1) Tell our audience a little about Attentive and its services.

Attentive is the leader in conversational commerce, providing an end-to-end platform for SMS marketing for over 8,000 of the world’s leading brands such as GUESS, CB2, Urban Outfitters, Supergoop! and more.

Our mission is to create magical experiences between brands and their customers through text message and email marketing. Attentive is capable of driving around 19% of the total online revenue for its customers.

2) What is your role in driving Attentive’s business growth?

As the Chief Product Officer at Attentive, I lead a team of amazing product managers and designers who collaborate closely with our customers, partners, and users to define the future of Attentive’s products.

When working in an industry that changes so rapidly, you have to keep your finger on the pulse of trends, technological breakthroughs, and regulations to provide the best product possible. That's what my team does.

3) You’ve been here for over a year. What major challenges have Attentive’s products solved for its clients in this timeline?

In the past few years, marketers have been facing major top-of-funnel challenges due to an increased strictness in data privacy changes. On the other side, marketers are also overwhelmed by the amount of data to parse through, without employing data scientists or analysts to help make sense of it.

Attentive’s services help in tackling both these challenges. Through generative AI and integrations, built on all the data we capture, our customers can personalize their interactions with consumers and ultimately drive higher performance.

Attentive’s AI helps its customers create campaigns to enhance engagement and overall performance. Our expert recommendations help businesses to develop stronger relationships with their consumers.

4) In the world of visually enhanced marketing assets, how is Attentive’s SMS marketing driving billions in revenues?

We’ve seen clear proof that SMS works. As per our survey data, 73% of marketers believe that SMS drives incremental revenue for their business and the numbers are only looking up.

In 2022, Attentive generated over $15 billion in revenue for businesses. The world’s leading brands trust Attentive as our services help them achieve the maximum ROI and improved engagement.

We also offer unique products that keep us ahead of the curve. Our two-way conversational services, supercharged by AI, allow for one-on-one personalized messages. Our technical expertise and unique services are the reasons why we can drive 19% of total online revenue for our customers.

5) What suggestion would you give to budding marketing agencies and product owners about investing in textual marketing methods, especially for customer relationship management?

Personalization and the right kind of data are key to delivering custom, relevant experiences for your shoppers. Your end product will only be as good as the data you put in, so invest in the best tools to gather that information.

Accurate data from your customers allows you to serve them with tailored and personalized content. When customers feel known by brands, and are not annoyed with misdirected content, they turn into lifelong fans.

6) What advantage does automation in marketing bring for businesses, that too in conversational commerce?

Attentive was designed to create meaningful connections through personalized text messaging.  SMS, by nature, opens up the doorway to one-on-one conversations.  The most innovative brands answer their customers’ questions quickly, ask them for feedback, and then reach back out with the right information at the right time.

Now, businesses of all sizes can integrate automation into their marketing programs to ensure maximum results and revenue. With AI, true personalization is finally achievable.

7) If you get the power to go back in time, what would you do differently that could have avoided a certain failure or taken your brand/software/product to greater heights than where you are now?

In my time at Attentive, I’ve been continuously left surprised by the untapped potential of SMS. Every time we’ve felt that we’ve nailed the ways that SMS can enable brands to build better relationships with their customers; our clients suggest more new use cases on our platform.

8) What’s a life lesson that you follow with all your heart, and would like to quote to our audience?

I grew up as a competitive swimmer. This meant racing competitively every month, and sometimes every week. On the plus side, I won a lot. But I also lost a lot of races - sometimes by the most painfully small margins.

While losing was really disappointing at the moment, over time when I looked back, most of my fondest memories were not of the races I won, but of the practices every day with my teammates, and the camaraderie we shared as we were pushing ourselves. So, the lesson I’ve taken from that is that it's all about the journey and how we get to the destination vs. the destination itself.

9) Where do you see Attentive in the next 5 years?

Attentive is the largest SMS marketing platform globally, sending and receiving over 2 billion messages per month. I see a major shift where the phone number is the center of marketing. As the world moves in this direction, we want to be the largest messaging platform, focused on the highest performance.

With generative AI, we have a big opportunity to create better, faster ways to reach consumers with highly targeted personalized information.  I’m excited for Attentive to empower brands to create a 360° personalized customer experience at scale.

If you wish to know more about Nakul Narayan, connect with him on LinkedIn. To explore the pioneering journeys of global leaders, read our MobileAppDaily interviews. For similar content and the latest updates, subscribe to MobileAppDaily.