Consumers are bored with the online shopping experience and want something new. But online and pick-up-in-store options are no longer a novelty for consumers. They want more.Budgets are shifting to improve the experience of Web sites and ecommerce systems. Management and delivery tools continue to gain traction with brands, because many want to improve their customers' digital experience before the major year-end holidays. A Forrester Research study reveals that 45% will focus on content management, 26% on ecommerce platforms, 23% on digital asset management, and 21% on testing and optimization 21%. The study surveyed 148 digital customer experience professionals about their strategies for the next 12 to 24 months.
On-site search requires an even better experience than traditional engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo. If there's any doubt that consumers are fed up with the experience, the white paper, Your Site Experience Is Old School, from Compare Metrics tells all. It analyzes site navigation tools and online shopping experiences in an effort to explore how to double the average order size of Web purchases and highlight opportunities for retailers. The basis for the paper comes from a study done with the eTailing group earlier this year.
"Consumers prefer to browse vs. search," said Garrett Eastham, CEO of Compare Metrics, making the distinction of looking through the merchandise and action of discovery vs. the tactical act of typing in a keyword looking for something specific. "The more relevant the inventory the more likely consumers are to engage and make a purchase."
The white paper reveals that shoppers often go online for inspiration. They believe it's more efficient searching through the Web site than racks and shelves in the physical store. This gives them an opportunity to make a purchase as well as to find design ideas.
In fact, 67% of consumers go online to browse and window shop for fun. Some 90% of shoppers spend the majority of their time shopping online when they know exactly what they want. When it comes to discovery and navigation of Web sites, consumers gave the experience five out of 10 points.
Some 73% of consumers said Web site category filters eliminate products that consumers wanted to see. Shoppers are also becoming less tolerant with inefficiencies in on-site search. Some 4 out of 10 consumers don't trust it, and 64% said they would rather have simplicity in the search process.
The white paper suggests increasing the sites' "wow factor" by focusing on commerce-driven content, as compared with pure editorial content, available naturally on the site rather than outside, the shopper's chosen discovery path. Make it easier to find products. Some sites are two complicated, have too many options and load slowly. Most of all, don't limit products or only show best picks. This will alienate those with a different taste in product. Consumers will close the browser and go on to the next retailer with an easier ecommerce system.
By Laurie Sullivan, writer and editor for MediaPost
This year’s Super Bowl was proof of the opportunities available to marketers to engage consumers during live events. In fact, during the Super Bowl, AT&T’s data usage almost doubled from 388 GB in 2013 to 624 GB this year, and Verizon reported an 800% surge. Consumers stay glued to their mobile phones at all times during real-time events, earning their position as a key place to grab and/or maintain attention through interactive mobile campaigns.
While large, well-known events are the bright and shiny object of real-time event engagement opportunities, there are numerous other options available that can be just as effective at building quality relationships with consumers. Think: in-store promotions, restaurants, internal conferences and more. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to these engagement tactics. Each company, its objectives, goals and audiences needs to be evaluated in order to ensure positive results.
Here are four tips to keep in mind when planning your next live-event or real-time engagement campaign.
1. Commit. This isn’t a one-time thing.
The success of real-time engagement is contingent upon it not being a one-time effort. Live events and other real-time experiences should serve as a jumping off point or part of an overall plan for year-round engagement and consumer interaction. If it’s a one-time activation, you risk losing the connection that you just put time, effort and—if its a landmark event—a lot of money into.
A brand that’s rocking real-time engagement at live events is the Country Music Association (CMA). In 2013, CMA Music Festival organizers, and its website, encouraged attendees to sign up for mobile alerts so they could get access to seat upgrades, stage change notifications, chances to win VIP experiences and priority seating in 2014. Festival marketers can use this text data to interact with attendees, see which bands/artists received the most interest, and update fans on plans for the upcoming festival this year to encourage repeat attendance.
2. Make it strategic.
Marketing strategies to engage consumers during real-time experiences need to align with your company’s overall business goals and objectives. While live events and real-time engagement can be fun ideas that make a “splash,†you need to make sure these strategies strategically align with your company’s plans for customer engagement and will provide positive results toward the big picture. So, if your aim is to drive traffic to your website, make sure the mobile call-to-action encourages site visits. If you’d like to increase your company’s social media following, then make sure the campaign or promotion lives on social media channels and encourages interaction on those channels.
