Ep. 109 | Gifting as a Customer-Centric Strategy with Monika Kochhar CEO of SmartGift

This week Monika Kochhar, CEO and co-founder of SmartGift joins Allison Hartsoe in the Accelerator. With all the attention paid to customer experience, you would think there was no stone unturned, and yet there is. Gifting is an untapped customer experience that naturally appeals to your most loyal customers. This week, Monika talks about the positive trends she’s seeing after the coronavirus pandemic as well as how companies can improve their gifting strategy.   

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Allison Hartsoe: 00:00 This is the customer equity accelerator. If you are a marketing executive who wants to deliver bottom line impact by identifying and connecting with your revenue generating customers, then this is the show for you. I’m your host, Allison Hartsoe, CEO of ambition data. Every other week I bring you the leaders behind the customer centric revolution who share their expert advice. If you are ready to accelerate then let’s go. Welcome everybody. Today’s show is about customer-centric gifting. To help me discuss this topic is Monica Kochhar. Monica is the CEO and co-founder of smart gift. You might be surprised, but this is one of the sharpest analysis technologies that I’ve seen when it comes to raw customer-centric power, so I think you’re really going to enjoy this show. Monica, welcome.

Monika Kochhar: 00:51 Thank you, Allison. It’s great to be here.

Allison Hartsoe: 00:53 Tell us a little bit more about your background and how you ended up in the concept of gifting.

Monika Kochhar: 00:59 I grow up in India. I came here from my undergrad, so it’s actually been avoided with sciences of economics, which is very interesting, especially when you look at gift-giving. I’m going to spend a lot of time in finance. So I was at JP Morgan. I was a trader. I was trading a tech and Telekom during the days. And then, I started my first company in the music space, which was also very much geared towards the independent bands and labels. So when you think about them as brands in themselves and how they could understand their audiences better. After that, once we got acquired by the orchard and then subsequently by Sony, we started smart gift. And for me, smart gift was a very interesting time in my life. I had my best friend who was just graduating, she was actually doing a Ph.D., and she was defending the thesis, and at that moment I was in San Francisco, the West Coast and she was at Mount Sinai in New York, and I remember thinking that we are close friends since undergraduate.

Monika Kochhar: 01:48 For so many years, we’ve been to the doctor, stays of a soul for the PFC. And yet I could not send her anything that was meaningful in any way. And it didn’t feel right given our relationship to just send her a gift card. But I also wanted to be there in that moment with her. And that’s when I started doing all this research around gifting, around the psychology of gifting, around the consumer experience that they’re on gifting. And we felt that within that market, which is a massive market, the consumer experience had just not transcended for years. And that was an innovation that was reading to be bought into the market for the customer or brands, et cetera.

Allison Hartsoe: 02:20 Couldn’t agree with you more. So how does smart gift actually work? Tell us a little bit about what smart gift is and how it works.

Monika Kochhar: 02:28 Yeah, absolutely. So if you think about subscribe, gift is really a gateway or brands and retailers and their customers to be able to transact on when they’re buying for other people. So gifting is obviously the most sort of natural you can give out of the natural funnel of that transaction. But it’s beyond that. So we sit on the product display pages of our offering, of our brand partners. And we take the customers into the funnel when they’re not buying for themselves, but they’re buying for somebody else. I’m good that they can send any product, any item, any experience if you will. Immediately to the recipient by messenger, by text and anyway they communicate. And the recipient can actually they have parts of the decision making within their hands so they can choose their size, they can choose their color, they can even exchange the item.

Monika Kochhar: 03:11 And all of this happens before it’s strict. If you think about sustainability, if you think about return rates, new customer acquisition, even looking at the fact that with every transaction you immediately and naturally you have two or more people within it just because of the framework is a people to people exchange and we give all this data, all these insights back to our brand partners for much more thoughtful merchandising, marketing and understanding the consumer base. So that’s one aspect of smart grid. And then the other aspect is a direct to consumer affiliate network that we launched. Actually not in only a couple of months ago in December. And that’s really a true gift affiliate marketplace driven by all the data that we have around gift intent, around gift conversion and Revere across all our brand partners. And we have all their merchandise, they’ll reply moving skews, and we help consumers find the perfect gift and deliver it in the perfect way.

