Wunderkind works alongside clients using an AI-driven performance marketing solution, helping them form stronger brand-audience connections through identification resolution and hyper-personalized triggered messaging. The Wunderkind Identity Network identifies anonymous website traffic through a network that recognizes 9 billion devices, enabling clients to recognize anonymous users, gather first-party data, and make targeted offers across email, text, and ads.
The company connects with any industry with ties to retail or that has direct-to-consumer revenue channels. Wunderkind is mostly active in apparel and fashion spaces, as well as beauty, luxury goods, and electronics. It is also fairly experienced in travel, hospitality, and even event ticketing verticals.
Over the last 13 years, Wunderkind developed a giant identity graph, which allows the company to see 9 billion devices, 1 billion opted-in consumers, and observes 2 trillion digital transactions per year. As consumers typically have multiple devices—tablets, phones, laptops, etc.—the team at Wunderkind stitches those together to help brands understand when triggered messaging needs to be sent or ads displayed. If a consumer signals they’re ready to buy or that they have a need, Wunderkind can help activate a response, primarily in owned channels. The company also leverages its WunderKIND Ads product to assist brands.
Loyalty360 spoke with Tim Glomb, VP of Digital, Content, and AI at Wunderkind, about leveraging AI, data collection and maintenance, and offering an intelligence layer to help brands better understand their customers.
Customer Loyalty
Glomb believes loyalty is defined as consumers thinking about a brand or participating in an activity with or around a brand when they haven’t been engaged. It’s not solely transactional.
“Evangelism is probably a good term to use around loyalty,” begins Glomb. “It’s synonymous because if you look at the definition, it’s someone who converts somebody to something else.”
While Wunderkind does not specifically provide loyalty platform technology to clients, all the company’s data and intelligence, alongside actions through its managed service, help foster loyalty with existing customers. The goal? Turn them into advocates.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Messaging
Brand marketers and customer loyalty professionals seek to elevate their communications with hyper-personalized marketing messages to better engage customers and cultivate brand affinity. Glomb nods to AI and the ability of machines to make faster decisions.
“ChatGPT just released version 4. You can create audio, video, and all kinds of text very quickly,” explains Glomb. “It’s impressive.”
While AI is at the core of Wunderkind’s engine, Glomb doesn’t see AI as being used well in the MarTech space. Some brands are only using it to change copy, subject lines, or product descriptions. For Glomb, it’s a superfluous use of AI.
“When you have as much data as Wunderkind—we oversee and observe two trillion digital events per year for consumers—and plug it into a true AI engine, you can make decisions that aren’t necessarily built on journeys or roles,” says Glomb.
Glomb believes that journeys are no longer necessary. Brands only need the signals—let the machine make a better decision about when a customer needs a follow-up or more support. If a product has a lifecycle and needs time to be used or appreciated, brands shouldn’t ask for a review on the day the customer made the purchase. Follow-up should happen weeks later.
“That’s where we’re going in the retail space: understand the signals and let AI actually make the journey fit where the consumer is in the moment,” says Glomb.
The Wunderkind team is excited about AI’s possibilities and the company’s application of it. With one of the largest proprietary identity graphs on the planet, there is an incredible opportunity to elevate the customer experience.
As a managed service, Wunderkind uses its data to help inform a brand’s messaging strategy. When a consumer interacts with a brand, data is created. Additional customer-brand activity adds to the collected data. However, the brand can only observe the interactions that happen on their digital property. This is where Wunderkind comes in.
“Through our identity graph, we know most of the other sites the customer has visited,” shares Glomb. “Maybe not all of them, but we’re on thousands of websites. We also power a giant advertising platform technology.”
The identity graph allows Wunderkind to understand more about that customer than the brand can learn. Leveraging this knowledge, Wunderkind can make recommendations for the brand to implement.
“We may know that its customer spends 30% more in their average basket size with other brands,” says Glomb. “While we can’t give our client that explicit information, we can make recommendations. For example, we could advise skipping discount offers because we can see that the customer spends more than average in other places. By understanding the customer’s rich profile history, we might realize the customer cares more about loyalty points or another non-transactional benefit.”