After seeing a huge increase in mobile usage and interaction in 2013, Mellow Mushroom, an Atlanta-based pizza chain, wanted to create a way to engage with customers in-restaurant. In partnership with Coca-Cola, Mellow Mushroom created a “Spin the Coke Bottle†game to not only capitalize on the real-time interaction opportunity but to also drive sales. This campaign was an in-restaurant, mobile experience where guests scanned a tabletop QR code to interact with their tablemates via a series of playful conversation starters and trivia questions, centered on music. During the promotion period, guests also received a 10-character Mellow Mushroom code when they purchased a qualifying Coca-Cola product at the restaurant. Each code earned a sweepstakes entry toward a VIP trip to the 2013 American Music Awards and LiveNation Concert Cash.
3. Choose your social channels wisely.
A challenging task for real-time engagement can be deciding which social media channel to use for a campaign. Instagram and Twitter are often popular choices for live events because of their frequent-post culture and the ability to easily follow unique hashtags. When choosing a social media channel, brands need to ask themselves and do research into where their target audience is most active. If your target audience mostly uses Facebook, and you have a contest available only on Instagram, you risk reducing interaction opportunities because a consumer isn’t active on the channel you chose. With that in mind, this is why multi-channel capabilities are always a best bet for submission-based campaigns.
Ever order the five try-on glasses frames from Warby Parker? The primarily online retailer allows customers to select five frames to have mailed to their home to try on for free—knowing you can’t possibly choose one frame from a large selection of styles and colors. If you need a second opinion on which glasses to choose, you can reach out to the brand via Instagram, Facebook or Twitter with pictures in the different glasses to receive quick advice on the pair you should go with. Warby Parker offers this service on a variety of social media channels to allow customers to interact where they prefer.
4. Don’t think of mobile as a single entity.
Smartphones have ensured that consumers have almost the same capabilities on their mobile devices as they have on their tablets and desktop computers, which is why all campaigns should aim to deliver consistent, cross-channel functionality. For real-time engagement, mobile functionality is necessary to enhance and accelerate the communications cycle for the consumer—making the conversation occur right then. A best practice is to make sure your programs have consistent capabilities and interaction opportunities through mobile apps, browsers and messaging to make it as easy as possible for customers to engage with your brand.
Live events and real-time engagement is an under-utilized tool for marketers. While brands can span across a variety of activation opportunities, there is a major opportunity for large and small brands alike to create a real-time, interactive experience for their customers. Take a look at your company’s goals, objectives and strategies for the year, and see where a real-time experience could increase the success of one, or more, of your tactics this year.
By Aron Clark
Aaron Clark is vice president of mobile sales and operations at HelloWorld (formerly ePrize).
Also Read "Real Time" Events Marketing
It's Time to Redirect Your Marketing Budget To Include Inbound Marketing
Tags:If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. – Lao Tzu
With Q1 about to come to a close, it’s time for businesses to begin the process of analyzing quarterly results. This means diving into the numbers and evaluating how business is going. For many small business owners this can be a painful process particularly if business results are in the toilet and the sales pipeline has slowed to a trickle.
Are your revenues stuck in neutral or declining?
As the old Dylan song says, “The Times, They Are A-Changing’.†It’s no longer business as usual. The internet, Google and social media have rapidly shifted the playing field and for those companies that have been slow to 
adjust to these new dynamics, it may seem like business has become difficult overnight.
While it is convenient to blame your business woes on macro-issues like the politicians in Washington, the poor economy or global climate change, it’s possible there may be a simpler and more painful reality.
Your marketing strategy really sucks!
Many businesses quite frankly are stuck in an outdated mode of thinking when it comes to marketing their businesses, using traditional marketing techniques suited to a bygone era.
Traditional marketing, or outbound marketing, is comfortable because it’s conventional, safe and has worked in the past. Included in these “legacy†tactics are:
- Yellow Page Ads
- Brochures and Flyers
- Coupons
- Door Knockers
- Cold-Calling
- Direct Mail
- Radio
- TV Spots
- Telemarketing
Sure, it’s still possible to reach a great deal of potential customers with these “shotgun†methods aimed at any potential customer that can fog a mirror. However, chances AREN’T good that a random recipient of your marketing collateral is just sitting around waiting to purchase your product or service, particularly if they were not searching for it in the first place.
For many businesses, good money is being thrown at these strategies with little to no tangible results.