Allison Hartsoe: 03:59 So I’m going to push on this a little bit because I think some people listening to this show may be like, Oh, why should I care about gift technology is just a fancy recommendation engine where I just put more product in front of my customers. Is that true? Or can we underscore some of the things that really make this technology unique? And I did hear you say about reducing the return rate, but I think it’s so much more than that.

Monika Kochhar: 04:23 Yeah, now, absolutely. And I think that’s such a great question, right? So what you see is in this world of promotions, cashback, kind of just this race to discounting what we see is that what are the other natural ways and purposes for which people are buying? Right? And when you can kind of tap into that, they’re only two transactions. Though you’re buying for yourself or you’re buying for somebody else. And if you can facilitate that transaction, take out the complexity in it, make it talk, we’ll make it delightful, make it experiential. That’s really, really powerful, especially because it’s probably the only time when you’re buying, when you’re kind of creating this act of generosity, creating a very big word of mouth recommendation for gifting is huge, right? Like in terms of word of mouth and like this product, I endorse this brand, and I’m giving it to you. And if you look at all of that, I think what you’re seeing is that for every brand on work across different brands, from Tomey to One hundred flowers to vineyard vines, Kendra Scott do, we have pretty much from a towel to gourmet food to fast fashion that express under armor, etc. And what they’re all wanting to do is they’re all saying like, how do we tap into the echoes of being more gift centric? How do we create new customer experiences that are more conversational, that are more meaningful and more purposeful?

Allison Hartsoe: 05:33 But I also think there’s some good economics behind here because what strikes me is when you talk about somebody who loves a brand and they want to get it to someone else, where they want to give a part of that brand to someone else, it strikes me that that is often a high-value customer. And businesses in general really want to go after other high-value customers, but it’s very hard to find them in advertising if I just put money into Facebook or I just put money into Instagram or influencers. Is this another way to fish for high-value customers in their friends?

Monika Kochhar: 06:05 Absolutely, Allison. So essentially, if you think about the traffic around the gift-giving transaction, if you’re real or the exchange, yes, it is minimal. It tends to be the most loyal customers of the brands. The AOV is also higher because in gifting, you tend to spend more money on somebody else than you would on yourself. It’s just this egocentricity of the nature of gifting and also the purchase frequency. Right? So all the band, it’s like, okay, how do we increase the purchase frequency and your bought something for yourself. But there is a birthday do and industry. There are these evergreen occasions that will come up throughout the year, and those are great ways to take one customer and then to really be able to like multiply their purchase path seven to eight times a year. And they also tend to be more loyal. And then when they’re referring you with your product and then endorsement, you’re immediately getting a second customer that is going to become equally passionate about your brand.

Allison Hartsoe: 06:55 Yes. And that reminds me a little bit of what you told me when we first met. We were talking about mother’s day versus Valentine’s day. Would you share that story because that was really fun.

Monika Kochhar: 07:05 Yeah. It’s funny when you fit in this on the path that you sit on the kind of data and the kind of sort of exchanges that you see in the behaviors amongst people. So yeah. So what we found is on consistently with the last two years that on mother’s day, men spend more money than they do on Valentine’s day. And that made me thinking, okay, there’s still some hope in the world. Like I guess, men are always Mama’s boy.

Monika Kochhar: 07:28 Yeah, it’s so funny. And also we’ve seen some really interesting data. So like, even for like one of our brand partners, Tomey which one of our earliest brand partners and they’re so innovative and embracing new technology and initiatives. What we found is that and this just even in the summer, right, so they have this big parents group that was giving bad tax to their kids who are about to go to college. And before going to college, they were doing a tour in Europe. So they were able to like go really so deep, and hyper sort of hyper-targeted personalization marketing by understanding the messages, understanding the behaviors of their customers within their sites.

