How To Design a Personalization Marketing Strategy For the Healthcare Industry

4 keys to increasing patient acquisition and retention with personalized content and offers.

Personalization has become one of the most effective marketing strategies for any business to improve customer acquisition and retention by increasing audience engagement and building relationships

It’s no different in the healthcare industry. In fact, with an overwhelming amount of health-related information available, it is now more important than ever to deliver content and services that are helpful and relevant to your patients.

Here are some essential steps to designing a personalization marketing strategy for your healthcare practice:

1. Create personas and map out the buyer’s journey

The first step to successful personalized marketing is understanding your audience by creating a series of buyer personas. 

These personas help you identify your patients’ priorities, the questions they have, the language they use, and their main concerns so you can design communications that speak to them. You can leverage this information for creating your content, designing your offers, and setting up your promotional strategies.

You also need to understand where your patients are in their decision-making process; for instance  they could be researching a medical condition, looking for a provider, or ready to schedule a visit. You can deliver the most relevant content and offer at the right time.

2.  Design targeted content and offers

When you have gained a clear understanding of your patients, identified where they get their information, and segmented your audience according to a variety of criteria, such as health conditions, you can then design targeted content and offers to deliver an individualized experience in the right place and at the right time.

Distribute the information and offers through multiple channels, such as personalized website content, emails, phone, printed materials, and social media, based on the patients’ preferences and past interactions with your content to maximize engagement and conversion.

3. Communicate the privacy policy

In a survey, 49% of consumers don’t mind businesses having a certain amount of their information so they can receive content and offers that are more relevant.

However, healthcare services involve more private and personal information than a typical retail business so there’s a fine line to tread when you use patient information to deliver personalized content.

To reinforce trust and patient relationships while distributing targeted content, you need to clearly communicate your privacy policy and how you utilize patient information before adding your patients’ information to your CRM system.

4. Analyze the data to understand user behaviors

There’s no one-size-fits-all personalization strategy and there’s only one way to find out what really works for your market and your practice, and that’s by analyzing the data to understand how your patients interact with your content and respond to your offers.

To effectively implement a marketing personalization strategy, collect patient information, and analyze the data to fine-tune your marketing communications, you need a robust customer data management system that provides you with a single customer view and offers content recommendations.

Request a demo to talk to our personalization expert and see how Nectarom can help you deliver a personalized patient experience.

Conversational Selling: Take Personalization To the Next Level

Increase customer satisfaction and conversion with conversational marketing

Live chat and messaging apps have become an integral part of any omni-channel customer service strategy.

Customers value the ability to get answers when and where they want and companies are improving customer satisfaction and conversion rate thanks to the capability of providing real-time responses.

One study found that 38% of customers said they have made a purchase due to a good live chat session. Live chat assistance has also been noted for helping to decrease cart abandonment by up to 30%, which in turn lead to an increase in sales.

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The key to getting the most out of live chat or messaging apps is to deliver a personalized experience tailored to each customer with conversational selling.

One-to-one conversations: the most effective way to convert

Remember the good ol’ days, before lead generation forms and email marketing, when people made sales solely by talking to other people!

With the help of advanced marketing technologies, it’s now possible to have one-on-one conversations with a large number of prospects and customers simultaneously and deliver a highly personalized experience in a way that’s most convenient.

This is often called “conversational marketing” – a process of having real-time, one-on-one conversations to capture, qualify, and connect with your best leads anytime and anywhere.

How to optimize conversational marketing

At the heart of conversational selling is a customer-driven approach that focuses on one-on-one interactions.

With the aid of technology, marketers can scale up these personalized interactions such that one employee can manage multiple, concurrent one-to-one conversations.

Here are some characteristics of conversational marketing to leverage:

Real-time interactions and fast responses

Conversational marketing is effective because customers can get the assistance they need right away.

With the combination of chatbot and live agents, you can effectively provide customers with the most relevant information as quickly as possible.

Chatbots can be programmed to respond to specific questions while triaging more complex requests so that a live agent can step in to assist promptly.

Customer-centric engagements

You don’t convert customers only by collecting leads. You make sales when you engage prospects in a dialog to understand what they need and offer a solution.

Conversational selling is effective because it focuses on having a two-way conversation so that you can deliver the most relevant information or solution based on the context of the interactions.

