Saurabh Khetrapal is a digital evangelist and marketing technology consultant with over 13 years of experience in the AdTech and MarTech sectors. His expertise lies in data-driven marketing, digital marketing, and providing end-to-end marketing technology solutions for various sectors, including banking and financial services, insurance, manufacturing, retail, telecoms, automotive, and entertainment.
He possesses expertise in multiple marketing platforms, including Real-time Decisioning, Customer Data Platforms, and Data Management Platforms. He is also well-versed in Programmatic Advertising, Dynamic Creative Optimization, A/B Testing & Optimization, Data Analytics, Marketing Automation, Website Personalisation, and Campaign Management tools.
Saurabh acts as a strategic partner and consultant, helping brands grow by leveraging marketing technology platforms and driving value for marketing investments. He combines his technical expertise with strategic thinking to provide tailored solutions that address specific needs and objectives.
Saurabh is a highly skilled and experienced digital evangelist and marketing technology consultant. With expertise in data-driven marketing, digital marketing, and a wide range of marketing platforms, he is well-equipped to help brands achieve their marketing goals. As a strategic partner and consultant, Saurabh delivers strategic guidance, technical expertise, and measurable results to drive growth and enhance marketing performance.
Here are Saurabh’s experiences and his ideas on the marketing technology landscape, along with his personal experiences in various industry segments:
A Personal Approach to Continuous Learning: Saurabh Khetrapal’s Excellence and Wisdom
“Knowledge is power” holds more truth than ever before. Staying abreast of the latest trends and innovations is not just a choice but a necessity for those aiming for professional excellence. Whether you’re in technology, healthcare, finance, or any other field, the pace of change is expeditious, and those who fail to keep up risk being left behind.
Saurabh Khetrapal, the Associate Director – Digital Engagement at Areteans Technology Solutions (Omnicom Marketing Precision Group), not only understands this but has crafted a meticulous strategy to ensure he rides the wave of change with finesse.
Saurabh’s strategy for staying informed and connected is a demonstration of his proactive approach. Active participation in professional communities on platforms like LinkedIn has not only expanded his network but also provided invaluable insights into the diverse digital transformation journeys of organizations across Australia and the broader APAC region including India & Singapore.
In-person conversations play a crucial role in Saurabh’s quest for knowledge. Actively engaging with colleagues and leaders, both within his current organization and from past experiences, allows him to share and learn from their diverse experiences in the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing technology.
Saurabh recognizes the power of industry events. Whether as an audience member or a guest speaker, attending conferences and webinars has been a cornerstone of his learning strategy. This not only provides networking opportunities but also keeps him abreast of the latest developments in technology across various industry verticals.
Drawing insights from publications by consulting firms is another facet of his information arsenal. Reports, whitepapers, and research findings from these firms serve as a compass, guiding him through industry trends and ensuring he remains at the forefront of the digital domain.
He emphasizes the importance of following innovations closely. Regularly reading industry blogs, subscribing to newsletters, and attending webinars focused on MarTech and digital marketing keep him well-informed and equipped to navigate the digital environment.
Armed with this wealth of information and a commitment to continuous learning, Saurabh has not only stayed relevant but has delivered exceptional services and innovative solutions to clients and partners. His advice to fellow professionals echoes a universal truth: embrace a learning path that suits you best and let it propel you forward in your areas of interest.
Join us as we explore his notable odyssey!
Building Strong Relationships
In his role, Saurabh engages with multiple partners and clients, emphasizing the importance of building and maintaining strong relationships in the fast-paced and compelling MarTech industry. The approach involves fostering a common goal and understanding of clients’ and partners’ business requirements.
To ensure successful collaborations and sustained growth, Saurabh employs a strategic set of principles. Firstly, he prioritizes establishing a robust rapport with key stakeholders across different organizational levels. This practice enables him to comprehensively understand their pain points, challenges, and areas where existing solutions may have fallen short. Armed with this understanding, Saurabh creates a detailed business or technical matrix aligned with their specific needs, offering unique and tailored solutions. This approach is geared towards building trust and contributing to the goal of enhancing the digital journey for clients.