Allison Hartsoe: 08:01 So tell me more about that. So that we make sure I understood. So Tomey was using the gifting technology, and they were able to get a sense of the content messaging that resonated.

Monika Kochhar: 08:12 Yeah, exactly. So because they’re sitting on, because of the understanding, because we’re kind of going to be a conversational platform, right? So very quickly we’re able to see what are the trends emerging, what are the patterns within any month and for them every summer you can see that pattern where people are gifting, are using smart Gift to give backpacks to give travel luggage to their kids. And these kids are usually off to college and going to college. They’re spending a month in Europe, or they’re off, or they’re going to Brazil or Costa Rica. They’re doing this sort of month off. And you can see all of that within the conversation that’s smart gift generates.

Allison Hartsoe: 08:45 I think that’s a really interesting angle because when we look at just raw analytics, we oftentimes try to combine the qualitative and the quantitative in order to eke out some sense of why this purchase was made. But it’s very clear when somebody gifts because they say, Oh, here’s something to help you on your travel, on your adventure through Europe or whatever. It becomes abundantly clear why that purchase was made. Is that right?

Monika Kochhar: 09:11 Exactly. And also what you see, so thinking of us with the data trends, right? So on birthdays, I’d be predominantly seen that when people gift black, right? So let’s say I’m giving a black pullover, the recipients whose birthday it is inevitably chosen for a brighter color. Yeah, it’s really funny. And that shows a social psychology maybe. And I wake up, it’s my birthday, I’m actually feeling really happy, and I feel great, and I want something in yellow and something red and something blue and one black that day. So on birthdays, you will always see the most part. It’s statistically significant that the recipient will go for a color, and they will go for the usual gray, brown, black undertone.

Allison Hartsoe: 09:48 Well, I wonder if there’s psychology where if I’m buying for myself, I’m trying to get maximum usage out of something. So I buy a color that goes with everything and if it’d be black or gray or Brown, but if somebody else is buying, for me it feels like a splurge, and now I’m going to put a dash of color in my wardrobe.

Monika Kochhar: 10:05 Completely. Absolutely. And in corporate gifting where it’s one to many, we do see that the recipients will go for more of the office tones and maybe blues, the dark grays. So you sort of start seeing called people pink around different occasions. I know it’s affecting.

Allison Hartsoe: 10:19 Oh, that’s fascinating. So are you seeing trends as well around the current pandemic that we have going on?

Monika Kochhar: 10:27 Yeah, it’s a great question. And actually, over the last two days, we’ve been analyzing on our data as well. And it’s interesting right because, in these times of social distancing, remote gift-giving is really kind of rooted in the act of generosity. So people are reaching out to each other in the community and the wider sort of world, if you will, with messages of gratitude and love, big and small. For the three trends, you’re seeing right now that you have been able to identify is that it knows. So the first one is thank you, the thank you occasion pass for us risen 71%.

Allison Hartsoe: 10:57 Wow.

Monika Kochhar: 10:58 Yeah. So it’s the fastest-growing occasion for us right now in the last two weeks. This is the last two weeks’ data across all our band partners, and thank you is going to IT staff. So a lot of messages are, what we know, people have been working day and night to support everybody who’s about to work from home or is working from home. Thank you is going to teachers who were still at the school’s teaching even though schools were shutting down, etc. To healthcare staff, to employees to employers for working hard for staying safe. So these are all the kinds of trends if you’re seeing doctors and nurses, but really sort of within the community. And then the second one is just because it has increased over 31% and that’s going really from very close relatives and close friends. And that’s really around I care for you, I love you. Stay safe. And the third one, which I find, so heartwarming is the love and romance, and that’s increased by over 14% now, and that’s really from partners. We’re actually trended internationally right now, or different cities or even close by, and they can see each other, and that is just the way it is of showing their appreciation and their love and sharing in this moment together.