Personalized conversations

These one-to-one conversations are contextual and informed by a customer’s past interactions with your brand.

Even if you’re talking to a lead for the first time, you can add a personal touch by getting insights from their browsing history, the page on which they’re initiating the contact, or their locations based on IP addresses.

Customer insights

You can glean customer insights and collect additional information to enrich existing customer profiles through conversational marketing.

For example, when you ask a customer if he wants to be notified when there’s news about a certain product category, you get information on the kind of items they’re interested in to inform your segmentation and marketing efforts.

The information gathered through these conversations can help you get a more in-depth understanding of your customers so that you can fine-tune your sales and marketing strategies.

The key to seamless customer experience

Conversational marketing helps deliver seamless customer experience and facilitates prospects’ progression down the purchasing path.

A 360-degree customer profile is the key to success for this marketing strategy.

This single customer view allows your team to deliver an outstanding purchasing experience based on all the interactions a customer has had with your brand so you can maximize the use of technologies such as chat and messaging apps to optimize your ROI.

Stocking Produce this Holiday Season: Go Beyond Green Eggs and Ham

Holiday produce sales are upon us, and many retail firms are already predicting that the 2017-2018 holiday season will have the strongest sales numbers we have seen in years. Yet don’t make the mistake of thinking that this forecasted sales increase will only take place in gifts and apparel: According to Deloitte, “non-gift” spending will account for 65 percent of consumers’ holiday spending this year. The National Retail Federation is also optimistic about the coming holiday, forecasting that the average holiday shopper will spend 218 dollars on candy, food and decorations this year. Since customers intend to spend more on food and grocery items throughout the 2017-2018 holiday, there is an opportunity to reap the benefits of increased consumer spending in your grocery store.

 

However, in order to profit from the increase in consumer spending this holiday season you’ll need to compete with ecommerce megastores for your portion of market spend. Many grocers struggle to differentiate themselves from online megastores such as Amazon. Yet brick-and-mortar grocers have the advantage of being able to offer customers a festive, personalized omnichannel holiday shopping experience, which is something that even Amazon has yet to replicate. Consider the following suggestions to stand out from the ecommerce giants this holiday season.

 

Focus On Healthy and Organic Options

 

Grocery shoppers are eating more healthful foods and the availability of organic and low-calorie food options is a determining factor for customers when choosing which grocery store to patronize over the holiday season. In fact, Statista reports that 80 percent of U.S. consumers said that whether or not there were healthy food options factored into their decision-making process when choosing a restaurant in the past year. The United States government has also become increasingly proactive about encouraging customers to opt for healthy and organic food options. Among the initiatives dedicated to inspiring Americans to live more healthily are Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” enterprise devoted to decreasing childhood obesity rates, and the USDA’s “Choose My Plate” initiative, which offers a wide variety of healthy meal-planning options for Americans to maintain healthy weight levels during seasonal meals.

 

Plan of action: Cater to customer demand for organic and healthy options by offering gluten-free, vegan, and low calorie alternatives to some of your best-selling holiday dishes. Bookmark healthy food options in your store aisles with eye-level signs marking the areas where the diet-friendly alternatives are stocked. Instead of making customers search for their favorite products, lead them to the right place with large and pronounced signs which are easily-viewable from the high-traffic main aisles of your store. This way your customers looking for diet-friendly holiday meal alternatives will be able to easily locate the aisles that house their favorite ingredients.

 

Stream Holiday Recipes On Your Website

 

There is an opening for independent grocers to build a following by offering customers a unique shopping experience this holiday season. Retail Dive reports that in light of an overabundance of discount grocers in 2018, “price is no longer a competitive differentiator.”  Instead of trying to compete based on price alone, focus on establishing your company as an innovative leader in grocery with the addition of a seasonal recipe section to your business’s website. Your website’s recipe section should include cost-effective and diet-friendly classic seasonal dishes with a nod towards the traditional holiday dishes of your company’s prime consumer demographic. By monitoring customer demographic information as well as the sales of particular food items, you will be able to populate a list of holiday recipes that are uniquely targeted for your customer base.

