THE HIGHLIGHTS
Winning the loyalty battle with real-time customer experiences
The pandemic has disrupted consumers’ relationships with brands and retailers, meaning their loyalty is up for grabs, but making the most of it requires anticipating their needs in real time.
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There is a fierce battle for loyalty taking place right now and the best way to win is to use unified real-time data to deliver customer experiences that delight.
That was the take-out for Festival of Marketing delegates from presentations delivered by Tealium’s senior director of marketing, Laura McHenry and the company’s RVP, solutions consulting, David Morris.
McHenry reminded viewers that there is a massive opportunity as consumers increasingly turn to online shopping in the midst of the global pandemic. Many will have a favourite in-store brand but they may well find they do not like interacting with it online.
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watch ‘Get TUNED in to the New Era of Dynamic Marketing’
at the Festival of Marketing on demand
Find out more about how to win customers’ loyalty. Watch Tealium’s sessions, ‘Get TUNED in to the New Era of Dynamic Marketing’ and ‘Do your Experiences Delight?’, at the Festival of Marketing on demand now.
“Loyalty is up for grabs, all the pieces have been knocked off the board,” she said. “If you can deliver a brilliant customer experience for people in the moment, you are going to take customer share from competitors who are not. That is the bottom line.”
Customers are in control
To do this, marketers need to understand
that customers are now in control and they are, as McHenry puts it, “directing their own journey”. Each interaction with the brand is a moment when data can reveal a little more about each prospect or customer that can be used to anticipate their needs.
The ultimate aim is to use real-time data to make real-time decisions, to ensure customer experiences are seamless and frictionless.
It is important because we all know as consumers how wonderful a good experience with a brand is and how damaging a bad one can be. It is backed up by Tealium research, which shows 86% of consumers are willing to pay for great customers experiences and 73% reveal they are important in purchasing decisions.
This need to provide delightful experiences, across all channels, means it is no longer permissible to talk about long-term digital transformation plans being scheduled further down the line because, as McHenry reminded viewers, “next year is now”.
Zero-party and real-time data are key
Morris reminded Festival delegates that the most pressing task they face is to find out more about customers, and keep on growing those insights, so they are offered valid, personal experiences.
watch ‘Do your Experiences Delight?’
at the Festival of Marketing on demand
Zero-party data is the key here, empowering brands and publishers to build up and improve their knowledge of each customer. The basis of this improved understanding is trust. Brands have to be transparent and lay out, up front, what data they are asking for and how they are going to use it. Most importantly, customers need to see the benefit.
A good example of how this is done well comes with the supermarkets’ loyalty schemes, Morris suggests, which offer tailored offers so long as a person shares data about their purchases.
By equipping marketing teams with the right tools to collect real-time data and turn into real-time decisions, consumers will soon be able to see the value in offering data for a better experience.
“We need to react in real-time to the way our customers want to be spoken to,” he said.
“To do that, we need both the technology that can act in real-time so we can respond, and we need to know the full lifetime understanding of the person so it’s always in the right context. That’s how we build our own friendships. We remember things about our friends and in the right moment we use that information to be able to support them.”■
THE HIGHLIGHTS