Allison Hartsoe: 12:01 Wow. I wouldn’t have thought that was such a big trend, but it really is.

Monika Kochhar: 12:05 It’s really is. Yeah. I guess there are a lot of people in New York, Boston, I mean sort of across the country who just can see each other and they probably were going to feature their work on the weekend or this each and every three weeks, and now that’s definitely increasing. And especially with jewelry, the jewelry vertical for love and romance is up by 160 pounds.

Allison Hartsoe: 12:22 Really?

Monika Kochhar: 12:23 Yeah. Yeah.

Allison Hartsoe: 12:24 So based on the information you’re seeing, it sounds like there’s, through the gratitude side of the equation, retail purchases online aren’t slowing down, they’re increasing. Would that be fair?

Monika Kochhar: 12:38 I mean for us, I think generally online purchases have slipped down as people are getting sort of used to resetting into their work and sort of new work lives if you will. And all the disruptions over the last few days are from certain gift. But what we are seeing is a gift purchase conversion is high. And so, the gift purchase conversion is up by 9% for the smart gift platform. And I think generally over time, you know, it’s sort of what’s happening and how sort of obviously social distancing but also they call people are kind of starting to behave when the consumer changes that will happen. I do think that online commerce and these waiting on gifting is, here to stay beyond the pandemic, you know, and I think this is a time when retailers and brands they can be possibly present in their customer’s lives, which is not just about online shopping or this is our new spring collection or summer collection, but truly like this is what they are doing, this is what their customers are doing right now. And I think these marketing messages are very strong, and thereby they resonate with their customer base.

Allison Hartsoe: 13:31 And I also want to point out that that is a customer-driven transaction. And one of the things that have driven me nuts about the retail industry is it’s constantly discounting, constantly couponing, buy, buy, buy new, new, new. And yet this is an emotional transaction driven by the customer. It’s a very personal element. So in a way that loyalty program, that next level that everybody’s been searching for is or could be bundled into gifting. Would you agree with that?

Monika Kochhar: 14:01 Absolutely. 100% I completely agree with that. And I think there is an also if you think about referrals and loyalty, purchase frequency customer engagement, our new customer acquisition, all of that. And then in a meaningful way, right? Because if I was actually as a much more intent oriented transaction and as you say, it’s not about Oh I need a new sweater. But it’s really like sort of that emotional component within that gift, within the shopping journey that this really is a bundle for loyalty for, I know for sort of you deeper data analysis for deeper sort of marketing, right? Much more insightful marketing.

Allison Hartsoe: 14:33 So it strikes me that if I choose to treat a brand like a friend and I love this brand and I want to share it with my friends, and I basically endorse it, that it’s very difficult for me to walk away from that brand that there’s kind of this spiraling upward increase of loyalty. Is that true?

Monika Kochhar: 14:54 Yeah, that is absolutely true. And that’s what we see. We see that within a gift customer tends to have more purchases throughout the year for the brand. So they’re definitely much more of a loyal customer, but their purchase frequency is also much higher.

Allison Hartsoe: 15:06 Okay. So then my follow up question there would be if the brand does something to piss me off, I’m going to take myself out of mix, and I’m going to tell all my friends that I previously referred to that brand. Hey, you know that brands no longer good. So am I also as a brand, do I need to be extra careful because these people are so powerful that if they walk away or I screw up their orders consistently, I don’t give them customer service that they’re going to disappear in a heartbeat and take all their friends with them.