 

Plan of action: Holiday recipes can boost margins only when customers can easily find the recipe ingredients on your website. Give customers a clear click-path to purchase the components of your holiday recipes by linking the produce, spices, and sauces from each recipe to buyable items in your online inventory. In addition, while low prices alone are not enough to differentiate your grocery store from the competition, offer your customers value in addition to your holiday recipes by adding links to online coupons and sale items in your ingredient lists. Appeal to the novice or holiday-only cook by keeping the ingredients and steps in each recipe simple, cost-effective and easy-to-locate on your company’s website.

 

Stocking produce for the 2017-2018 holiday season doesn’t have to be complicated. Edge out the ecommerce competition by loading up on healthy holiday meal options and by streaming fresh seasonal recipes on your company’s website and mobile app. Go beyond the standard holiday dishes by researching your company’s target consumer and loading up on economical versions of their favorite seasonal foods, so that your company can profit from the strongest holiday shopping forecast we have seen in years!

3 Ways To Maximize Sales On Black Friday

Want to get a piece of the $3.45 billion Black Friday pie? Here’s how to get ready.

In 2016, US consumers spent $3.45 billion on Black Friday. Is your retail business set up to make the most out of this year’s Black Friday Cyber Monday sale period?

With more eCommerce retailers competing for shoppers’ attention, you can’t afford to cook up a last-minute promotion and hope for the best.

It’s more important than ever to plan ahead and get your retail business ready for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Here are a few things you can’t afford to ignore:

Start early

The National Retail Federation (NRF) has found that 40% of shoppers start doing their research for holiday shopping as early as October.

Plan to start promoting holiday shopping related content and products, such as holiday gift guides, during that time. Set up website personalization strategies that leverage data from your customer profiles to ensure that you’re displaying the most relevant content and offers to your visitors.

In addition, make sure that you have contingency plans in place. For instance, figure out what your options are if your shipping company is delayed by a higher volume.

Not only should you be planning for things that may go wrong, you must also plan for when things go well. For instance, can your website handle a surge in traffic? Is your fulfillment system set up well enough to handle a large number of orders?

Last but not least, forecast your sales and communicate with your suppliers to ensure that you’ll have the right products in stock to fulfill your orders.

Plan your marketing efforts

Decide on the products you want to highlight, plan out your sales schedule, and coordinate all the promotional efforts to maximize your sales:

  • Schedule email marketing campaigns ahead of time and don’t forget to include personalized content and offers that are most relevant to each recipient.
  • Set up your social media promotions and use strategies such as email retargeting to deliver a personalized omnichannel shopping experience.
  • Connect with influencers early on so they can work any mention of your products or promotions into their schedule.
  • Do some social listening to find out what’s trending this holiday season and identify which products to promote.
  • Design a holiday-themed giveaway or contest with a viral component to help increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website.

Be mobile-ready

During the 2016 holiday season, half of the web traffic and 30% of retail sales came from mobile sites.

If your eCommerce platform isn’t optimized for mobile, you could be missing out on sales and losing revenue this holiday season.

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Mobile devices offer great opportunities to deliver personalized shopping experiences that will help you increase conversion rate.

Other than website personalization, you can deliver an omnichannel experience by using technologies such as geofencing (if you have a physical store) or mobile apps and leveraging data from your customer profiles.

You can also facilitate the mobile purchasing process with features such as tap-to-call or auto-fill by using location services to deliver a seamless customer experience.

Don’t get left behind this holiday season

An omnichannel personalized shopping experience will be the key to success for retailers this holiday season as well as for the ones in the coming years.

Thankfully, implementing these strategies are getting much easier with sophisticated technologies that will help manage customer data, personalization automation, and omnichannel personalization so that you don’t have to do all the heavy lifting yourself.

Increase Revenue by Tailoring Offerings for the Next Generation

Much of the information going around regarding generational buying preferences is based on alternative facts. Millennials and Generation Z for instance, are often said to be harkening the death of physical retail with their online shopping habits; when in actuality, both generations make the majority of their purchases in brick and mortar stores after omnichannel browsing. As a result of this informational disparity, many retailers get lost in the details of trying to build their presence across channels.

 

It will come as no surprise that a targeted omnichannel presence is paramount to a company’s ability to reach and convert next generation customers. However, when retailers research how to bridge the gap between their traditionally-run businesses and their Millennial or Generation Z target customer they are met with a barrage of false information.