Buying Behavior Has Most Definitely Shifted
While traditional marketing methods have remained the same for many companies, buying behavior has changed drastically over the last decade. Cold-calling is perceived as a rude intrusion, and direct mail is intercepted by gatekeepers and thrown away before it’s even opened.
The most significant trend however, is the ability for buyers do their own research online prior to stepping foot in a showroom, or prior to scheduling an appointment with a sales person. The internet is the “great equalizer†that has tilted the sales process in the favor of the purchaser.
60% of the research and decision-making is done prior to you knowing that a prospect is in the market for your goods or services, and if your website is not optimized to
capitalize on this trend, your business is in serious T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
Inbound Marketing Allows You to Connect With Your Ideal Customers
In order to respond to this dynamic shift in behavioral patterns, inbound marketing has emerged as the new paradigm for savvy companies of all sizes to transact business in the digital age. Inbound marketing allows you to interact with businesses and consumers during the research and decision making process and capture the attention of your most coveted prospects along their journey from problem identification through purchase: their “Buyer’s Journey.â€
By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound marketing attracts qualified prospects to your business, nurtures them, helps turn them into customers and if executed flawlessly, keeps them coming back for more.
Some of the most important tools to attract your ideal customers to your site and show how much you care as businesses are:
Blogging- A blog is the single best way to attract new visitors to your website. In order to get found by the right prospective customers, you must create educational content that speaks to them and answers their questions.
Premium Content- Premium content development includes eBooks, white papers, slide shares, Infographics, videos, podcasts and webinars. These items provide quality information that educate, inform and guide your prospects through their journey.
Social Media Engagement- You must share remarkable content and valuable information on the social web. Social media engagement, utilizing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google + and Pinterest have become the go-to methods of engaging with prospects. These tools allow you to put a human face on your brand. It is necessary to interact with your prospects where they hang out online.
Keywords- Your customers begin their buying process online, usually by using a search engine to find something they have questions about. To make sure you are appearing prominently when they search, you need to carefully and analytically pick keywords, optimize your pages, create content, and build links around the terms your ideal buyers are searching for.
Pages- You must optimize your website to appeal to and speak with your ideal buyers. Transform your website into a beacon of helpful content to entice the right strangers to visit your pages.
It’s Time to Redirect the Marketing Budget
Talk to any small business owner and they will tell you that this shift in consumer behavior is easily recognizable. Just go to a restaurant or coffee shop and take a look at the people glued to their mobile phones, laptops 
and tablets. Intuitively we know that things are different than they were even just a few short years ago, and for all but those few with their heads in the sand, this radical shift is evident.
Understanding this trend is the easy part, but knowing what to do about it is an entirely different matter. It’s a tall order for many business owners to shift away from marketing tactics that have provided great results in the past, and moving towards this unknown world. However, for those that wish to survive and thrive in the coming years, this move is necessary.
It’s time! In the midst of THIS quarterly review, DIVE into the numbers and look at where the majority of your marketing dollars are flowing.
An inbound marketing budget, particularly for B2B businesses will contain line items such as:
- Collateral development and production
- Content development specialists
- Email programs
- E-newsletters
- Graphic artists
- Market research
- Marketing software
- Metrics/data analysts
- Mobile marketing specialists
- PPC
- Printing
- PR specialists
- SEO/keyword research
- Social media specialists
- Special events
- Sponsorship
- Website development/re-engineering
If your budget contains none of these items, and you are still throwing the majority of your money at trade shows, advertisements, entertainment and dining and a whole host of offline other marketing tactics, you have some work to do.
Why?
Because right now, your ideal clients have a problem that your business is ideally positioned to help them with. While you are reading this article, they are searching online this second to understand their problem, and they are looking for “great†companies to do business with.
The question remains.
Are They Going To Find You? It’s time to roll up the sleeves and get to work! What’s in your budget?
By David Cuevas
As competition intensifies, coming in all new shapes and sizes, global e-commerce organizations face challenges in differentiating their offerings with key audiences. To succeed, marketers cannot afford to miss opportunities to improve the effectiveness, reach, and return of their marketing and sales programs. Yet, a recent survey we conducted with 160 global retailers found the majority are missing out on significant opportunities to use tools that already exist in their arsenal to improve theROI of marketing campaigns.