Monika Kochhar: 15:35 I mean, that’s forever. I’ve done, am I right? They call you today for how to position yourself where you’re consistently being good and nurturing that customer. And I think for us we are being in a rare very, we can isolate their high-value customers, and they’re more sort of gift oriented customers, and I think that’s a great way for them to take that customer base and really engage with them, right? Engage with them beyond product, product, product. We show the customer service, you know, maybe even like white-glove service, right throughout the year. Understand when are those important occasions in their lives? When is this person’s birthday, when is the anniversary? What are these things occasions that resonate with them? And really there’s so much opportunity to I Rhonda the occasion, be there for them more thoughtfully.

Allison Hartsoe: 16:17 But this is a real tilt for most companies, especially companies that have been around for a while, to be that truly customer-centric and not just treat the customer well but treat specific groups of customers really well because of the value and really probably the innovation they represent all sorts of goodness that they represent. Are you finding that the companies that work with you are transforming the way they think about customers, or are they a little more slow to come along and get the idea?

Monika Kochhar: 16:46 That’s true. No, it’s, I think generally what we have noticed is over the last 22 years, let’s say the conversations are very different than the conversations we were having with brands and retailers lets say a couple of years back, and now they’re all very naturally talking about what are the new customer experiences, facilitation of shopping journey that we can bring to our customers. Where can we be there for them, and they have any sort of naturally talking about it. Like so much of is really inbound inquiries, and I think for them it is. It also brands are saying to themselves like how much time discounting and cashback and all of this can I be doing? Yes, it’s part of the business, but some it’s not even part of the pigment for when a day that’s fine. But there has to be more meaningful ways that I can interact with consumers, showcase innovations, and facilitate their shopping journeys that are beyond shopping for themselves.

Monika Kochhar: 17:35 So one thing we see with our gift example, which is really interesting, is that, so someone like express one of our retail partners or brand partners, you see that a lot, you know a lot of time patents that actually using smart data to send genes to send dresses to their kids. Because, and it’s sort of like, because the parents don’t know what the kids were very like, but they know that my daughter needs a pair of jeans and they’re literally using the platform. It’s not an occasion, it’s not her birthday, but it’s become a platform for them to make sure that the particular are about to make is safe. And it’s like it’s liked by her, but she wants it.

Allison Hartsoe: 18:04 Oh. So not just that she wants it, but that it’s safe as well. I think that’s what I heard you say.

Monika Kochhar: 18:09 Yeah. Safe in the sense that I am picking the right things for you. Right? Is this what you want? Right. Why don’t you choose what you want? Yeah. It’s also that, so it’s really also care to feel mechanism off. What are you saying? Is this what do you want? Why would you customize? Personalize it. Yeah.

Allison Hartsoe: 18:24 I’m laughing because I always wish my mother had had that platform. What is this? Again, it gets back to your theme of sustainable and you don’t have returns coming back, but I think it also makes people feel a little bit more validated that they sent something that was wanted instead of, Oh yeah, I put that in a drawer somewhere and kind of re reduces unwanted.

Monika Kochhar: 18:53 Yeah, absolutely. And right now what you’re seeing, which is something you just brought up somehow, is that even by now, especially given the mess where you don’t know where anybody’s working from, where are people, right? That most gift transactions, people are choosing their own independent over smart pick and choose their own delivery address. So all at the center, all I have to do is just know your name, your email, and your phone number. Right. And what you’re seeing is that people are definitely choosing completely different delivery addresses and they have before. They were seeing that trend that people are under lockdown people are at home or working from somewhere remote.

Allison Hartsoe: 19:24 So whereas before they might’ve had it delivered to work or someplace that was, yeah.

Monika Kochhar: 19:29 Exactly. That’s what I think we talked about it last time that you see now and on Valentine’s, a lot of men will send bouquets to their partners. Now their wives, girlfriends to the home address, and most of these women will change the address to their work address. So for them to be delivered.

Allison Hartsoe: 19:44 Well, of course, I don’t, you know, if you’re going to send me a beautiful bouquet I want everybody to see it.

Monika Kochhar: 19:49 Exactly. You’re like me. I wanted everybody to know that I have an admirer.

