Engage your key target audience in the right way and they will interact with your brand. Engage and connect with them in an exceptional way and on an emotional level, they will remain loyal to your brand and become brand advocates. This is hugely powerful in the competitive CRM & loyalty marketing world of ‘attract, acquire, engage and retain’.
“It’s about moving away from a business-driven agenda to nurturing relationships and customer experiences, in an authentic and truly valuable way, focused on the consumer need. This is where CRM and data bring you closer to real connections and unlocks value from your customers” – Rachel Hutcheson, Director of Client Services & Expansion at Ikano Insight.
CRM and data insight help you unlock real value by enabling you to engage and connect with your customers on an emotional level.
Fast innovation, new data, savvy customers
The pandemic curveball led to a huge rise in reactionary marketing strategies and fostered a culture of fast innovation and creativity, which has created a wealth of new data and opportunities.
At the same time, customers have become more and more demanding of brands. They seek transparency and authenticity, and gravitate towards brands they connect with on an emotional level.
They also use a multitude of media platforms in different ways, so loyalty marketing channel choices and message relevancy have become even more crucial to reach your key target audience.
Brands need to deeply understand this new customer mindset in order to engage and retain existing customers in an exceptional way in 2022.
Deliver a seamless omnichannel experience
Accelerated digital innovation, coupled with revolutionary in-store augmented and virtual reality technology, is leading the way in transforming the retail space and customer experiences.
Consumers are thirsty for innovative physical experiences after being immersed within the boundaries of the digital world for so long, making this a great time to be creative with experiential marketing campaigns.
Mintel predict that one of the top five global consumer trends for 2022 will be “Enjoyment Everywhere“. They predict that having endured lockdown, consumers will be eager to break out of their confines and explore, play and embrace novel experiences, both virtually and in the “real”, physical world.
So, don’t just focus on the physical experience. Create a seamless omnichannel customer experience by blending physical, virtual and digital and give consumers back the choice, put them in control and let them experience and interact with your brand in the ways they want to.
“In Control” is another of Mintel’s predicted top five global consumer trends for 2022: “In times of uncertainty, consumers crave a sense of control over their lives. Brands can deliver the information and options that consumers need to feel like they’re in the driver’s seat”.
Create emotional connection through brand purpose and promises
To create a deeper connection with your customers, it is essential to make your brand purpose clear and authentic and be consistent with your messaging across all brand touchpoints.
- Lego, for example, already has a clear brand purpose ‘to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow’ but took this to a whole other level in 2020, when they launched the LEGO Super Mario set, offering a very unique omnichannel customer experience with physical bricks and online games. It was one of their most successful theme launches according to Mintel.
- Innocent Drinks are another brand with a brilliantly simple purpose: ‘to make it easier for people to do themselves some good.’ They communicate in a way which means interaction on any platform is in the same, unmistakable tone of voice and visual style, which is powerfully engaging and authentic.
The focus for most brands is people and planet right now, and Innocent Drinks communicate not just their hopes and goals but also the ‘how’ they put culture and sustainability at the heart of what they do. Along with achievements to date which further reinforce their brand purpose and deepen the emotional connection with their consumers.
Fulfilling the brand promise and living up to consumer expectations is extremely important. Brands often say they put the customer first, but their actions often say otherwise. With online ordering, for example, if your supply chain and logistics teams have real-time visualisation dashboards, they can track stock availability and issues, enabling them to be agile to meet changing consumer demand.
We, as consumers, have increasingly high expectations around speed of delivery, with the rise of services offering same day or next day options. Being able to centralise and visualise your data, in easy-to-understand ways, enables you to drive efficiencies throughout the value chain, become far more reliable and build a deeper level of trust and loyalty with your consumers. Our Data Visualisation Dashboard product could help you simplify and visualise your data with actionable insights.
The power of personalisation
It is important to understand your customers’ individual wants and needs to ensure they don’t feel like ‘one of many’. When customers feel they are understood and listened to on a personal level, they are far more likely to be loyal and trust in your brand. It’s about communicating the right messages, in the right way, at the right time, through the right channels.
By understanding your customers better and using data insight and loyalty analytics techniques, you can easily predict your customers’ changing needs and desires as well as build a stronger trust and connection.
“At Ikano Insight we use our Recommendation Engine to ensure a tailored and personalised customer experience across all brand touchpoints. Providing this one-to-one marketing experience is key to cultivating long term customer relationships” said Rachel Hutcheson, Director of Client Services & Expansion.
Predictive analysis can be used to establish channel affinity so customers can be communicated with in the right channel(s), and campaign analytics can test, refine and optimise for continuous targeting and performance improvement.
Additionally, retrospective analysis of content and natural language processing can test the optimum subject lines as well as using personalised content which adapts for each and every individual.