 

To cut through the confusion, Nectarom consulted with leading retail analysts to find data-backed actionable insights on how retailers can construct their omnichannel presence in order to increase traction with a Millennial and Generation Z audience. The following guide will demystify the methods being used by successful retailers to build their revenue by offering their young customers a targeted, personalized omnichannel experience.

 

“One thing we know for sure, is that Gen Z inherently understands the new retail landscape, which sounds like this: ‘We don’t have to go to stores anymore, we have to want to go to stores.’ So if a retailer has stores they’d like to market to 80 million young people with expendable income, it’s time to think about why they would want to visit one of these stores. If they can’t answer that, or the answer is something lame like, ‘we’re cheap,’ it’s time for that company to rethink the reason they even have a brick and mortar store. Retailers need to think about what the term ‘omnichannel’ actually means. Omni-channel should be based on the brand, especially where Gen Z is concerned. For example, XXI’s web site is not made for ecommerce and Urban Outfitters has bands in their Spaces concepts. THAT’S omni-channel being done right, opposed to just opening mall kiosks and bad smartphone apps. Doing what’s right for the brand is more important.” – Lee Peterson, Executive VP of Brand Strategy and Design, WD Partners

 

Brick and Mortar Is Still a Priority

 

As we discussed earlier, physical stores are still a priority for next generation customers. According to a 2017 report by IBM/NRF, 98 percent of Gen Z customers still make their purchases in stores. This is especially true for the Generation Z customer, who uses brick and mortar stores as a place to meet up with friends and to test products before making a purchase. Big box stores are awakening to the possibilities of opening small, experiential retail concepts. Nordstrom recently debuted their first test concept of an inventory-less store in LA, called Nordstrom Local.

 

Although Gen Z has an affinity for the in-store experience, the path to purchase for the Gen Z customer takes place on multiple devices. But retailers take heed: Gen Z customers have a 6-second attention span and they won’t waste time waiting for slow apps or websites to load. According to IBM/NRF, over 60 percent of Gen Z customers will abandon apps and websites if they take too long to load, so businesses can lose out on potential next generation customers if their omnichannel experience isn’t up to par. Paradoxically, this means that retailers need to be equipped with a fast and personalized brand presence across channels in order to lead the Gen Z customer into their physical stores.

 

“By 2020, Gen Z will make up one-third of the US population. 77% of Gen Z prefers to shop in-store. When it comes to marketing, Gen Z does not trust what brands say about themselves. They trust what friends, family, and other customers say about a brand. So, positive reviews are a crucial factor in the Gen Z path to purchase. Because they trust the recommendations and endorsements of others, influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways of targeting this age group. Gen Z also prioritizes the interactions they have with store associates, so having knowledgeable and friendly employees who can offer personalized advice is a must. Overall, Gen Z is loyal to the experience they have purchasing products, not necessarily the products themselves.” – Meaghan Brophy, Managing Editor, Independent Retailer

 

Philanthropy and Individuality Define the Brand

 

Generation Z-ers have often been dubbed “Millennials on Steroids.” This is because Gen Z customers take Millennial values to new extremes. While for years Millennials have been hailed as the most eco-conscious generation of consumers to date, Generation Z shoppers are even more sustainability-minded than their predecessors. According to Forbes, 76 percent of Gen Z customers are concerned about how people are impacting the planet. This makes having a great mission statement is a necessity for brands, since Gen Z customers expect every purchase they make to go towards aiding the greater good. This might even include a publicized sustainability report, or donating a part of every purchase towards a charitable cause.

 

Creativity is also a core value for many Gen Z customers. This generation not only appreciates the opportunity to have their voice heard, but they also want to take part in the creation process. Retailers such like Target are jumping aboard the crowdsourcing trend by enlisting Generation Z influencers to have a hand in creating their new lines. Target’s Art Class, their new clothing line geared towards Gen Z, lets young people get creative with their apparel with original, influencer-created pieces they can mix and match. Since Gen Z favors being collaborated with over being sold to, so retailers that offer them the opportunity to construct their own unique looks will be the first to win their favor.