Secondly, Saurabh recognizes the significance of acknowledging clients’ pre-existing systems of technology and partnerships. Articulating the role his organization will play in driving incremental benefits becomes crucial. Identifying gaps and proposing customized solutions tailored to specific needs form a key aspect of his strategy. He achieves this by developing product or solution prototypes and demonstrations that highlight the distinctive value his organization brings to the collaborative table.
Balancing Tech Advancements and Practical Solutions
In order to successfully implement MarTech initiatives for clients, it is crucial for professionals to first understand their objectives and business goals. This understanding forms the foundation for developing effective strategies and solutions. To achieve this, a comprehensive assessment of the existing processes and capabilities within the client’s environment is recommended. This assessment helps identify any gaps or areas that need improvement in their current technologies and strategies.
Based on Saurabh’s experience working with various organizations, he has found that executing a proof-of-concept (POC) can be highly beneficial. A POC allows for the demonstration of innovative solutions prior to implementing them on a large scale. This not only showcases the capabilities of the proposed solution but also provides valuable insights and feedback from clients.
It is important to adopt a client-centric approach throughout the entire MarTech implementation process. This involves creating and providing solutions that align with the long-term vision of the client’s business goals and marketing strategy roadmap. By understanding their specific needs and requirements, professionals can tailor the solutions accordingly, ensuring maximum value and impact.
Furthermore, Saurabh recommends everyone focus on understanding client objectives and business goals, conducting thorough assessments, executing proofs-of-concept, and adopting a client-centric approach to drive a successful MarTech program.
Tackling Complex Challenges Head-On
In various professional scenarios, technical expertise plays a crucial role in overcoming obstacles and complex challenges. Throughout Saurabh’s career and experience, he has been fortunate to encounter a few situations where his marketing platform knowledge and technology understanding were utilized to solve complex business problems.
One instance is during his tenure at a prominent e-commerce giant in India. The organization was facing challenges with its personalization strategies, as they were not scaling effectively and failing to deliver sufficient value. The company’s optimization strategy and experience were limited to focusing solely on selected e-commerce products with high-profit margins, neglecting the exploration of new revenue opportunities and strategic possibilities offered by the technology platform.
Recognizing the potential for improvement, Saurabh took the challenge to develop a comprehensive plan that highlighted their low maturity on the marketing technology platform and how it could significantly impact their key performance indicators (KPIs). By outlining the potential benefits and opportunities that lay untapped within their existing capabilities, he was able to demonstrate how to leverage their marketing technology platform effectively with advanced capabilities for setting up marketing campaigns alongside unifying data with high accuracy from multiple data sources, driving customer insights with AI features that weren’t used in the past, and building a robust measurement framework with easy-to-build customized dashboards and templates that could make a substantial difference to their business growth numbers.
The execution of the plan provided the e-commerce giant with a great opportunity to implement the desired solution, which led to an uplift in the bottom-line numbers and made them show a profit on their respective business lines and portfolios.
A Roadmap to Success
According to Saurabh, every project represents a distinct undertaking involving diverse elements like business objectives, team members, key stakeholders, and the execution process within an organization. The success of a project relies on several key factors, including the diversification of the team, with individuals possessing different skill sets coming together to drive the program.
In Saurabh’s view, when assembling a project team, it is crucial to consider the inclusion of various roles such as scrum master, project manager, technical members, delivery manager, engagement manager, and product owner. However, the specific composition of the team may vary depending on the complexity and requirements of the project at hand.
While having the right skill set and resources is essential, Saurabh emphasizes the importance of assessing the existing skill set within the team and identifying any gaps that may exist within the organization. This can be achieved by actively seeking feedback from everyone involved in the project and gathering timely opinions after each stage of the most viable product (MVP) release. Relying solely on project timelines and success metrics, according to him, may not provide a comprehensive understanding of the team’s capabilities and potential areas for improvement.
He suggests adopting an iterative approach, as it allows for continuous learning and improvement throughout the project lifecycle, ultimately leading to more efficient and successful outcomes.
