Srishti Sofat, VP of Product Development at Oracle Marketing Cloud, explains how AI now optimizes subject lines, timing, and frequency for each customer automatically. Real-time data and 5G enable personalized experiences across devices, from airlines sending travel offers to smart fridges ordering milk. Privacy regulations like GDPR require balancing personalization with responsible data use.
Chapters
Things are happening automatically. In my own space, I can talk about in terms of marketing. I mean, earlier a marketeer would need to look at a lot of data, analyze it, slice and dice, figure out how to message people. Now we are building algorithms which tell them how to send this message. What's the best subject line? What's the best message? What time of the day should you send it? You know, how often should you send it to somebody? You're making the life of your customer simple. So, I want to now just move and talk about some of these technology trends, right, which could help you building software, building product for this economy. So, you know, all of these things are here, right? I mean, today, real-time is expected. 5G is Right here. I mean, it's any moment, right? I mean, you're talking about really rich user experiences which you can give customers, right? Whether it's on their phone or whichever device, it doesn't matter. And there are many, many channels. I mean, we are talking about building an Alexa channel even for our enterprise software right now, right? I mean, so it's just so many channels. And it's really about these micro-moments, right? I mean, I think that everybody must have a story, at least I have so many now, where you're like spooked by the messaging you get because you're like, how do they know that I'm going to be doing this, right? Sometimes you're spooked and sometimes you feel that that's what I want, right? I mean, so it's like, where do you draw the line? But with all these technology trends where everything is real time, everything's 5G, and it's not only in the United States of America, it's across the world now, right? I mean, it is happening everywhere. The world's coming much closer because Because all of these things are not a phenomenon of one part of the world. It's a phenomenon of across the world. And always on, right? I mean, we are always on. Every device is talking to each other. I was just reading an article on the internet just, you know, over the weekend, and it's talking about Apple Watch trying to do ECG. You know, we're talking about, you know, I run a little bit, and you're talking about customized shoes and 3D printing. I mean, it doesn't matter, right? I mean, it's like— I want my custom shoe. I want to know how my heart is doing at every moment of my step. I mean, it's just unlimited, right? I mean, the imagination today is everything is on your fingertips. Whatever you want between the devices and the data, it's all there for you. Abundance of data signals. I mean, we all are leaving such a large footprint. I mean, I understand there's the other side of it now. There is the whole data privacy, GDPR, HIPAA, large companies like us, we all are definitely involved in trying to figure that out as well. However, there is still enough data out there which can be leveraged, right? I mean, just pure— I mean, you know, I'll talk about intelligence in a minute. But even just about the data trail, I mean, I was going for a presentation somewhere. And I finished it. And it was funny because I got a text saying, if you finished early, do you want to fly back now? Right? I mean, it was like, it was a day trip. So the airline knew I did a day trip. And— I guess it was 2 in the afternoon. They figured maybe I want to leave home early. And my flight was frankly at 8 or 9 in the night. And I figured I finished my work. So I'm like, yeah, whatever, $400 more, I'll fly early, right? I mean, it was the timely message, right? Because of some data analysis they did about— it could be me, it could be a little bit of deep learning about the pattern of people who do day trips, whatever the algorithm was. Right? It was, that didn't spook me. I was thankful for that message, right? I mean, it wasn't that, hey, what happened here? I'm gonna report, you know, this airlines to privacy because what are they doing? So I think we all have to figure out that right value and where is that right message that we can give or the right value in terms of a product that we can provide to our customers which can make the difference instead of using data in a spooky way, I guess, for lack of a better word, right? And then the next one I'm a big fan of. I mean, hopefully a lot of your hacks and your projects are leveraging all of this. I mean, this is now just changing the paradigm, right? I mean, clearly we all are becoming a little bit lazier, right? I mean, we just don't wanna do things because things are happening automatically. In my own space, I can talk about in terms of marketing. I mean, earlier, a marketeer would need to look at a lot of data, analyze it, slice and dice, figure out how to message people. Now we are building algorithms which tell them how to send this message. What's the best subject line? What's the best message? What time of the day should you send it? You know, how often should you send it to somebody? So you're making the life of a You're making the life of your customer simple, or, you know, in one way lazy, right? Or we talk about this, just looking at it, haven't bought it yet, but, you know, these fridges now, right, which were like, milk is out, click a button, it'll order it. I mean, where is the Sunday morning drive, go pick up the— I mean, it's just, you know, you're lazy. It's a click of a button, groceries are done. I mean, that's the world, right? So with all of this automation, I mean, you know, we all are living in the Bay Area. I mean, you know, many of you are living here or you're traveling to this area. You see the Teslas. I mean, you see the autonomous driving. I mean, it's like we would not drive, we will not shop, you know, we are running and monitoring all our heartbeat. And, you know, so we're doing different things, right? So, I mean, I think really, Data science and intelligence brings a lot of options to building the product, really, if you think about for the experience economy, because everybody wants to experience things and have the time for it. And really, we are making the customer a little bit lazy, but you have all the options to do that, right, with data science. So that's another big area, a lot of investment, lots of companies doing lots of things, and lots of options to really please the customer here in an experience economy. And hopefully all of you are building product in this generation, so we know this, but really the ease of building product and deploying software has become so easy. I mean, everybody's got a container. Everybody— I mean, maybe many of your hacks, you all just got an account on one of the cloud providers and just deployed a container. You've got A lot of open source software. If nothing else, you know, you have Elasticsearch to do your items. You know, you can build everything as a microservice. Things can talk to each other. You can consume other people's microservices. I mean, building software is becoming easier and easier, right? Even deploying software is becoming easier and easier, and it's becoming cheaper, right? I mean, earlier, I mean, even when I started my career, I actually started my career in a startup. I mean, you know, there was a physical cost. I mean, now it's pay as you go, right? I mean, there is no cost. I mean, if you get usage, you'll get cost, which is not a bad place to be at, right? So really to leverage all of this, you know, it's a good space. So, you know, really, I haven't spoken about anything transformational here, right? I mean, it's nothing that this is so forward-looking that it's not happened yet, or that's not the idea. Because sometimes the idea is in the obvious, right? I mean, so the thing really is about stepping back and looking at all these trends. And as you're building your product, figuring out your personas, right? Who are you targeting your product to? Is it— how is it enhancing that experience for the customer? And how are you servicing, you know, and this experience economy is here to stay, right? I mean, it is about people are not going to just buy something you manufacture. They do want to make sure that it's a pleasurable experience for them. So how are you going to leverage these themes, right? So just want to pause a little bit here. And I'm going to shift gears a little bit about another aspect of the whole thing, which would be building a team. Right. Because then that's really another really important factor of what you need to do.
