Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Borge Hald, CEO of Medallia (Part 1)

Borge Hald is the chief executive officer of Medallia. Borge graduated from the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He previously worked for Procter & Gamble and the Boston Consulting Group in Stockholm, London, and Oslo. In this interview, he paints a picture of how social media insights drive customer engagement and how to leverage that with the Medallia mobile app. He also gives us a view into the future of this space and discusses open problems and opportunities for young entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with background on Medallia. Our audience met Medallia a little while ago. Some catching up would be great. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: For the small retailer category, I like the kind of marketing strategy you are talking about a lot, because there is a problem of being able to generate meaningful content. Let’s say you make an e-mail newsletter – it is not easy for a small retailer to generate an interesting e-mail newsletter on a regular basis.

Jai Rawat: You’d be surprised by the kinds of things people write. They are really passionate buyers who love the content and the brand. I show this to the retailer and say, “This is the content money can’t buy. These are authentic user comments, and they are endorsing your products. Look at the passion they have for you.” >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: That is true in B2C, but in B2B that doesn’t really work that well.

Jai Rawat: Absolutely. There are certain categories that are very content heavy, where a person wants to sit down and read about that. But in the B2C category, you basically get the user´s attention with images. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Yes and no. 1M/1M, for example, is entirely marketed through content in our media work and social media.

Jai Rawat: But you are not trying to sell something.

SM: We are and we are not.

JR: It is content. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Is online retail the main category where you do business?

Jai Rawat: Yes. Right now that is our focus area. We are beginning to look at some offline components as well. In offline there are two areas we are looking at right now. To begin with, we are looking at using offline to supplement the online retailers. The first moment of excitement is when you just bought the product. The second moment of excitement is when you receive the product – when you open the product. I call it the Styrofoam effect. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did you find them, or did they find you?

Jai Rawat: One of their representatives usually does that. They reached out to us and they test tried us for 30 days, just to see what the impact was. They saw a huge uplift. As I said, you are acquiring fans, getting e-mail subscribers, and you are increasing conversion rates. Every Like post also shows up on Facebook, so it automatically creates word-of-mouth branding. Finally, we also found that there is a strong correlation between the social signals and SEO rank. So they were able to see all these results during the trial period, and then they decided to become a customer. Pricing is an annual subscription, so you sign up for one year and pay us a fixed monthly price. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: That is a huge problem on Facebook: Likes vs. leads.

Jai Rawat: Exactly. Likes don’t equal to fans. We say that people are visiting a site already, so they are obviously interested in the types of products you sell and they are somewhat familiar with your brand. They are much better candidates to become fans. So what the Get-a-Fan module does is when people visit your website there is a little slider that comes out and says, “Hey, if you become a fan and click on the Like button, you will get 10% off.” Of course, they are running these promotions on their websites all the time anyway, so instead of just giving it away, ask them to become a fan. They never have to leave the website. They become a fan right away and they get a coupon, which they can redeem within the same session. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Interview with Jai Rawat, CEO of ShopSocially (Part 1)

Jai Rawat is the founder and chief executive officer of ShopSocially, a company that offers a cloud-based social app platform. Jai has over 15 years of experience in the industry and has worked in the B2B and B2C spaces. He holds a degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and a master in computer science from Iowa State University. In this interview he describes how ShopSocially helps retailers to drive more revenue by creating user generated content and recommendations for their products and post those on social platforms.

Sramana Mitra: Let´s start with a personal introduction as well as one of your company. What is the analysis that you did with the market to come up with what you are doing now?

Jai Rawat: My name is Jai Rawat. I have been in the Valley for a few years and did a few startups before this one. This is my fourth startup. The idea behind ShopSocially came about towards the end of 2009. The original idea was to create a community where you could connect with your friends and look for recommendations for anything you may want to buy. What we realized is that currently people rely a lot on friends ‘opinions. If I am looking for a school for my kids, or if I am looking to buy a camera, I ask my friends for opinions. Most of these exchanges would happen over the phone, e-mails or face to face. But that knowledge gets lost after the conversation happens. Nobody else benefits from that. >>>