This conversational commerce giant has set its sights on Southeast Asia

More than 20 years ago, CM.com was founded in Breda, Netherlands, with a simple purpose. As one of the earliest conversational commerce platforms in the world, it functioned primarily as an SMS service for nightclub and bar visitors to inform them of guest DJs, timetables, contests, discounts, and more.

Over the years, CM expanded throughout Europe, with event and festival organizers hopping onto the platform. The company would go on to provide other offerings such as SMS voting services for events like the Eurovision Song Contest.

But these alone weren’t enough. Jeroen van Glabbeek, founder and CEO of CM, saw ecommerce as the next frontier for conversational commerce tools.

Jeroen van Glabbeek, founder and CEO of CM / Photo credit: CM

For many years, ecommerce customers had to figure out what they wanted by themselves, and the whole transaction process was impersonal, he says.

With conversational commerce, customers can personally engage with brands through conversations, improving overall customer engagement. Businesses, on the other hand, can use conversational commerce tools to know and understand their customers better, adds Van Glabbeek.

Sensing an opportunity within the space, CM launched a host of cloud solutions in 2020 to help businesses expand their conversational commerce capabilities. Today, these cloud solutions include the likes of an AI chatbot, an integrated mobile messaging service, and a cloud marketing platform.

All of this has led to explosive revenue growth for CM, with the company taking in 107.6 million euros (US$127.5 million) in overall revenue in H1 2021, a 97% increase from 54.5 million euros (US$64.6 million) in H1 2020.

Adapting to Asia

Having found success in Europe, the platform has now set its sights on accelerating its growth in Southeast Asia, which has some of the highest engagement rates for conversational commerce in the world.

Asia was one of the driving factors behind CM’s soaring revenue this year. Increased spending from Asia Pacific and the Netherlands on the company’s communication-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) solutions grew its CPaaS revenue by 95%, from 48.2 million euros (US$57.1 million) in H1 2020 to 94.1 million euros (US$112 million) in H1 2021.

In Q2 2021, CM also saw a 100% year-on-year surge in messaging volume, with much of the increase coming from big tech consumers in Asia. For Van Glabbeek, Southeast Asia is the second most important market after CM’s home ground of Europe.

However, the diversity of the region also presents a hurdle in the form of localization, especially with adopting local languages, he says. CM realized that this was an important area to develop because of its prior experience working with clients in the region, which allowed the company to learn more about what these firms needed.

CM found that because many of its clients had to work with different software tools, having these platforms in their local languages made it much easier for them to use. By providing its solutions in different languages, CM gave its users a more localized feeling, which not only improved the user experience of CM’s clients, but also made communicating with their own end users easier.

To overcome this challenge, Fred Siu, director of CM in Asia Pacific, says that the company has a strong hiring process for local talent, who support CM’s clients by pitching solutions to them in their native languages.

Fred Siu, director of CM in Asia Pacific / Photo Credit: CM

Another strategy employed by CM to grow its presence in Asia Pacific is adopting local business practices, such as billing currencies and preferred communication channels. The company has integrated popular channels in Southeast Asia such as WeChat, Instagram, and Viber into its solutions, adding new features to support these channels.

“It’s not only about sending text back and forth,” says Van Glabbeek. “It could be pictures, menus, carousels, or many other technical features.”

To further facilitate its expansion in Southeast Asia and reduce reliance on its headquarters, Siu says that CM has resources for all functionalities, such as servers, within the region itself. Van Glabbeek adds that the company currently hosts its own cloud server in Hong Kong and is in the process of installing another in Singapore.

Expanding its business horizons

As part of its growth, CM recently began incorporating new solutions in order to grow from just a CPaaS provider into a wider, more comprehensive software-as-a-service platform that offers integrated solutions.

For Van Glabbeek, integrating the company’s services makes them easier for businesses to use, especially for clients who do not have the knowledge to develop complicated processes or leverage application programming interfaces themselves.

One of these solutions is CM’s Mobile Marketing Cloud, released two years ago.

The cloud service was the result of CM integrating its marketing campaign tools – such as dynamic landing pages and conversion tracking – with its customer data platform, which was first developed eight years ago to help businesses store customer information and activity.

The customer data platform was originally conceived because CM realized that customer information was often difficult to consolidate and unify into a single system. Furthermore, the data stored on these separate systems might not be optimized for data collection or marketing. The integrated platform allowed businesses to connect these different systems and capitalize on the data gathered as a result.

With the Mobile Marketing Cloud, marketers now have a one-stop solution to not only gather customer data, but also use it to improve engagement through the right channels.

However, the platform still had some gaps left to fill, such as the coverage of customers’ web activity, which is a key metric for any business. To enhance the solution’s capabilities, CM acquired data collection service TraceDock earlier this year. With TraceDock, CM’s clients can now store the data of their website visitors without the need for a third-party platform like Google Analytics.

Leading the way in Southeast Asia

As it grows in Southeast Asia over the next few years, CM sees itself becoming one of the top players in conversational commerce. It will do so by providing solutions that cover the entire gamut of channels together with functionalities like AI chatbots and voice and payment capabilities.

Van Glabbeek says that CM’s focus on its solutions being integrated for business users provides a clear advantage over its competitors, as most other conversational commerce platforms often cater to software developers instead.

“To use our services, you can just use your browser, go to CM, then help yourself. You don’t need to develop anything – it works out of the box and is already integrated,” he adds.

Photo credit: amadeustx / 123RF

Within the region, Indonesia is an exciting prospect for the firm, Siu says. In a survey conducted by Facebook and BCG, 94% of the country’s consumers said that conversational interactions influenced their purchasing decisions.

Indonesia’s huge market also means a growing number of opportunities in ecommerce, fintech, and logistics that could make use of CM’s services and solutions. Ecommerce platforms, for example, can use the Mobile Marketing Cloud to allow consumers to opt-in for product notifications through their channel of choice, which will send them an alert when a product they’re interested in is back in stock.

Beyond that, one of CM’s current projects focuses on empowering two-way communication between merchants and their end users, making conversational commerce an even more reciprocal experience.

“This might facilitate upselling or cross-selling at the same time, which will change the way service providers interact with their users, enhancing the overall customer experience,” adds Siu.

Currency converted from euro to US dollar: US$1 = 0.84 euros.

CM.com is a leading provider of conversational commerce solutions, allowing businesses to communicate with and understand their customers even better. Its Mobile Marketing Cloud provides solutions for customer engagement across a wide range of channels while automating the marketing process at the same time.

Get in touch with CM.com on its website.

This content was produced by Tech in Asia Studios, which connects brands with Asia’s tech community. Learn more about partnering with Tech in Asia Studios.