According to the survey, online retailers are prioritizing their e-commerce platform, site search, and SEO, as well as mobile and customer-focused analytics. Still, nearly 60% admitted to not using site search reports and information to enhance marketing programs, and only 25% say they integrate site search data into email marketing campaigns to better customize offers for customers—implying there is still a great deal of value organizations can pursue, from integrating site search information to integrating their marketing campaigns.
Interestingly, half of the survey respondents said they are not doing more with site search to enhance marketing and sales programs due to limited resources, while nearly 30% say they just aren't sure how to do it and 10% note that their existing site search solution does not allow for integration with marketing programs.
Savvy online retailers reap rich benefits from site search
Every retailer knows site search is a must-have element of any online business—yet it's clear they're not taking full advantage of the rich benefits site search can provide to marketing and sales strategies. With the right approach, online retail marketers can glean valuable insights into visitor habits and buying behavior to help them deliver a richer user experience—which, in turn, can encourage a purchase.
Take, for example, gourmet candy maker Jelly Belly, which uses site search data to ensure that the appropriate top-searched keywords are incorporated into press releases, advertising, and marketing materials. Jelly Belly also uses site search merchandising capabilities to tune results and create landing pages for customized product groupings.
For a previous Cinco de Mayo promotion, Jelly Belly grouped various beans together to create “recipes†for tres leches cake and Mexican hot chocolate. The company then used the URLs of those dedicated landing pages for display advertising, retargeting, and email campaigns. Jelly Belly also dropped a banner tool onto the page to tie the promotional assets from the email or banner ad to the landing page. The result was an 85% increase in open rates for direct mail campaigns.
Site search improves decision making
You don't have to be a master at harnessing a large amount of data in order to make the important information work for you. Data gleaned from site search can be incredibly helpful in the decision making process.
According to our poll, half of retailers currently use site search data and analytics to enhance their business offerings or processes, while 28% use site search data to make smarter decisions related to inventory selection, 26% use site search data to enhance customer service, and 18% use it to augment predictive analytics practices.
The majority of retailers say they have not implemented site search features such as auto-complete with graphics (55%), mouse-over pop-ups (59%), personalized search history (64%), refinements (43%), or a floating search bar (80%). Most merely rely on site search features they have already, such as auto-complete (62%) and refinements (43%) to do the job—a significant miss for these retailers.
The good news is, nearly half (47%) of retailers plan to change their ways, and will work to incorporate more features, functionality, and data gleaned from site search to enhance marketing programs throughout 2014. As they do, there will be more effective ways to propagate information to their consumers, suppliers, and alliance partners that will lead to better online shopping experiences, brand-building opportunities, and revenue generation.
Tim Callan is the CMO of SLI Systems.
After making the necessary preparations for a small business event, you have to come up with a marketing plan to ensure its success. Whether you plan to hold a garage sale, open house, or night out, try to add these social media strategies to promote and boost attendance for the event.Before the Event
1. Engage with the audience through social media.
Draw in the audience from the outset by allowing them to propose what will take place at the event. For instance, run a competition on different social networking sites and let the audience decide on the venue or choose the keynote speaker, or suggest details about the venue.
2. Show the event details in visible social media channels and well ahead of the event.
Use social media to build momentum and excitement, especially if your event has a prominent keynote speaker or special guests. To do this, use Facebook and Pinterest to create your event page. If it is a business gathering, add a LinkedIn page.
If the event features a guest or speaker, add photos and links where he or she has already presented. Ask the speaker how he or she wants to be introduced. Then share it on your social media channels. It creates an appealing profile for your guest.
3. Add a countdown timer on your company website and share it on social media.
Once the countdown timer reaches a specific point in time, provide engaging updates and share progress during preparations about the distinctive aspects of the event. Provide more and more updates as the time for the event draws nearer.
4. Use a QR code and hashtag for your event marketing campaign.
QR codes and hashtags are helpful to promote events on different online and offline channels such as posters and invitation cards.
5. Create blog posts, an eBook, or a webinar.
Among the popular trends in marketing is to create a blog post, an eBook, a webinar, or to provide any type of downloadable material that provide a glimpse of the event.
For example, you can start an event marketing campaign with blog posts, a dedicated webpage, and a webinar. Each one of these items has to feature an important aspect about the topic to urge users to purchase or grab tickets for the event. You can ask the keynote speaker to be interviewed for a guest blog post or to write one.
6. Let your attendees register online through the company website or a social networking account.
The best way to lure potential attendees to your event is to offer a convenient method to register for it. If the event requires a reservation, use an online registration form such as Planetreg or Evite.
