In September 2024, WirtschaftsWoche, together with Capgemini, Fraunhofer ISI, and KIT, presented the Best of Technology Award to ten companies—Mainition won first place in the Marketing & Sales category and remains the reigning winner in that category to this day, as the award has not been presented again since then. The jury recognized a company whose AI not only responds but also takes proactive action.
Shortly after the awards ceremony, editor Andreas Menn—who writes about digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligence for *WirtschaftsWoche*—spoke with co-founder Stefan Karrer. Karrer demonstrated how a fictional email exchange regarding a construction project, using structured communication, resulted in an accepted proposal, complete with follow-up emails generated automatically. The key statement that remains the foundation of Mainition to this day comes from that conversation:
"AI is taking the lead here."
A core idea that has been confirmed
In an interview, Karrer described a concept that remains the foundation of Mainition to this day: AI takes the initiative to actively re-engage customers at the right moment. It is precisely this idea that has been consistently refined ever since—and today forms the core of our product: automated customer reactivation.
Focused on What Works Best
By 2024, the feature set also included a smart chat function and automated quote generation. Since then, we’ve deliberately focused on what delivers the greatest impact for our customers: taking the initiative to specifically reactivate dormant existing customers—at the intersection of CRM or ERP data and a company’s actual transaction data. That’s exactly where the signals emerge that indicate when a customer should be reached out to again.
Mainition thus recognizes when an existing customer becomes inactive and automatically reaches out to them with a personalized message. What began as an early, broader vision of AI that takes the first step on its own has evolved into a focused solution for the very problem that costs medium-sized companies the most: revenue that quietly slips away from their own customer base.
Why We Like to Remember It
Awards such as the Best of Technology Award provide early confirmation that an idea has merit. For us, this was proof that proactive, AI-powered customer engagement is not a niche topic, but rather creates real business value—a vision we have consistently built upon ever since.