Allison Hartsoe: 19:53 Oh, that’s great. Are there other examples of interesting trends you’ve seen?

Monika Kochhar: 19:58 You know what? So the kind of the speaking capture that’d be the cat are there, they tend to be nonlinear. So if you think about it could have a standardized CRM. Oz is always based around relationships, around occasions, down to the skew level as a, for us, it’s all about the people or more people, what is their relationship, but what did the defenders and what did the recipient, what was their past branch down to even like what else would they look at in their accepting journey to an average price point. So we know that GoPro anniversaries tend to be a higher price point than any other occasion. And I think it’s probably because it’s, you know, much more special. It’s once a year occasion. So we get this whole sort of holistic picture of people’s shopping journeys but also their behavior journeys now and relationships.

Allison Hartsoe: 20:41 And that strikes me that you’re probably not using a linear technology behind it. Like the typically structured row and column CRM.

Monika Kochhar: 20:49 No, we have not. We cannot because for us, the gift funnel is a very different funnel, and they’re are always sitting on more than one interaction. But we have to kind of look at it as a whole life cycle, not only of the gift sender, but the gift recipient are be able to bring the gift recipient into the life cycle shopping journey of the brand in which way. What is location is that the senders’ location? Is that the recipients’ location. So our entire CRM is a much more circular CRM.

Allison Hartsoe: 21:12 And does that mean that it needs to be real-time or pretty close to real-time?

Monika Kochhar: 21:17 Yeah, we have passive may be very transparent with our data. All our brand partners get access to the data in real-time. And on top of that, we are always recommending, you know, marketing insights, gifting insights across the trends and across the brand if you’re seeing to be able to help them merchandise market better.

Allison Hartsoe: 21:34 This is a great thing. I think this is what’s always been missing from most people who distribute to the larger Macy’s, Target, Walmart, whatever. Or, especially Amazon is you can’t get access to the data. You can’t get more insights. And I think that’s very frustrating. And it’s formed this transactional mentality amongst, particularly old school retailers. And so as they try to move into more customer-centric thinking, they don’t have the right tools. And it strikes me that this is a really powerful tool for them to think about as they look at how do they increase the relationship with their customer? How do they raise customer equity, if you will?

Monika Kochhar: 22:13 Yeah, absolutely. And how did it transcend beyond the transaction, as you just said, right? Yeah.

Allison Hartsoe: 22:18 So what’s next for smart gift? You’ve got this great platform. What are you thinking about in the future?

Monika Kochhar: 22:23 Oh yeah, no, we are really excited, but what they’re building, we’re really excited by all the retail and brand partners that they have. And if they have signed up for 2020 for us all about growth, be willing to supply this to not only to, not only to our retailers’ brands, but also to consumers to be ready to be there for them during their journeys, their shopping journeys in a much more meaningful way and yeah, and grow this out. I think everybody should have the gift strategy and the customer-centric different platform.

Allison Hartsoe: 22:49 So are you looking at industries that are not just retail but other industries where maybe I gift reward points or something like that?

Monika Kochhar: 22:57 Exactly. That’s exactly what you’re also looking at is how do you convert a board for a reward point into meaningful products into getting people recipients the choice of converting them before losing them into things that they might actually want�also looking at industries where it’s hard, right? Like ticketing events, ticketing experiences. We’re looking at all of that, even B to B. So if I want to give 50 gifts for how can you give us 50 gifts, which are unique for each of the, we know each of the recipients while you can show that it will always get the perfect one that they want, you know, at that moment.

Allison Hartsoe: 23:29 Oh, that sounds inspired. I can’t wait, really good.

Monika Kochhar: 23:33 Yeah, no, I think it’s super exciting time. Then also just looking at sustainability angle, looking at this sort of, not even like looking at the conference while I mean right pods of different worlds, but generally, we just go to conferences and pick up so much Slack cause you don’t need, but imagine it’s March and it’s not giving too much more meaningful sort of way to deliver your brand Ito’s your branding without giving them plastic or they’re going to take on Vegas in New York with them. You know.

