Domain (ASX: DHG)

Ben Karpin is a highly accomplished senior marketing leader with a remarkable track record of success spanning over 15 years. Throughout his career, he has excelled in various roles such as business strategy, customer value management, digital and product marketing, analytics, and customer communications.

Please tell us about your current roles and responsibilities at Domain.

As the director of Personalized Marketing, my responsibilities involve designing and executing one-to-one communication strategies for our customers on both side of the marketplace. In order to engage and provide value to both our agent and consumer audiences, it is crucial to deliver relevant communications through emails, push notifications, personalized home screens that facilitate the next step in their property journey. I work closely with our data scientists to ensure that we are leveraging the wealth of data at our fingertips to match the right customers with the right set of messages at the right time. Whether that is notifying next home buyers of changes in the financing landscape, or providing tips to help our sellers maximise the return on their investment.

What are some of the major challenges in the marketing industry space?

I see some quite common and pervasive challenges at the moment. For instance, companies such as Domain, which have experienced rapid growth, face the dilemma of maintaining a consistent and coordinated approach when interacting with customers. It becomes challenging to co-ordinate strategic approaches when companies have separate technologies, databases, and customer engagement platforms for different units within the business. In the past, this resulted in various communications being sent out about different products from different areas, creating a disjointed image of the company rather than a unified voice.

In order to create an optimal customer experience, companies should prioritize their data management, communication strategies, orchestration rules, and the location of their data to create the best experiences for customers.

Also, there are difficulties for companies when it comes to the use of customer data due to customers now understanding the value of their personal data and legislation evolving to better protect this data. It is increasingly hard for businesses to build 360 degree views of customers without articulating a clear benefit to customers. There have been lots of high profile data breaches recently both in Australia and across APAC, and customers are hypersensitive about sharing their information. Therefore, it is essential to have a clear value proposition for customers in exchange their data, and specific processes to safeguard customer data ongoing.

What are recent trends that have evolved to help tackle these pain points?

The most tangible evolution I’ve seen is in the rise of customer data platforms. These platforms allow for the consolidation of multiple first party data points and the ability to connect them to an individual, regardless of whethere interations are taking place on a website, with a specific product, or in relation to a particular communication. It's important to build a 360 degree view to ensure a comprehensive understanding of customers' actions, needs, and experiences.

I’ve also seen the rising prominance of first party data strategies within organisations to protect revenue streams and results, especially across digital channels, in light of the upcoming deprocation of 3rd party cookies. Many organisations capture and leverage first party data today, but their has been a marked shift in focus on areas like identity resolution and testing the activation of 1st party data across channels to try and build learnings before 3rd party cookies become obsolete.

Is there a project initiative that you've been part of recently and have implemented one or couple of these trends to make that successful?

There are two major projects that I've been a part of over the last 12 to 18 months that aim to address these issues and trends for Domain. One of these projects has been a complete transformation of our marketing technology stack. We partnered with Tealium as our customer data platform to aggregate and activate our customer data in the most suitable channels, such as through our account managers or various marketing channels like digital, email, SMS, and traditional direct channels. That was the part a) of our marketing technology transformation. Part b) was introducing a new customer engagement platform, Braze to unify our activation against all of that data. This has allowed us to create standardized messaging rules and prioritize different types of communication across various customer groups.

“Understanding the importance of technology and its various solutions is crucial in today's world. It is equally important to understand your own business and its specific needs, as what works for one scenario may not necessarily work for another.”

If technology transformation is one major project, the second has focused on enhancing team collaboration. While aiming to present a unified front to our customers and maintain coherence in our actions, it is imperative for every individual within the company to fully embrace this approach. We have extensively examined our methods of working and how we align our marketing, product, tech, and data teams to effectively implement personalization. The shift here has been to move from a siloed world to one where personalized listings on our website are coordinated with the personalized communications we send through outbound channels. Additionally, we now ensure that the insights gathered from these activities are shared with our account manager team to facilitate performance conversatiosn with our agent audience. Sitting above all of this has been the establishment of consistent principles for personalization. I chair the personalization council, which holds monthly meetings to address issues, plan big projects, and ensure alignment across teams.

How do you see the marketing industry evolve over the next few years?

I’m hearing more about AI as a new  hot topic, but many companies have been using AI in their work for the past five to ten years, particularly when it comes to audience analysis and segmentation. In the next 12 months, I see significant advancements in the development and scale of communications. These innovations will allow us to tailor our communications to smaller groups or even individuals, resulting in highly personalized interactions. Utilizing AI, various versions can be generated and subsequently evaluated to determine the most effective and valuable options for customers.

Currently, as technology consolidation is occurring, organizations are facing cost pressures on their marketing budgets and are seeking ways to optimize their efficiency by reducing the number of technologies utilized within their company. Some of the major integrated players have the opportunity to capitalize on this trend and offer comprehensive and unified solutions that surpass what was available in the past.

Any specific piece of advice that you'd like to share with your fellow peers or other industry leaders?

In my view, understanding the importance of technology and its various solutions is crucial in today's world. However, it is equally important to understand your own business and its specific needs, as what works for one scenario may not necessarily work for another. The other piece to consider is how enabled your entire workforce feels to leverage the technology you bring in. Great personalization ideas can come from all over your organisation and the only way to ensure that you are utilising that collective brain power is to have a clear change management plan that focuses on what the technology means for different teams and what their role is in bringing personalisation to life for your customers.