category are very high involvement decisions. Hence our customers do a lot of online research before buying into the brand. Technology has helped us educate and inform them online in a targeted manner and help them make the right purchase decision.
For example – we did a very targeted campaign to drive anti-wrinkle services among women in the 25 – 40 year age-group which gave us great results.
On Social media, besides a whole host of platforms that we are present on, we also leverage our Facebook fan-page to test concepts and new product ideas. The response has been very encouraging – it has also helped us to increase our two-way interaction with our customers. We have also run a lot of online specials in Social media – this has turned Facebook into a medium for customer acquisition. We also have an e-commerce portal and this helps us to retail our products to over 60 cities across India, while our retail presence is only across 26 cities.
Our CRM program is completely technology enabled. We track more than 50 customer segments drive targeted marketing programs for them from time to time.
We also have an SMS-enabled referral program that has helped us in both customer acquisition & retention.
PW: Do you have a separate budget for the IT component of marketing? And how aligned are the marketing and IT functions in the organization?
SD: A large number of IT initiatives are designed to support Marketing initiatives. Infact the marketing team drives technology within the company. Money spent on technology as part of the Digital marketing campaign is in double digit percentages already and will grow further in the coming years.