Customers connect with brands that they resonate with. These businesses are kept top of mind, as there is so much competition out there that it’s comforting for a customer to know that they have a go-to source for their specific needs. But this also means that brands need to go above and beyond to even make an impact in the first place.
Retention efforts are often far behind acquisition campaigns as many businesses and brands are of the opinion that they need to be driving new business more than they should focus on retaining it. According to Smart Insights, 80% of a business’s future revenue will come from 20% of their existing customers, which enforces how important it is to focus on retaining existing customers and keeping them happy.
Understanding What Our Customers Want
Brands need to study the data they have at their disposal to gain insight into their various customer groups. Knowing where and when they can be reached will be highly dependent on the information that is gleaned from these insights. In understanding this, already one of the most difficult challenges has been overcome, opening brands up to the next challenge: using meaningful content, stories, conversation and personalised promotions to engage the customer and keep them happy. A happy customer will not only be the best advocate for your brand, but they can also come back for repeat purchases time and again.
Because each customer is unique, in an ideal scenario, we need to be able to treat him or her as such. We can’t predict every outcome for each customer, but we can use collected data and customer insights to create contextual marketing campaigns that appeal to the individual in a way that’s personal to them.
How Can Brands Create Personalised Campaigns?
There are a number of ways that brands can create personalised campaigns that individual customers respond to. It starts with interpreting all the data that is available to be able to effectively segment the audience into smaller demographics. This data provides vital information that can then be used to personalise and contextualise the marketing campaigns. Typical customer behaviour can be used to trigger a variety of personal messaging that will help build trust with the customer and engage them further with the brand. Messaging that is relevant to the customer will only make them feel more secure, which in turn will make them comfortable to hand over even more information about who they are, how they shop, what they want and where and when they want it.
A number of generic pieces of information can be converted into personalised interactions once the business understands the customers profile and requirements. Weather, customer gender and age, browsing history, previous purchases, favourite check-in spots… all of this information can be used to create a semblance of familiarity between customer and brand.
In the past, marketers were always using insights that were based on a group or demographic as a whole, but as we learn more about individual customers, we can start marketing to them based on their personal preferences.
Southern African retailer, Pick n Pay’s loyalty programme, Smart Shopper, allows customers to earn points for every shop that can then be used to pay for future purchases. In matching each customer’s purchases to their loyalty cards, the retailer is able to track what each customer buys on a regular basis and will periodically send these customers vouchers for those exact products. They know the customer enjoys a particular brand of tea, so they offer them a percentage off voucher for this tea, which the customer interprets as love and personal attention. Small actions like this have a large impact on customer experience.
In order for a brand or business to succeed with their retention marketing efforts, they need to be able to interpret information and use it to their advantage to ensure their customers are content, taken care of and being communicated with. It’s the little details like this that naturally push the customer to make the purchase, but also instil that feel-good notion of trust between customer and brand.