According to him, it is also crucial to conduct effective planning sessions involving all key members working on the project. These sessions play an important role in determining the project’s outcome by addressing various aspects such as past initiatives, execution strategies, new initiatives, business objectives, the product roadmap, execution pain points, and roadblocks. By adopting a design thinking approach, valuable inputs can be gathered, leading to the implementation of impactful changes within the program and key projects.
Saurabh believes that every project is a unique entity that requires careful consideration of various elements, including team diversification and skill set evaluation.
Decoding Nuanced Business Needs
Saurabh emphasizes that to ensure client satisfaction and deliver top-notch services, thorough analysis, deep understanding, and requirement gathering are essential. The process involves various activities that play a crucial role in shaping the success of the organization.
In his strategic approach, Saurabh delves into some of the key tasks involved:
- Engaging in Comprehensive Discovery Sessions: Saurabh recommends conducting workshops and discovery sessions with key stakeholders. Open-ended questions during these sessions help gain a deep understanding of the client’s business goals and objectives, allowing alignment of services with specific needs and expectations.
- Thorough Analysis of Competitors: Saurabh suggests conducting a comprehensive analysis of the client’s competitors. Benchmarking their position against others in the market helps identify areas of improvement and potential opportunities, providing valuable insights for developing effective marketing strategies.
- Performance Comparison of Marketing Initiatives: He advises comparing the client’s current marketing initiatives to previous years’ performance. This evaluation helps gauge the effectiveness of past efforts and identify areas for improvement. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of previous strategies enables the refinement and optimization of future marketing campaigns.
- Creation of Customer Journey Mapping Matrix: Saurabh advocates creating a customer journey mapping matrix that outlines various touchpoints and interactions a customer has with the client’s brand. This visual representation helps identify pain points and areas where the customer experience can be enhanced, ultimately improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Testing and Validation of Existing Setup: He stresses the importance of testing and validating the client’s existing or initial setup. This step ensures that systems, processes, and technologies are functioning optimally. Identifying any issues or gaps allows for proactive addressing, ensuring a smooth and seamless customer experience.
By performing these activities, organizations can gain a deeper understanding of their client’s business, uncover valuable insights, and deliver services aligned with their goals. This strategic approach, as recommended by Saurabh, ultimately leads to greater client satisfaction and long-term success for the organization.
Strengthening Client Bonds
Implementing an effective account management approach that prioritizes regular communication and complete transparency with clients can lead to mutually beneficial outcomes. Saurabh has successfully implemented this practice with numerous clients, resulting in significant success. To become a result-oriented professional, taking ownership of driving client success is crucial. This involves actively participating in key decision-making processes and providing comprehensive support throughout each project.
Another key aspect of achieving client success is considering the clients’ business objectives and offering the necessary assistance to help them thrive in their transformation program. This support can take various forms, such as providing specific information on the product roadmap, defining the elements for an effective campaign, suggesting marketing strategies, recommending improvements to team structure, aligning customer journeys with business outcomes, automating activities, planning new initiatives, establishing a robust measurement framework, and proposing innovative approaches and solutions to achieve a faster return on investment (ROI).
Cultivating a Growth-Centric Culture
In Saurabh’s professional journey, he has had the privilege of working alongside exceptional mentors and leaders whose guidance has significantly influenced his learning curve. A crucial lesson learned is the significance of establishing an environment where team members feel at ease sharing their feedback and opinions.
Recognizing that everyone encounters unique struggles and challenges, Saurabh emphasizes the importance of providing team members with the freedom and flexibility to seek guidance and support. Restricting this pathway risks a singular-direction assumption, potentially hindering diverse perspectives and input that could contribute to more well-rounded and effective outcomes.
In a contemporary, fast-paced work environment, team members aspire to more than just a job. They actively seek opportunities for professional growth, learning, and acknowledgment for their hard work. As a mentor, it becomes essential to recognize and address these expectations, fostering a successful and motivated team. Sharing personal experiences and learnings, especially from mistakes, can be transformative for the team.
Creating an open and supportive environment where team members feel empowered to share their thoughts and experiences cultivates a culture of continuous learning and growth. This not only benefits individual team members but also contributes to the overall success of the team and organization. Thus, embracing the role of a mentor, being open to feedback, and guiding team members on their paths of growth and success become paramount.
