While marketing departments crave the benefits of personalisation, they seem to fail at executing on an individual basis. According to analytic data intelligence solutions company Effective Intelligence the reason is simple: disparate data sets.
Because data usually exists in silos within organisations, it’s difficult to find that single, elusive customer view, says Julian Ardagh, CEO of Effective Intelligence. Adding to the challenge are the facts that brands and their agencies become paralysed by the sheer volume of each customer touch point and, worse still, fail to use the data they collect to provide tailored content – products and services that ultimately drive the customer to make a particular purchasing decision.
The good news is that it’s a situation that can easily be resolved, says Ardagh. “Adopting a more intelligent form of marketing orchestration – where different systems work together to enable brands to manage the individual customer journey across channels and over time – helps brands overcome these challenges. Rather than waiting for customer-centric and master data projects to be delivered, customer experiences can easily be improved using current channels and systems, so companies can start to see a greater return on their investments.”
Companies wishing to lead in terms of delivering relevant, consistent brand experiences should learn from best practices that show that focusing on the individual customer experience across all touch points (the entire customer journey) will enable brands to build longer-lasting relationships with greater value.
Ardagh suggests starting by implementing a pilot or project with a specific audience in a specific channel, followed with a proven rollout across wider targets, gradually adding more channels until a brand’s entire customer base is included and engaged.
However, true brand engagement will result only if there is a single orchestration hub that employs unified logic and decision making across all touch points. An orchestration hub will be able to provide a holistic view of how a valuable customer makes a purchase. “Consumers follow their own logic – so if intelligence is dispersed among channels governed by traditional siloed logic, it will result in disjointed, oftentimes conflicting, brand experiences,” Ardagh explains.
Today’s consumers value experiences over things, and this applies across all channels. The premise that the customer relationship comes first, and that the relationship is more important than the sale, is central. In this way insights about a consumer’s buying propensity, likes and dislikes can be developed and used to ensure that brand messaging is personalised, consistent and relevant within the target market.
Understanding consumers’ personal journeys helps brands to devise ways to nudge their behaviour in a specific direction and ensure that the brand always acts in context. Furthermore, understanding the relationship between the consumer touch points and merging this information with a customer’s life stage allow brands to take the appropriate action always, or not to take any action at all, as the case may be.
The big take-out: Brands that are winning the hearts and minds of their consumers are personalising messages across touch points, using data to forge relevant insights and utilising a single orchestration hub.