Wunderkind offers an intelligence layer that allows brands to know their customers better. It enables them to make hyper-personalized offers—whether it’s a content offer, an engagement offer, or simply an appreciation message.
Data Collection Challenges
Given the
complexity of data collection, maintenance, and distribution, Wunderkind is also tasked with helping brands navigate increased customer data and privacy concerns, especially with data privacy laws and regulations.
Glomb admits that as an early brand builder, he wanted as much data as possible in-house—proprietary data that could be leveraged in support of brand goals. Often, there were brand partners, endpoint tech solutions, or even a marketing stack he could build, but he wanted to
own the data.
“Even with the complexity of data collection, there is no federal law here in America around privacy,” says Glomb. “What marketers should focus on today, and where I flipped the script in my own head, is partnering with companies that do things really well. Wunderkind has been doing this for 13 years: collecting proprietary, opt-in customer data that we can use on behalf of our clients.”
Wunderkind makes recommendations to help a brand align more closely with a particular customer’s needs. Once this is in place, the brand can build its products, implement product marketing, and go to market.
Glomb suggests that any brand worried about data governance and privacy find partners that are good at what they do—completely compliant with great references and a long history. Like Wunderkind, these partners can be plugged into the brand’s ecosystem.
“We natively integrate into some platforms and seamlessly integrate to all Application Service Providers (ASPs) out there,” says Glomb. “Lean on a partner that has the data and understands government policies, and then let them act on your behalf. Don’t worry about owning everything—because then you become responsible for it.”
Successful Programs and Strategies
Glomb notes that for Wunderkind clients, the key is providing value to the end customer in the moment where they need it. While there may be a bit of guesswork, the technology and data exist to direct brands when and where to send messaging.
“This is not the ‘cast and blast’ messaging where everyone gets the same offer. True loyalty is going to be fostered when you can understand that person as an individual, and you can connect with them when they need you,” emphasizes Glomb.
Triggered messaging is where Wunderkind lives. Individuals will be sent a message, an offer, or content based on signals or existing data indicating a person needs relevant messaging on a particular day. Understanding a product’s lifecycle is vital when deciding when to reach out to a customer. Offers should not be made based solely on past behavior.
“Maybe a customer wants to know about your loyalty program,” says Glomb. “Tell them you’re going to give great loyalty advice and get them to opt in there.”
When a brand can view a customer holistically, more value can be provided. For Glomb, that’s where value and
customer loyalty intersect.
Looking Ahead in 2024
When asked about what’s coming next in 2024, Glomb advises brands to lean into AI. It’s a transitional tool that can produce amazing results with the right data. He believes it will create more opportunity than cause negative disruption.
“We adopted AI very early on and have been using it for years as our core engine,” enthuses Glomb. “Brands can use platforms like Wunderkind’s autonomous marketing platform to make better, quicker, and faster decisions.”
While traditionally, humans were needed to set up journeys—or journey orchestration and business rules—they can now be agile because of data. Companies like Wunderkind are trying to solve problems with AI to reach an autonomous state where the “orb of the engine” makes decisions and sends offers in the moment a person needs them most.
“The right offer, at the right time, with the right message, in the right channel—we’ve been saying it for years,” finishes Glomb. “AI and the advancements in technology, servers, etc., it’s here. We’re excited to see how autonomous marketing will allow humans to do more human things: creative, product development, and resonating in the marketing collateral, whereas AI can stitch together the consumer experience. I’m very excited for the future of that.”
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Quick-fire Questions
What is your favorite word?
Eat. I love to eat.
What is your least favorite word?
Can’t. It can always be done.
What excites you?
Being outside.
What do you find tiring?
Typing.
What book do you like to recommend to colleagues?
The 4 Disciplines of Execution, by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
I think airline pilot would be fun.
What do you enjoy doing that you don’t get to do often?
I did it last night. Fishing.
What inspired you to become the person you are today?
Solving problems is what inspired me to become who I am today.
What do you typically think about at the end of the day?
It’s always getting outside—got to get outside.
How do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
If it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t worth doing. So, I hope I was a fun guy.