We recently spoke with the CEOs of companies that participated in the recent AWS Startup Showcase: Innovations With CloudData and CloudOps to find out what drives them and learn about their visions for the future. This is the fourth feature in our CEO Startup Spotlight series.

The classic movie “Mary Poppins” is what inspired Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Swift (pictured) and his co-founders to name their company Cordial (officially Cordial Experiences Inc.), a cross-channel marketing and data platform. Specifically, the scene in which Poppins gives the two youngsters medicine to drink. 

One said it tasted like strawberry, the other said it tasted like lime cordial, and Mary Poppins said it tasted like rum punch. Swift likened this scene to what he refers to as “and both,” the idea that customers can each have their own individual experience using Cordial’s technology.

“We loved the idea of creating a unique experience for every single customer and any given brand, and frankly the term cordial appealed to us by its very definition,” he said. “The idea of creating joy and happiness within people was important to us. We didn’t just want to build transformative technology, but we wanted to build an experience that elicited this notion of being cordial. And, of course, there are many who hold us accountable to the very name of our business too. It’s a high bar, and one that continues to grow, but I love that people hold us to it.”

Cordial enables marketing teams to collect all of their customer data in one platform and use it to quickly discover trends and then deliver highly personalized messages for some of the largest brands, including Revolve and Edible Arrangements, via email, SMS, mobile app, and social channels. 

“We’re the underlying data platform and the activation layer that help brands better communicate with their customers because they ultimately understand their customers better,” Swift said. “Consumers want assurance that a brand knows them, gets them, understands their desires, wishes or patterns of behavior with that particular brand.”

Hyper-personalization drives 250x ROI and triple-digit growth for brands

Cordial gathers data around individualized behaviors and looks at them in full view, taking into account past history, the present moment and what behaviors might be predicted. Very discrete or descriptive pieces of data tie to unique content that helps drive a better customer experience or a particular behavior. 

In a separate interview with theCUBE in March, Swift said that these hyper-personalized messages drive higher revenue per message, helping brands to significantly increase their customer lifetime value because the experience they’re creating for consumers is very tailored and unique to that individual.

As a result, Cordial customers can generate a 250x return on investment and triple-digit growth very rapidly. It helps that Cordial’s implementation process is 90% faster than legacy marketing clouds in the market, according to Swift. 

“Our enterprise clients are typically up and running within seven days and fully implemented within 60 days, which is unheard of. And we pride ourselves on the flexibility of our technology coupled with an incredibly talented services team,” Swift said.

Swift attributes much of the platform’s speed and data operability to its work with AWS cloud services, with which it partnered in 2014 when Cordial was founded. 

“We said, ‘Let’s start in the cloud right from day one,’ and it’s been a huge competitive advantage,” he stated. “It gives us speed; it gives us scale; it gives us all sorts of things that we can immediately start unlocking value with. AWS has been an incredibly strategic partner for us ever since then.” 

A cordial company culture

Swift believes that what truly sets the company apart from others, particularly older, legacy companies, is its team and company culture. In a market that is saturated with marketing technology brands, at the end of the day creating and enabling a culture of “world-class human beings” that live by distinct values is why Cordial wins and keeps clients. 

Communicating better, being tenacious about clients, taking ownership and being on-mission to “be cordial” are not only differentiators for Cordial, but Swift feels these elements are critical and necessary in the world we live in today.

“Clients are not just marketers or brands; they’re actually people we have a relationship with. And we want them to be ecstatic with the experience we’re offering,” he said. “We want to make their lives better and bring joy to them. When they shut down their laptops at the end of the day to spend time with family and friends, they shouldn’t feel disgruntled because of the experience they had with the platforms they use to be successful in their jobs. It might sound altruistic, but we want them to feel they had a really good day because Cordial is trying to make their lives better.”

Swift feels it is important to care for people within the company, as well as challenge them, and help them be the best and healthiest version of themselves. He’s clear and open about what his priorities are: his wife, four children and leading the company, in that order. And he encourages others to go through the process of figuring out the priorities for their lives. This is especially important as the company prepares for what promises to be a very fast-moving three years of growth ahead. 

“We’re fortunate to be in a category that is exploding right now in terms of growth, especially coming out of the pandemic,” Swift said. “Brands are saying they need to transform rapidly, reimagine what their technology stack should look like, and ensure they’re using the right tools to enable a really transformative customer experience.”

Cordial’s data architecture was purpose built to accommodate any number of channels, as well as an infinite number of data sources. The ability to manipulate and restructure data coming in or going out of Cordial’s platform and work seamlessly with other systems is a significant differentiator as compared with legacy clouds and even next-generation options in the market. Swift feels that brands investing in Cordial are taking a huge step toward digitally future-proofing themselves and how they’re preparing to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving consumer experience.

Evolution of a leader

When asked if he’s learned from any mishaps along his journey to becoming CEO, Swift responded that he fell into the trap in his early twenties of “fake it until you make it.” 

“At the time, it sounded like a good mantra to live by, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth,” he explained. “Faking it prevents us from learning and asking vulnerable questions, and from truly being our authentic selves, leading with purpose and honesty.” 

Swift even carried the mantra with him into the early years of starting Cordial and building the company. 

He began to find that when conducting activities that were fairly new to him, like fundraising, learning and growth came more rapidly when he chose to ask “the dumb question.”

“When I started asking for explanations, my learning went through the roof,” he said. “It was scary and uncomfortable, but when I decided to lean into it and let others teach me, it helped me grow.”

Mental health has become one of Swift’s passions in recent years, and he strongly feels it is a topic that should be prioritized and instilled into the startup business culture. He has spoken about it publicly at universities, and internally it is talked about at Cordial on an ongoing basis. Just as business outcomes and priorities are a key part of discussion, so too is the dialogue around the importance of nurturing healthy individuals within the organization. 

“There is a lot of pressure and stress in the startup world, and I think we need to foster an environment in which people can talk about that and bring it out into the open so they know they’re not alone in their journey,” he said.

Something Swift’s father instilled in him was that wisdom is garnered over time through successes and failures; it is never given in an instant. He expanded on that to say, while a founder can name him/herself as CEO early on, that title has to be continually earned with good stewardship of the company. 

“It’s an honor to be in the position of CEO,” he said. “I pray and seek for wisdom every single day and that I’ll be able to apply it to my business and the people I interact with.”

Photo: Cordial