Banking On Innovation

“I began my career with sales in a digital startup agency. I won the Nissan Motors and SOTC digital mandate. Then I joined Volkswagen in the sales planning team to understand the automotive business and to manage digital marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) at the company,” recalls Sameer Nanjangud, Chief Manager - Digital Marketing & CRM, Skoda Auto Volkswagen India.

Nanjangud also had a short stint with BMW in the Middle East for product planning and pricing and was back in India to work with a Jeep brand, leading the company’s digital and CRM practice. In his experience of over 14 years, he has been credited with the highest website visits, highest attribution to retail, linking full stack systems for better coordination and customer experience, implementing artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbots for speed and scale, digitising the entire network by implementing in-store digital elements.

Innovations Focus

Nanjangud has contributed to four industry-first innovations for better reach and conversions. This included an increase in retail conversion by 8 per cent, planning and implementing an e-curriculum CRM programme for hand raisers and prospects and a six-part webisode that garnered 40 million video views. 

The strategies that augmented brand growth keeping the user at the centre of every brand experience ensured the sales pipeline never dried out for the dealers to follow up and convert. The brand utilised social media and digital connectivity to increase brand engagement during the lockdown and adopted new-age technologies for user engagement like augmented and virtual reality.

Ideas To Action

Nanjangud believes that his core strengths are the ability to connect user journeys to campaigns for actionable metrics, strong planning and running data models from ‘what if’ analysis. KPIs-based planning and interventions and applying Kaizen method to daily work and projects are also something he is confident in. By adapting to the constantly changing digital media landscape, he has contributed to the overall brand growth via an innovation agenda. 

During the lockdown, the digital medium saw an unprecedented surge in consumption to increase brand engagement with users. “I capitalised on the situation and increased digital activities to engage more with users and convert them. I have delivered measurable KPIs across the brand funnel and the sales funnel indicating marked improvement across the measured variables. I have implemented ‘click to retail’ measurement metrics and constant monitoring for last-mile conversion,” says Nanjangud.