Stay fresh! How to Capture the Moment and Run
7 Tips from the Jazz’s Manager of Contextual Marketing & Customer Value Management
Hira has a wonderful first childhood memory.
“I remember cutting my hair in front of the mirror. I thought I was a hairdresser! My mom always talks about this,” recalls Hira.”
It’s interesting how this early experience connects to Hira’s work at Jazz today. As a toddler, she was just living in the moment, ready to embrace a new look and make that happen herself. At Jazz, Hira’s role is all about keeping things fresh for the customer and making sure marketing offers come at the right moment.
As you can imagine, Hira has much to tell us about capturing the moment and running with it. So, let’s hear her wise advice!
1. The brain and the engine
Think about when you go for a haircut. The hairdresser and you first discuss what sort of style you want. Then, the hairdresser cuts the hair.
In short, there’s a design part and then an operations part. Hira’s team at Jazz has two parts as well. She calls them the brain and the engine.
“In the big picture, we work on the real-time triggers. If a subscriber’s data is about to run out, we get a trigger so we can upsell,” describes Hira.
This requires that the customer value management (CVM) team, who handles business design and crafting relevant offers for the customer, and an operations team, who executes the strategies. Describing the CVM team, Hira says:
“The design team has to have a fine, analytical skill-set. They use data science, algo models, data mining, etc. They use different predictive and prescriptive analytics. This team knows more about the customer more than the customer themselves. We have a 360-degree view and we’re constantly tweaking and improving profiles.”
So, the CVM team designs the offers using analytics. They’re the brain doing the slicing and dicing of the customer, profiling them, analyzing demographics, and segmenting accordingly.
“The operations team makes sure SMS pitches are scheduled and executed correctly. They make sure below the line communications are in place. They utilize marketing management software to execute campaigns successfully,” says Hira.
To Hira, marketing is more than just the right time and place now. It’s about the right context.
As Google research has found, “People are making decisions faster than ever — and they expect to act on those decisions in the moment.” That’s evidenced by a 150% increase in searches related to finding places and products nearby now. Consumers also expect an increasingly personalized experience, with offers related to what they’re doing in the moment.
So, that’s why a contextual marketing strategy needs a brain and an engine that are in sync. It’s the only way to satisfy today’s customers.
2. Find the fuel that propels the operation
Data is the currency of the team, according to Hira. That’s why team members must have an analytical mindset.
“I mostly hire business analysts and contextual marketers. The data scientists are code experts that are constantly looking at numbers and helping our analysts. We put a business value to what they find and ensure accuracy of the model.”
In addition, Hira’s team has statisticians, business analysts, and contextual marketers. They’re a group that’s very sharp with numbers.
“We can’t slack at all. Creating a contextual campaign requires understanding everything from data engineering, or how you find the data, to data science, or how you extract insights, to proper segmentation and clustering of customers. Finally, we must know how to wrap it up in a nice offer.”
For most of the team members, continuous learning is a part of the job.
“We start from a conceptual perspective and then move to execution of the idea and real-time solutions. Most of the team has become engineers because they work with data science and the job requires that knowledge. It’s a very nice learning curve.”
That opportunity to learn is precisely why Hira encourages people to join her team. She believes contextual marketing is the future of business, and those that join her group will learn how to perform successfully in any market.
“Contextual marketing has the minimum cost to market and minimum time to market, but it has an exponential ROI. Joining this team is a great learning opportunity.”
3. It’s happening now
When Hira cut her hair as a toddler, she was doing something spontaneous and in the moment. After all, that’s what toddlers do.
Now, let’s think about this idea of being in the moment. The key to marketing in the digital age is to meet customers in that moment, when they’re getting a haircut or taking the bus. Hira’s team has overcome some hurdles to be able to achieve this.
“With the legacy systems, we were kind of missing on the moment, especially the moment where the subscriber wants to spend — not necessarily when you want them to spend. For example, when a subscriber was watching football, we used to only be able to respond with an offer the next morning. Now, we can make a relevant offer while they’re watching the game,” tells Hira.
“It has been a roller-coaster ride but we’ve successfully moved to an agile approach. We’ve gone through an evolution and have been working on the triggers. We’ve worked on the use cases, like what sort of offers that work when a user is near a shopping mall.
Hira’s team has developed lots of contextual offers. For instance, when users get a smartphone, they get a special welcome to the digital world offer. When customers are outside the network, they get SIM card and data roaming offers.
Additionally, machine learning is being employed by at Jazz to improve product recommendations. Hira has been surprised by how it’s enhanced their ability to make successful pitches to customers.
“It’s kind of like how Netflix recommends what you should view next. The machine learning app takes into hundreds of different data points to predict the next best offer. The tool has helped us boost conversions!”
“We are now using Machine Learning models to match context and offers in the best way possible. In some cases offers that were chosen by Machine Learning converted way better than offers chosen manually”.
So, just as Hira needed the right tools to cut her hair as a toddler and make the most of that moment, she needs the right tools with her to make the best possible contextual offers.
