Freshworks’ Girish Mathrubootham On How D2C Brands Can Get Personalised Marketing Right

Freshworks’ CEO Girish Mathrubootham believes that D2C brands should address the concerns of customers on privacy and data security with regards to personalisation. 

Speaking at Inc42’s ‘The D2C Summit 3.0’, he stated that brands need to get permission-based marketing right. “We don’t want brands to buy a list and spam customers. D2C brands need to care about their brand.” He added that customers understand that entrepreneurs want higher revenue, but entrepreneurs need to build a brand over time. 

“You get new customers. Give them awesome service and engage with them contextually. Earn their trust and build the relationship. That’s the right way to do it,” he said.

Mathrubootham was speaking on how customer engagement tools can help D2C brands increase personalisation. He stated that D2C brands should use technology to provide personalisation to an online buyer on the same level as is offered by a small offline business owner.

However, sometimes the price of personalisation is ‘mistrust’ by the customers, he said. 

The debate around how online players use customers’ information has grown in recent times. The government is also planning to bring a comprehensive law for data protection. 

However, Mathrubootham believes that brands need to use customer marketing for acquiring and retaining customers. The only condition is that customer data should not be sold and used only for personalisation.

Citing Amazon and Netflix, he stated that the latter’s recommendation platform and the former’s ability to suggest ‘when to buy’ an item is commendable. 

“The idea is to ease the consumers’ online shopping journey and give him the experience that a corner store from Bengaluru would,” Mathrubootham said.

Day 2 of Inc42’s ‘The D2C Summit 3.0’ begins soon. Catch more leaders talk about how D2C brands can navigate the pressures of ecommerce, build great customer relationships on experiences and become privacy-first and consumer-first brands.