 

“Many analysts believe GenZ are the most advertising-immune generation in history and favor value-driven brands who are pioneers in corporate social responsibility such as having a voice in sustainability, inclusion and making the world a better place with social entrepreneurship and value-add on products.  GenZ mobile natives appear to favour retail experiences that are human-centric, interactive and bring people together. GenZ are both instant gratification natives and in-store experience natives, and this is shaping the entire future of E-commerce discovery and how retail brands create a scene in physical stores.” – Michael Spencer, Futurist & LinkedIn Top Voice

 

Capture Customers on Social Media

 

This is no time to procrastinate evolution. Brands need to evolve to have staying power and doing things the way they’ve always been done is a death sentence in the current retail landscape. This means that companies need to meet young customers where they are, through advertising methods which appeal to them. Generation Z prefers video to text, which means it’s futile to try to appeal to next generation customers with long-form textual advertising. According to a recent Adweek infographic, 50 percent of Generation Z “can’t live without Youtube.”

 

Now, more factors than just a customer’s age determine how they navigate their shopping journey. In fact, in the aforementioned Adweek infographic a small number of Gen Z-ers also listed Snapchat, Instagram and even Facebook as their “can’t live without it” platform. More on this in a minute. Regardless of what social channel a young customer prefers to be reached on, one factor remains a constant: they demand a personalized omnichannel shopping journey tailored to their own unique buying preferences.

 

“If you want to reach GenZ, you need to advertise where we are on YouTube, Instagram, and/or SnapChat. You are wasting your advertising dollars trying to reach Generation Z on Facebook and Twitter. Make sure your ads give us something to engage with and share.

If you want to convert Gen Zer’s on your website, you have a 6-second delivery window to show us real people using your product with pictures and videos – and less words.  Also, design your website mobile first and then transform the page to larger screens – I call that reverse responsive design.” – Sky Rota, 13 Year Old Founder of Gen Z Insider

 

 

 

Here’s where we need to start to talk about the importance of segmentation. Generation Z customers have a shorter attention span than any generation which came before them and they expect immediate, intuitive customer service based on their individual buying preferences. Segmenting customers based on generational demographics alone doesn’t provide marketers with enough data to personalize their shopping journey. To create relevant offers, companies also need to tailor their campaigns to suit their target customer’s buying history, location data and online behavior.

 

“From a marketing standpoint, I don’t think that starting with demographics is all that helpful. It’s way too high level. The best marketing treats different customers differently and is therefore more personalized. Just saying someone is from Generation Z or a Millennial doesn’t result in sufficiently actionable insights and targeting. For instance, it’s hard to say ‘We are the fashion brand for the Millennial professional,’ when so much of that individual’s preferences are determined by factors like location, profession, and lifestyle. Take it down to individual data for relevant and useful insights.” – Steve Dennis, Forbes Contributor, President & Founder of SageBerry Consulting

 

That’s a Wrap

 

This isn’t to discount the importance of understanding your customer’s path-to-purchase. While demographical data can be helpful in providing a general understanding of a specific age group’s buying preferences, it is only once companies whittle their this down to an individual level that they provide actionable results. It all comes back to using data to create a single view of each unique customer. Even as our world becomes increasingly technological, companies should still focus their efforts on understanding each individual customer.

Do we need a closing to round this all out?

Strategies to increase holidays sales of your online store – Part 2

The Key to Boosting eCommerce Conversion Rate This Holiday Season (Part 2)

eCommerce will be driving the growth of US retail eCommerce this holiday season. On the flip side, online retailers will also face increased competition as more businesses and merchants recognize the opportunity.

In Part 1 of this series, we showed you how to deliver an outstanding shopping experience to increase eCommerce sales through personalization on your online store.

In this article, you’ll learn how to extend the personalized experience beyond your eCommerce platform to create an outstanding customer experience with targeted content and email marketing automation.

Email isn’t dead!

Contrary to what many are saying, email is far from dead.

In fact, it’s one of the best marketing tools for the busy holiday season when consumers are bombarded with generic messaging from online and offline channels:

  • Email works well with mobile, which accounts for 48% of holiday shopping traffic.
  • Email offers instant buying options.
  • Email can marry targeted content with a specific call-to-action aimed at driving sales.
  • Email automation allows you to deliver relevant offers effective and efficiently.