4. Make a better path
With the Jazz xlr8 accelerator, the National Incubation Center, and other initiatives, Jazz plays a huge role in helping Pakistan build a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem. Hira has had the opportunity to work with startups through the incubator project.
“I’ve learned cool ways to brainstorm. I’ve learned how important it is to listen to all ideas. As you grow up, you can develop a blind spot when observing because you’re too focused on your targets. Working with these startups taught me to notice the small things,” says Hira.
While serving as a mentor to the entrepreneurs, Hira also learned the importance of being comfortable with failures, that the norm should be for failures to serve as learning opportunities.
“For the best teams, their mistakes would become jokes and learning experiences. Their culture is defined by those sorts of norms. And this enabled them to stick together longer. I’ve applied some of these norms with my team. For example, I’ve made it the norm that everyone gets to speak in a meeting room.”
As Hira witnessed, the secret to building a close-knit team is about setting the right norms, or expected shared behavior. Experts in workplace culture support this idea. They say having the right norms, and therefore the right workplace culture, isn’t about downplaying individual strengths and quirks for the sake of team unity. Instead, it’s about having the right way of doing things.
To make norms stick, Sabina Nawaz, a global CEO coach, recommends first identifying successful norms, then turning the norms into measurable behaviors. Such behaviors should be tailored for the moment and individual personalities. This allows individualists to do their own thing while still working towards the bigger goals of the team. To make the norms actually become norms, a recurring plan must be implemented and there must be mutual accountability to ensure the processes stay.
At Jazz, Hira describes how Jazz has created new norms as they’ve undergone a digital transformation. This is how they’ve made a better path.
“The learning pace is so much faster. The company is very welcoming and there are no boundaries or red tape. You can learn on the job and even learn with different departments,” describes Hira.
“The culture has changed a lot. When I first arrived, there were more silos and bureaucracy. Jazz has evolved into being an agile organization with no closed doors. People are open to failing and making mistakes. The culture is more collaborative. Jazz is one of the most agile organizations in Pakistan. It’s an employer of choice.
5. Have grit!
“Be braver. Take more risks. Never be scared of going out of your comfort zone. Because that’s where the growth lies. Constantly strive for growth. That’s the advice I would give my childhood self,” exclaims Hira.
During her career, Hira has made a point to seek new opportunities. She studied computer engineering at school and then got a job in telecom as a systems engineer before moving to customer value management. Following that, she got a job with Jazz as a CVM specialist.
“My hands-on experience has been in business and marketing but my education background is technical. My role does require technical and commercial knowledge. Having both enables me to understand all that’s going on and how we can optimize our processes and success.”
As a leader at Jazz, Hira is often using her own personal story to provide advice. Here’s one piece of advice she said to us that was especially empowering (take note!):
“Passion and grit are key. The grit to perform and make your dreams come true is something that never gets old. And it’s something that anyone, no matter your age or where you come from, recognizes and appreciates.”
That’s awesome advice. As long as you have grit, or what experts say is the ability to sustain interest and maintain effort to complete long-term goals, you’ll have the capacity to reach your targets and surprise.
6. Make your voice — and others — heard
The team norm Hira implemented about allowing everyone the chance to speak at meetings brings us to an important point about making voices heard. Because that’s how you engage people and capture the most of the moment.
During International Women’s Day, Google captured the moment by researching the most popular searches about women. Some of the top searches were questions about who was the first woman to go to space and who was the first woman to win a nobel prize. By focusing on a relevant topic for the day, and our time in general, Google was able to engage its users.
Speaking of women in the workplace, Hira provided us with some great nuggets of wisdom from her experiences. Her words inspired (see below):
“It’s a difficult world out there for many women. You must prove your worth, that you belong. You have to be focused on your goal and you can’t let what’s happening around you drag you down. I should note that Jazz has been very proactive in giving women the opportunities they deserve.”
What this all connects to is the idea that we must be making all voices heard. It’s how we get the most out of today.
“We’re changing lives for the better. We’re empowering women and people in rural areas. We’re empowering entrepreneurs and others to give back to society. We’re running incubation centers. There are so many exciting things we’re doing and I’m excited to be a part of it. There is meaning to what we do. Jazz is about empowerment!”
7. Go kickboxing
What are we talking about here?
Well, you can’t be working all the time. Sometimes you just have to enjoy the day.
“I want to learn kickboxing. I feel like it’s a great way to let out,” says Hira.
“I also like to travel, especially after working hard for the entire year. Recently, I went to Kiev, Ukraine for work and then spent some time seeing the city. It was beautiful. The people are friendly. It was amazing to immerse myself in a different cuisine and environment.”
Relaxation is crucial to being able to come back to work refreshed. Even a trip to the park helps.
“I saw a kid chasing a butterfly at the park recently. That made me smile!”
Moments like those put Hira in the right mindset for work. There’s much ahead to prepare for, and she wants to have an impact.
The moment is now
Now that Hira has shown you all you need to know about capturing the moment and running with it, all that’s left to do is take action. Well, maybe you can first have a little fun. Go chase a butterfly or get a haircut. You want to look and feel fresh before you go make big things happen!
