Abstract

The case study ‘Zenoti’s AI-Driven Smart Marketing Tool’ describes the entrepreneurial journey of Zenoti, a US and India-based software company that offered an all-in-one cloud-based software solution for the wellness industry, including spas and salons. The case touches upon how the new software solution helped Zenoti’s subscribers simplify both their front office operations (including customer service, marketing, and sales) and back office operations (including record maintenance, quality compliance, billing and payments, and customer feedback). This helped the wellness center to focus exclusively on offering superior customer experience. The case study then focuses on the company’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven ‘Smart Marketing’ tool introduced in 2019 that helped Zenoti’s subscribers improve their customers’ loyalty by enabling them to send personalized and timely e-mails to their customers. The tool used predictive algorithms to predict the future visits and spend behavior of customers and displayed Return on Investment (ROI) and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) metrics for marketing campaigns on its dashboard. The case study then describes the Smart Marketing tool’s impact on Zenoti’s subscribers that helped Zenoti become a unicorn in 2020. The case finally touches upon the company’s future plans.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Learn the key role of customer experience in services marketing.
• Understand the importance of software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies to standardize service operations across multiple branches.
• Learn how digital technologies can be leveraged to offer SMART Marketing solutions.
• Become familiar with how data analytics and artificial intelligence can help improve customer relationship management and customer loyalty.
• Become aware of how SaaS providers can differentiate their offerings through a benefits-based Unique Value Proposition (UVP) in a competitive SaaS market.

Keywords

Martech; Customer relationship management; Customer experience; Marketing automation; Minimum Viable Product; Predictive analytics Customer Journey; B2B platform; SaaS business model; Service operations