Objective: Scale wanted to systemise account development plans and discover ways to leverage AI in their growing organisation
Results: 10% increase in avg revenue per client within 90 days
Who are you and tell me about Scale Digital?
I’m Stephen Kerin, Director of Scale Digital. We’re an acquisition agency based in Soho, working across mobile, influencer and affiliate marketing.
Can you explain how your company has integrated AI into its operations?
We’ve been working with AI and integrating it across everything we do for a couple years now, and we’ve thought quite a lot about how we’re going to continue to use it.
It largely started with how we buy media, but through Kaizan now we’ve improved every interaction that we have with everyone we engage with from our clients, to each other, to our publishers, right down to our accountant. We want to continue to increase and understand how AI technology can make us more efficient and allow us to do more money-making things.
What are the main objectives and opportunities you want to achieve using AI?
There’s a little bit of suspicion about technology, specifically fear of it listening to every interaction. Certainly some of our clients were a bit worried about the legal aspects of being listened to, that was the main thing but what we realised now is that no one cares now, it just happens. Now it’s just making sure that everyone who’s seeing the data is using it.
The main benefit of using AI, is it allows us to focus on more of the strategic work that makes us money. The other benefits are around understanding workflows, such as what we’re doing that may be repetitive, whether we’re supplying to the wrong people or if we’re having meetings with the right people. For the senior team members, it helps us understand what’s happening so we can get more out of every conversation and interaction with our clients without having to be directly involved.
Did you encounter any roadblocks or obstruction whilst implementing AI across your business?
Not really! When we first started using Kaizan it was as simple as installing a couple of plugins but the setup was very easy. In the beginning there was an initial hurdle to adjust to having something to listen to you, which was a change but most of the younger team in advertising are open to that. We’ve had no problems with any clients either.
What are the main benefits across the team from using Kaizan?
Kaizan provides us with good information that we can use. With performance marketing in particular there’s a few things around at the moment that allow us to buy and understand media better. For Scale, using Kaizan is all about getting deeper into automated responses to the point where the team are approving things before they go out and providing deeper analysis of numbers.
Specifically with internal meetings there is sometimes some suspicion, but as the tools continue to develop that ability to understand it helps us grow. For the team, the main benefit I believe is that they feel some comfort that Kaizan is listening to them. It means they can go back over conversations and not have to worry about taking notes all the time. The note-taking functionality, whilst probably the easiest bit for the technology to provide, is quite useful. The context it provides, alongside the summary email received afterwards provides huge benefit. The team can then draft and improve on what was noted, they enjoy using that.
They’re able to go back and refer to things that have been said that are useful for themselves to get accurate heat maps and client sentiment on their engagement with certain clients at different times. Particularly if some of the team are not around other team members can pick up on a conversation or a series of conversations, via the summaries. Now the team are into it, I don’t think they’ll ever go back. They were a tiny bit fearful at the beginning but now they appreciate what it can do for them in their day-to-day.
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Rebecca Rodin, I work for Scale Digital and I’m a Senior Client Services Manager, heading up the strategy of the accounts that I’m working on.
What effect has AI had on your work?
Since AI has become more visible in the workplace, it is speeding up a lot of our processes particularly for simple tasks such as pulling together copy for brand where we can just ask AI to do it. It’s also helping speed up client requests. In Client Services, we’re often trying to cut out the time it takes to execute so we can help manage all our clients better.
What changes do you hope AI will make to your role?
Anywhere we can save time is obviously beneficial, particularly in speeding up and automating processes for us is important because we are managing so many different clients. Being able to expedite the time it takes from that first interaction with a partner to going live and then reporting for example is really what we want to be doing to create efficiencies. This can include creative assets and copy or putting things live on their YouTube channels or websites, AI can help speed up those processes.
How do you think AI can benefit your clients directly?
If I had to put it in one word it would definitely be efficiency. The most common request clients ask about is how long does it take to go live with a partner and how long until they start seeing the results. If we can reduce that time to go live and the back and forth in producing creative assets it would be very beneficial because clients would see results quicker.
We’re working on a huge portfolio of clients every day, so being able to move between each of those clients, whilst remembering what you need to do for each one is key. Every day brings different requirements for all those clients, which means staying on top of the calls and agendas requires being efficient in terms of getting things live as quickly as possible to generate results quickly.
Our clients are paying us to do the job so we want to show them that it’s paying off and the activity we’re running on the affiliate platform is working, so that they want to continue working with us. They want to see the affiliate program doing well and they want to see growth week on week, year on year. Driving that consistent growth on the programme is important. Equally, all clients are different and some care more about the types of partners we’re working with which means we need to be recruiting and optimising good quality partners regularly.
What are the benefits you’ve seen from using Kaizan?
One of the biggest benefits we have seen from using Kaizan is the AI meeting assistant which records everything that was said during each call. It also takes notes so if a week goes by and you need to recall what you or the client said, it’s all there in the Kaizan app and for you or anyone else in the team to access.
Even if it’s a few months later, and you need help to look back on a call or your notes to remember what was initially said you can find the records. I love that feature about Kaizan.