Here are a few ideas to help you increase sales by using personalized email automation:

Saved cart and reminder emails

Cart abandonment statistics from a recent report show that desktop has a 61% abandonment rate, tablets have a 71% abandonment rate, and mobile has an 81% abandonment rate – which translates into over $4 trillion of merchandise left unpurchased in shopping carts!

To recover some of the sales from abandoned carts, you can send out reminder emails to shoppers who have registered on your site.

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This is a very effective sales recovery tactic. Research has found that nearly 50% of all abandoned cart emails are opened and over 33% of clicks lead to purchases back on site:

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Targeted content

Gift guides create some of the most popular content during the holiday season. Take it to the next level by personalizing them for specific segments of your audience.

Create gift guides that focus on different target markets and send personalized emails to specific segments of your customers, directing them to the content.

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You can further customize shopping experience with an interactive gift selector, such as a quiz on your website, to help shoppers narrow down their choices.

Besides gift guides, publish other holiday-related content that maps to shoppers’ preferences and customer lifecycle and share it with your audience via email and retargeting campaigns.

Deals and discounts

Another way of utilizing email marketing to increase sales is ending personalized offers to your customers.

Email segmentation makes it extremely cost-effective to deliver deals and discounts tailored to the preferences and purchasing behavior of your audience.

By delivering relevant offers, you can increase conversion rate and drive more sales.

Personalized email automation also allows you to send out action-triggered messages. For instance, you can recover abandoned carts by offering a special discount on the specific items in a shopper’s cart via email.

Make personalization automation work for you this holiday season

Personalization is the key to cutting through the clutter by delivering an outstanding customer experience designed to drive sales and improve loyalty.

Thankfully, today’s marketing automation technology means you can put these strategies into action in no time. So, don’t let another year go by without upping your online retail game!

[ Case Studies ] How To Apply Omnichannel Personalization in the Restaurant Industry

How to boost ROI, increase conversion, and build loyalty with personalization automation

Just like with any other brand, consumers want to interact with their favorite restaurants both online and offline – from placing an order of their favorite dishes to getting personalized offers and discounts.

Delivering a seamless and personalized experience will help you stand out from your competition and make your restaurant the go-to dining choice.

Need some ideas and inspiration? Here are three restaurants that are winning the omnichannel personalization game:

TGI Friday’s

The casual restaurant chain increased conversion rate by 35% using an omnichannel personalization strategy that involves a website, a mobile app, social media, and in-store experience.

They collect all customer data on a centralized platform and create targeted offers based on each individual’s preferences, habits, and past orders.

TGI Friday’s robust mobile app uses push notifications to remind customers about their favorite foods at days/times when they’re most likely to make a purchase.

Case Studies omnichannel personalization

The app offers easy access to a list of past purchases so customers can order their favorite dishes quickly and easily.

They also incentivize individuals who have downloaded the app but are yet to place an order with a special first-time order discount code, delivered through push notifications.

Carrabba’s

The Italian restaurant chain successfully boosted mobile and in-store traffic conversion by encouraging customers to sign up for a coupon on their website when they relaunched their menu.

They then leveraged the customer data to integrate website, mobile, and in-store customer experience. Customers were rewarded for engaging with the brand via different channels.

By collecting data from these interactions, Carrabba’s was able to gain insights on its fans and customers by using all information from ZIP code to favorite dishes.

Combining such data with the emails collected during the menu relaunch campaign, Carrabba’s implemented automated personalization technologies to send emails featuring customized content and offers to keep building relationships with diners.

Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe

This Greek restaurant chain is on track to double its locations by the end of 2017.

They owe a good portion of their rapid growth to a mobile and online ordering system that offers a fast and personalized off-premise dining experiences, such as take-out, catering, delivery, and third-party delivery.

Case Studies omnichannel personalization

To support online and mobile ordering and provide a seamless customer experience, Taziki’s installed a unified platform that funnels all types of orders through a single gateway.

Guests can order via the website, iOS and Android mobile apps, or on Facebook, with the ability to choose from different menus and fulfillment options such as in-store pickup, curbside pickup, and catering.

All orders are tracked by a fully-integrated loyalty program designed to increase the customer lifetime value.

Online and mobile ordering generates a lot of customer data, which is the starting point for any personalization strategy. Taziki’s is then able to collect and analyze such data to enhance their customer interactions.

