3 Tips for Gaining Brand Power

Customer Service

Customers are the base of any successful business. Without customers, you have no sales. While this is the most obvious tenet of having a business, customer experience and brand loyalty are often overlooked. Consider an example of a retail clothing brand that is known for its superior quality at the least expensive prices in the industry. They have achieved superiority to other brands, and in theory should hold a monopoly in the retail clothing industry, but strangely, their sales are not as high as projected and are even losing customers to competitors. There are 3 main issues with this retail clothier, and they are all related to customer experience.

 

1. First Issue: High product quality, low customer service.

Just because the product is higher quality and more reasonably price doesn’t mean everyone will purchase it. If a customer comes in the shop, questions the quality or price, and is met with a rude sales clerk, the unpleasant experience will lead the customer to spend extra money at a different store and spread negative word of mouth for the company. This reason alone explains why a superior store might be languishing with poor sales and loyalty.

 

2. Second Issue: Know your customer better than the competition

Even if a company has great customer service in addition to quality and price, another obstacle for achieving a loyal customer base is to simply know your customer. If Jane Smith likes to wait to buy sweaters on sale, the next time she is browsing the store online, it is up to the retailer to target an e-mail to her with this specific information. It will connect the consumer with the brand while simultaneously promoting positive word of mouth press.

 

3. Third Issue: Stay in touch with customers often

One tactic of growing brand awareness and customer loyalty is by acquiring their personal information; whether by signing up for newsletters, collecting it through surveys, or asking for information during checkout. By taking these approaches a company can strongly increase brand loyalty and stimulate sales by informing customers of when and what is on sale, prompting a call of action. While it is a commonly known that this type of communication push may be considered bothersome, a survey by Adobe showed that 75% of customers want companies to use their personal data to improve shopper experience.

 

Having superior quality and price is only one piece of the puzzle to having a successful company. You must evaluate your customers and value their tastes, opinions, and most importantly their word of mouth. If used properly it can be leveraged into a powerful free marketing campaign to boost brand awareness but if utilized incorrectly it can be harmful.

Small Details In Marketing Personalization Makes A Big Difference

marketing personalizationThe Little Things Are A Big Deal

There’s a lot to do in the great big world of marketing personalization. Your goal is to acquire customers, drive traffic to your site, boost revenue and retain your pool of customers. Establishing a 360 degree customer profile requires a great deal of effort. This information is obtained through various sources including purchase history & habits, CRM, customer profiles, email, mobile, social, browsing history, etc. Once that is established, you have to connect the customer dots from customer databases and third parties.

From there, hyper-personalized communications are deployed via trigger marketing in real time to deliver the right information, products, offers and content at just the right time. This involves finding the trigger, creating the right offer and delivering a timely execution. All in all, having the most efficient and accurate road map will determine your success and aspired outcome.

When you look at a map, you’ll see more than the thick lined interstate highways. There’s a collaboration of main roads and side roads. When trying to get from point A to point B, it’s habit to look at the quickest route…interstate highways. However, this doesn’t take you to your final destination. Close, yes, but not quite there. You need the main roads and side roads to successfully reach your destination.

The same holds true for marketing personalization. There’s a great deal of dynamic sources of retaining big data and generating real time, hyper-personalized content and communications.  As much as it may appear that you’ve gone from point A to point b successfully, you’re not there…yet. Now you need to string together the smaller roads that will get you there.  In the world of marketing personalization, that means paying attention to the little things.  Those little things can make a big difference.

The small details aren’t so small when you look at the big picture…

1.  Timing – We all know, with most things, timing is everything. Within your big data, you’ve determined Mrs. Smith’s comprehensive 360 customer profile. She’s received timely offers, content and products based on her needs, triggers, habits, etc. Are you ready to execute a campaign? No. Now you need to take the word “time” in its literal sense.  When are you sending these emails to Mrs. Smith? Have you studied her patterns to hone in on when Mrs. Smith reads her emails? This often overlooked detail is of key importance. You can have the most complete, real time communications, but if Mrs. Smith reads her emails at 9 a.m. and you’re executing a marketing campaign at 7 p.m. you’ve missed her.

2. Events – By using adaptive algorithms, you can listen to what a customer is doing. You can observe behaviors, social, CRM, purchases, announcements and lifecycles to evaluate and optimize the hyper-personalized content. Did Mrs. Smith accept a new job that requires relocating to another city? Sending a congratulatory note might seem like the nice thing to do however, this is information you need to weigh carefully.  Instead, find a meaningful and relevant way to use this information to influence some recommendations.

3. Customer engagement – You’ll be aware of when a customer appears to have “fallen off the face of the earth.” They may appear to be in a state of dormancy. Your first reaction may be to send a slew of “We’ve Missed You” or “We’ve Noticed You Haven’t Shopped In Awhile” emails with offers and products to nudge them. You may even go so far as to send an exclusive coupon to lure them back. Overloading can often backfire and potentially turn a customer away for good. This is a good time to study those algorithms and key in on those events. Mrs. Smith is moving because of a new job. There’s a lot to do!  She’s packing, making arrangements, a long commute, starting a new job, etc. Now is the time to plan a careful marketing campaign to reestablish her engagement.

Nectar’s suite of products can work together to connect big data, develop a complete picture and deliver the most relevant and individualized communications.  

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