The following is a guest contributed post from Matthew Winters, CEO at Veoo.
If you are a business in the 21st century, you cannot afford not to engage with your customers via mobile. At a time when consumers’ expectations for brand engagement have changed dramatically with the ubiquity of mobile, social, messaging and the on-demand economy, marketers are challenged with engaging with these hyper-connected consumers in a way that is relevant to them at any given moment. As a leading provider of mobile engagement solutions, we consistently seek to provide our customers with a best-in-class platform to enable them to engage one-to-one with hyper-connected, mobile consumers at scale.
If there’s one thing to take away from this article, let it be that personalization is critical in driving customer loyalty. Why? Well, let’s first look at what can happen if things go wrong…
Poor personalization can result in customers becoming inundated with offers that are completely irrelevant, leaving them irritated, frustrated and in some cases, disenchanted with the brand. Imagine a person making a purchase from the computer of a friend or family member. The odds are that the owner of the computer will have very different requirements and interests to the person who made the purchase yet, following that one transaction, they will be flooded with targeted advertising that was never meant for them.
A consumer could also be pestered with offers that, while relevant, might be undesirable. For example, they might have made a one-off purchase that is related to their age, sex or weight. This doesn’t mean that they are interested in every product that claims to be the next miracle cure for wrinkles. Making this assumption could then actually foster a negative relationship if the consumer associates the product with their own insecurities and begins to see the brand as an unhelpful reminder of a weight problem or the fact that they are growing older. In the same way, offers could also be made to a customer that were once relevant, but are now out of date.
Marketing is all about delivering valuable information at the right place and the right time. But how about delivering this valuable information to the right person? If organizations use consumer data intelligently, they can ensure that the information they share is always relevant to the recipient and as a result, build a relationship with that customer based on trust, loyalty, and above all, offering products or services that they know the customer will respond well to.
I know what you’re thinking, if personalized marketing has so many benefits, why doesn’t everyone do it? Well, gathering data, understanding what the consumer wants, and creating a great offer experience for your consumers is hard without the right tools. Effective personalization needs to incorporate data-driven targeting to deliver meaningful content which will compel users to take action, whether that’s redeeming an offer or spending more on purchases.
So, how does the magic happen?
Omnichannel
Knowing your customer allows you to know their go-to preferences and channels. Using a platform, such as our own, you can unlock a single view of your customer so that your marketers can now identify unique consumers across mobile channels. This will enable an aggregated representation of personal data and customer behavior. The built-in next-generation CRM capabilities of said platforms mean that marketers are better positioned to deliver the correct message to the correct consumer via the correct channel.
CRM
In addition to more powerful identity capabilities, it’s important to expand the ways you can engage your customers with personalised content by means of their preferred channel. For example, as emojis become a common language among consumers, integrating them into your messages can work towards making your brand conversations more human and relatable.
Integrations
As a supplement to native channels like SMS/MMS and push and in-app notifications, it can be important to add support for other OTT apps such as Facebook Messenger, an increasingly important messaging channel for chatbots.
It is no longer enough to leave advertising and marketing to chance. Businesses that want to stand out from the crowd need to begin using customer data in an intelligent way to create a positive user experience. Personalization not only makes customers feel valued and helps to build trust, it is also a powerful tool for engaging directly and regularly with customers in order to obtain a level of constant feedback that can refine and improve the techniques behind positive personalization. Don’t delay in finding out how your business can begin engaging with customers on a more personal level!