Omnichannel personalization unlocks the future of casual dining

An omnichannel experience not only makes it faster and easier to place an order but also builds long-term relationships, which increases customer lifetime value, by offering the ability to order from a list of past purchases and the opportunity to participate in a loyalty program.

At the core of any personalization strategy is the ability to collect and analyze customer data by using a centralized platform.

Find out how NectarOm can help you take your restaurant’s omnichannel marketing to the next level with our personalization automation solution.

Survey Respondents Mark Personalization Initiatives as “Top Priority” for 2018

NectarOM recently conducted a Marketing Personalization Survey in partnership with the Texas A&M Retailing Summit. This survey inquired about each company’s existing personalization efforts and which initiatives they are currently using, as well as their primary obstacles to implementation and where they hope to be in the future. Over 75 percent of respondents to this survey said that they were either in the process of putting omnichannel personalization methods in place, or that it was on the roadmap for the upcoming year. With such a large majority of companies still in the inception phase of their omnichannel journey, the outcomes from this survey give us an important glimpse into of where these businesses are with their omnichannel strategy and where they hope to be in the near future.

 

Among the many revealing takeaways from the survey, some of the most enlightening outcomes center around how company leaders rate weigh their current personalization initiatives, as well as what methods they feel need to implemented in order to keep up with their competitors.

 

Current State of Affairs

 

One of the most important factors impacting putting personalization methods in place is how familiar and amenable company leaders are with those methods. While over 58 percent of survey respondents said that their company leaders are familiar with the concept of personalization, another 42 percent said that the exposure level varies with various leaders within their organization. Similarly, 50 percent of respondents felt their company leaders know how to execute a personalized marketing campaign, while 40 percent said that the answer was dependent upon the individual company leader in question.

 

Most survey respondents (70 %) replied that they rank their organization at a medium level of maturity in their marketing personalization efforts. When asked what tools they are currently using to collect and manage consumer data, the leading answers were customer relationship management software (CRM) and data management platforms (DMP), with nearly 64 percent of respondents saying that they are currently using both platforms.

 

Room for Greatness

 

Beyond each company’s existing capabilities, NectarOM also asked survey respondents where they see the most opportunity for growth. A whopping 70 percent of companies said that they are using or are interested in using a distribution platform to personalize their marketing campaigns. This includes distribution platforms such as an email service provider, mobile app push, or website widget. This number was closely followed by other personalization solutions including CRM, DPM, and content management systems (CMS), which were each marked as a priority for 60 percent of survey respondents.

 

In addition, when asked where they see an existing opportunity for omnichannel implementation over 83 percent of respondents marked evolving to meet customer expectations as the primary reason for building their omnichannel offerings, while more than 58 percent of respondents replied that their top reason for building personalization initiatives would be to focus on a more customer-centric approach.

 

Obstacles to Implementation

 

The preceding statistics leave one resounding question unanswered: With so much interest in expansion through omnichannel personalization, what are the main barriers holding these companies back from full-scale implementation? While 58 percent of survey respondents feel that their companies have sufficient budgets to implement omnichannel personalization, nearly half (41%) of survey respondents don’t feel that their companies have enough allocated to get the job done.

 

Interestingly, 60 percent of survey respondents work for companies making over $1 million dollars a year, along with another 40 percent of survey respondents whose companies make from $100 million to over $10 billion dollars a year. Despite these substantial budgets, half of these company representatives don’t disagree with the idea that their business is behind their competitors in terms of executing personalized customer experiences.

 

Plan Looking Forward

 

Perhaps this is why in a recent Periscope Study by McKinsey, over 71 percent of respondents listed personalization initiatives as either their utmost marketing priority or among their top three foremost priorities for the coming year. Among the channels which will be used to build personalization, McKinsey survey respondents listed email and social media as their primary focus. Email is also where NectarOM survey respondents saw the most opportunity for their companies to grow their personalization efforts. In fact, 100 percent of the individuals that NectarOM surveyed checked email as the primary channel where they saw potential for activation.

 

These results point to an increasing awareness among company leaders of how deploying marketing personalization initiatives across existing channels such as email and social media can increase sales and build customer loyalty. What remains to be seen is how these companies deploy these initiatives in the coming year and how each business’s efforts impact both their relationships with their customers and their bottom line.

 

Watch our session to learn more about our survey findings.