Consumers are giving brands a clear message: change, or kiss my coin sack goodbye
In today’s new world of growing consumer demands, fueled by an ecommerce-sized shift in the market, online shoppers will soon abandon brands that don’t offer them personalised content or understand their likes and dislikes. Brand loyalty is no longer a given, it has to be earned.
According to our recent study of consumer attitudes to online marketing, 46% of UK customers will ditch their favourite brands if they don’t understand them. Consumers are giving brands a clear message: "change, or kiss my coin sack goodbye".
People are unique and have a variety of interests, likes and dislikes. So, just as those interests differ for each consumer, so must the messages that brands and retailers send them.
Blanket messaging has plagued marketing for too long. It’s time for change.
Email is still king, but mutiny’s in the air
You wouldn’t wear a jumper you hated, so don’t expect consumers to open your emails crammed full of undesirables
Email casts a pretty long shadow over its young channel upstarts, with 72% of Brits calling it their preferred marketing channel.
"What’s new?" you sigh. Well, when you compare it with second-spot Facebook (with 13% of the vote) it’s pretty clear how important it is to get this long-serving bastion of marketing communication right, right?
Customers are being turned off by too many emails, messages littered with products they don’t care about and ones without recommended items they actually want.
You wouldn’t wear a jumper you hated (sorry gran) so don’t expect consumers to open your emails crammed full of undesirables.
In particular, it’s the millennial audience that feels most strongly about this, with 70% of 18-24 year olds stating that the brands which fail to personalise their marketing will lose them as customers.
Can you afford to lose 70% of your most powerful purchasing group? No.
How about a single customer view?
Having a rich profile for each contact in your database enables you to pinpoint where they are in the customer journey
Brands are failing to use the data they collect on their customers to provide tailored content, products and services to encourage the shopper to make a purchase.
Many brands know basic customer information - such as whether they are male or female - but consumers have moved way past this.
Being able to market to each customer in a personalised way requires us to have a detailed understanding of who they are and how they interact with our brand - the elusive single customer view.
Getting a single customer view means bringing together all the data that you have about a customer, from demographic details to their interactions with your site to their purchase history and more, and consolidating it all into a single record.
Having a rich profile for each contact in your database enables you to pinpoint where they are in the customer journey, and extend their customer lifetime value by targeting them with timely, relevant messages.
It also lets you learn who your best customers are and create strategies to keep them active.
The future of email is personal
The mass-consumer society has been the excuse for poor marketing for too long
Welcome to the anti-mass era. A space where targeted, fleshy human touches win and batch blasts lose.
It’s not as simple as insert [NAME] I’m afraid. It’s not about segmenting male vs. female. Ready yourself guys, it’s about to get pretty personal.
Every time you send a customer or potential customer a marketing message that isn’t relevant to them, they’re less likely to connect with your brand, less likely to open or click on your emails and less likely to buy from you.
It’s not about segmentation, it’s about a truly individual message. People will respond better and bring greater value to your business when they feel their needs and interests are being specifically addressed. Our study found that British shoppers are 56% more likely to buy if email content is tailored to the types of products they’re interested in.
It would seem that our crusade for change isn’t just personal, it’s the key to profitability, according to Forrester’s , which underlines how personalised experiences will be the key determinant in who wins mindshare and share of the (growing) wallet in 2016.
Marketing today should harness the power of customer data and nurture a continuous cycle of interactions, drive deeper engagement, and get to know the customer behind the data in the process.
The mass-consumer society has been the excuse for poor marketing for too long. With the internet, smartphones, smarter technology and subsequently the ability to track customers’ activity, brands now have the means to bring back the personal experience.
Get personal, or fail.
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