Allison Hartsoe: 23:56 and maybe you don’t have to stuff that in your suitcase cause I’m probably guilty like everybody else of leaving a certain volume of things in the hotel room.

Monika Kochhar: 24:03 Yeah, I think that, Oh, what do I think most people do? I think the whole world, right? It’s becoming even making increasingly clear that we all have to be more thoughtful, whether it’s in purchasing, whether it’s engaging with other people. And I’m thinking about sustainability, right? And I think that’s really becoming more and more important to all of us.

Allison Hartsoe: 24:20 Very true. Monica and well said. So let’s say I’m convinced, and I really want to start thinking about how to make more of an emotional connection with my customers, and I think that gifting might be a right way to think about it. What should I do?

Monika Kochhar: 24:35 You should call Smart Gift. You should get a demo class on smartgiftit.com. And once I’m one of our representatives, we’ll be there. We’re happy to help and happy to think through gifting strategies, what’s resonating with consumers, how do you really develop an entire program or on gifting, on loyalty, using a referral, using of these high-value customers, and we want to help as many reseller brands to succeed.

Allison Hartsoe: 24:57 Well, you know what’s interesting about that as most of my guests on the show, the first answer is you need to develop a business use case, but in this case what you’ve said is your team will actually help you develop that business use case before you even pull the trigger.

Monika Kochhar: 25:11 Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s very important. I think especially with innovations with customer innovations that are new, are you really want to be there with your bank partners, right? It’s not that. Hey, there’s a new shiny toy, but it’s really about, well, what is your brand? What is your consumer base? What are those messages that resonate with your consumers, and how can we really help you become much enhanced that engagement become more customer-centric. Increases the incrementality in conversion,

Allison Hartsoe: 25:35 increase the goodness of the customer base, you’re really increasing what we’ve always called it was the equity. You’re increasing the goodness of the customer base. You’ve got more customers who love you and want to buy more from you. That’s kind of the Holy grail. And it seems like you’re the grease in the wheels behind that through the gifting strategy.

Monika Kochhar: 25:52 Absolutely. And on top of that, as you say, you keep adding onto it, right? You can add in the loyalty programs within it. So there’s like a whole, it’s a platform. It’s a platform of goodness. That’s true.

Allison Hartsoe: 26:02 Yes. All right, so if people want to reach you, what’s the best way to get in touch?

Monika Kochhar: 26:06 Absolutely. So people should check out smartgiftit.com, and there’s a request for a demo they can ask for a demo. It’s a very quick setup. The smartgift takes between five to seven days to set up, which is for enterprise brands and for smaller brands is even shorter time period. It’s a very easy implementation, customized implementation, and we’d be happy to work, you know, we’d be happy to work it around people’s businesses and help them succeed.

Allison Hartsoe: 26:29 Wonderful. Monika, I am sure that many people will check that out. Make sure you get the it on the end. It’s not smart gift, its smartgiftit.com.

Monika Kochhar: 26:38 Yes, smartgiftit.com absolutely.

Allison Hartsoe: 26:40 As always, links to everything we’ve discussed are at ambitiondata.com/podcast, including the link to smartgiftit.com. Monica, thank you for joining us today. I really love this strategy and the way you thought about the technology. I think it’s really revolutionary and many companies can benefit from this. It’s not like you’re just pushing more technology that doesn’t think about the longterm picture. You’re actually improving their businesses, and that is rare, so thank you for doing that.

Monika Kochhar: 27:10 Thank you, Allison, it was so great to talk with you. I really enjoyed it.

Allison Hartsoe: 27:10 Remember everyone, when you use your data effectively, you can build customer equity. It’s not magic. Just a very specific journey that you can follow to get results. See you next time on the customer equity accelerator.