The Remarkable SaaS Podcast #56 - Jon Shalowitz, CEO LiftIgniter - On how AI solves both Data Privacy and Customer Experience challenges in real-time
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation around marketing automation that has the power to transform the way we can turn customers into buyers by using the power of content personalization, and my guest is Jon Shalowitz, CEO of LiftIgniter
Jon brings a wealth of experience in building innovative, fast-growth companies. He was CEO at XDN, where he transitioned the company into a category leader for application delivery services and led the company to a successful acquisition by Fortinet.
He then co-founded CloudUP Networks and led the company as CEO to capture a critical part of the cloud data management market.
He then became the CEO of Badgeville, a leader in Enterprise Gamification that got acquired in July 2016 by CallidusCloud, where, in turn, he created a new division to address the $20B Customer Experience (CX) market. CallidusCloud got acquired by SAP in August 2017, from where Jon moved into an interim CEO role at SnapRoute with the prime objective to re-focus the business. In April 2018, he became CEO of LiftIgniter – a Series A stage startup that helps B2C and B2B companies optimize their Web-based and app-based customer experiences in real-time.
The way LiftIgniter does this intrigued me, hence I invited Jon to my podcast. We explore the challenges marketers have these days in meeting the expectations of their prospects and customers in the digital world we live in, while at the same time ensuring we are 100% compliant with data privacy regulations like GDPR. It has become impossible to keep up with manual segmentation and tagging as we all expect our suppliers to give us a personalized experience based on our behaviors – in real time.
Here are some of his quotes:
“I truly think that the marketing stack is in a position to move from evolutionary change that we had with marketing automation, to now something revolutionary with AI and machine learning.
The big idea is that customer interactions, customer experience, and digital customer experience need to be number one, real-time, and need to pick up on signals in real time. And, related to that, need to be behavioral-based, or need to understand your behavior in the moment, or the users’ behavior in the moment, versus the traditional way of tracking and segmenting and really focusing on who you are.
It's what you are, what you're doing, what you're interested in, in the moment, not who you are, and what you've clicked on at 10 other sites where you came to me.”
By listening to this interview, you will learn three things:
- How you can leverage your 1st party data effectively and drive the best possible Customer Experience.
- That true breakthroughs in technology can only be achieved by taking a distance from the conventional ways of doing things. Too often, we get too engaged with improvement on improvement on improvement, where we should really start with a clean sheet.
- Why as a CEO it’s your duty to gear your company towards the most valuable challenge of your ideal customer, not the most interesting challenge. You need to apply a level of adaptability, and with that you’ll turn customers into fans.