Fostering Team Innovation
Saurabh emphasizes the significance of encouraging team members to engage in cross-collaboration with other teams and colleagues, seeing it as a valuable strategy to foster innovation within the organization.
In addition to this, Saurabh advocates for identifying team members who show enthusiasm for taking new initiatives or assisting others within the team with their responsibilities and tools. Maintaining a regular team cadence is highlighted as essential for creating a learning environment where key owners can deliver high-quality programs.
Creating a psychologically safe environment is another crucial aspect mentioned by him. This involves ensuring that team members feel comfortable sharing their ideas without the fear of rejection or non-acceptance.
Saurabh observes a tendency to focus extensively on learning and development for long-term visions or goals, often overlooking the celebration of short-term successes. He suggests providing opportunities for team members to share their success stories, fostering confidence and enhancing the overall learning environment within the team.
Lastly, Saurabh underscores the importance of aligning short-term and long-term goals with business growth and key performance indicators (KPIs). He emphasizes the necessity of setting goals based on the ‘SMART’ principles (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) and conducting quarterly check-ins to provide feedback, identify potential gaps, and track progress toward these established goals.
Evolution of Data in Digital Marketing
In the past decade, Saurabh has observed significant growth and transformations in the utilization of analytics and the changing landscape of analytics teams in various organizations. There has been a strong emphasis on building analytics teams composed of individuals skilled in programming languages (SQL/R/Python and others) to generate valuable insights.
During his professional experience, there has been a shift in marketing activities from audience-based targeting and a traditional campaign approach using third-party data or isolated data to a heavy reliance on first-party data, unified data, and 1:1 customer targeting. As a result, many organizations are now prioritizing the collection and utilization of their own first-party data from multiple sources, including digital channels – customer relationship management, call center, IVR, website, apps, email, SMS, push, retail, POS (point of sale), kiosk, etc., alongside other internal and external systems with a focus on data governance and security.
Insights in the field of marketing have undergone significant transformations in recent years as well. Earlier, the focus was primarily on providing general audience insights, basic campaign performance with top-level KPIs, segregated channel performance, etc. However, there has been a dramatic shift towards a more granular insights approach, involving analyzing and understanding the individual experiences, channels, campaigns, audience, channel contribution, KPIs, audience, and data attributes contributing to the success of such initiatives. This shift has been driven by the growing importance of implementing personalized customer engagement strategies, and brands/clients to be more customer-centric and result-oriented.
Organizations have recognized the significance of catering to the unique needs and preferences of each customer. The concept of hyper personalization and customer engagement has gained significant attention in recent years. Implementing these strategies requires a deep understanding of customer data and the ability to leverage advanced analytics and technologies. By collecting and analyzing data insights, businesses can create personalized marketing campaigns, recommend relevant products and communication, and provide tailored content that resonates with each individual customer.
It has also become increasingly important for businesses to invest in technologies and platforms that facilitate the collection, analysis, and activation of customer data. This includes leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, decision-making, and automation to deliver personalized experiences at scale.
Perspective on Leadership
Saurabh offers valuable advice to aspiring leaders navigating the dynamic landscape of the MarTech industry. In emphasizing the importance of success in digital marketing and technology companies, he underscores the need for a robust understanding of tools and technologies. However, he also highlights the equal significance of honing business and people management skills for achieving growth and establishing a formidable position in the industry.
Recognizing the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, particularly in 2023, Saurabh identifies them as a key driver of change in the MarTech sector. The swift integration of AI into platforms by numerous companies to stay competitive underscores the urgency for professionals to stay informed. Understanding how clients adopt AI and its impact on business transformation is crucial for driving additional growth and revenue.
In this context, he advocates for professionals to acquire skills in data science, AI, customer data and analytics, and real-time decision-making. These competencies, he believes, are of utmost importance, not only shaping multiple industries but also elevating personalization to new heights. Leveraging data science and AI empowers businesses to derive actionable insights from customer data, make real-time, data-driven decisions, and enhance personalized experiences for their customers.
Ultimately, he asserts that a combination of strong MarTech knowledge, business acumen, and proficiency in advanced technologies like AI will be the differentiating factor between leaders and followers in the digital marketing space.