During the Event
Marketing content from events is outstanding, making it crucial to capture everything. You can use the ideas to document all the happenings during the event.
1. Hold a contest for users to submit their content.
Encourage attendees to be participants by asking them to submit photos or video clips of their favorite parts of the event. Feature this content in your social media channels as the event happens.
2. Allow attendees to take pictures with a professional photographer in a photo booth.
Apart from the fun it brings, it is another chance for you to get guest information and stay engaged with the participants.
3. Talk to guests at various times during the event.
Programs such as Ustream allow you to share live interviews. You can ask guests about their expectations before the event or impressions after the event.
Use social media to come up with prize opportunities, such as when guests share their praises about the event. Reward these people with prizes. Then create custom content using guests’ social media updates, and share it on your social media accounts or stream live content at the event using platforms such as Tweetwally.
After the Event
You still can gain awareness about the business and get sales even after the event. There are opportunities to add post-event promotions to your event marketing plan.
1. Share a detailed photo album of the event on social media.
Take pictures, identify the people in the picture, create a compelling caption, and add links to your business website whenever applicable and appropriate. Never miss opportunities like this. You can also ask guests to submit their own photos.
2. Share the highlights of the event through a podcast. Â
Ask the special guest or keynote speaker for a podcast interview and do a recap of the highlights of the event.
3. Write a feature story about the event in the company newsletter.
Contrary to most people’s belief, a newsletter still is an important marketing medium for small- and medium-sized businesses. You can share the newsletter across your social media channels.
4. Set up a post-event email drive.
For those who failed to attend the event, add a sales offer that includes links to the photo albums, the podcast, and the newsletter.
By Francis Rey Balolong
Also Read "RealTime" Events Markting
Knowing what is best for you can often be a difficult decision to make. One clear low cost way is to utilize data that already exists in your company database and an onsite community where you can collect additional data to help you maintain a clearer picture of what your existing customers want and need as individuals and project a customer centric image to potential customers
.
An onsite community acts as a core social tool that can be combined and used to enhance all your marketing initiatives. Â Communities act as a stable platform on your site that you control on which you can build solid marketing initiatives regardless of what is trending on social channels and will act as a magnet for organic search to draw more people to your site.
From mobile marketing to social media to organic SEO your website should be ground zero from which all your marketing emanates.
This infographic created by the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Online Masters in Business Administration program shows you more about how technology is impacting how we market.
Click to enlarge
NJIT New Jersey Institute of Technology – Online MBA
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The following article written by a Hispanic mom raising kids here in the US shares a perspective that is shared by a large segment of the US Hispanic population.Having researched this subject over the past 8 years both here and  in South America I am glad to see that it is now being talked about more and more because the statistics are staggering. ( A Market Not to be Ignored)
The Hispanic segment of the US Population Represents the 13th largest economy in the world and are the youngest, fastest growing segment of the US population representing 60 % of overall population growth here in the US. ( America’s New Baby Boomers )
The tremendous Buying power of Hispanics is growing exponentially including a current per capita income closing in on the national average makes it important to finds ways to effectively penetrate this market now and into the future.
As a Hispanic woman raising kids in the United States, I'm especially attuned to the attitudes and challenges of moms like me. But in the past couple of years, I've noticed that a lot of big brands are tuning into our needs as well. The reason is simple: Between 2000 and 2010, the Hispanic population grew by 43% – that's four times the general rate of population growth.And as the percentage of Hispanic households earning higher incomes also grows dramatically, marketers are beginning to realize that this is a segment they can't afford to ignore. Of course, marketing to Hispanic moms means more than hiring a Spanish translation service. We're culturally unique, with our own set of habits and preferences. Here are a few tips to help marketers understand us better.
We're not all alike
As a daughter of Spanish parents born in France, I've taken a unique journey to where I am today. Other Hispanic moms have their own stories to tell. Some moved here recently and speak little English; others were born here and live in bilingual homes. Marketers who understand these nuances will be better equipped to get their message across.
For our studies, we've found it useful to divide Hispanic moms into four distinct segments: completely acculturated (21%), high (40%), moderate (23%), and low (16%). It's important to know which of these segments will be most receptive to your message and understand their language preferences. For example, four in five completely acculturated Hispanics view themselves as American, while two-thirds of low-acculturated Hispanics view themselves as Latino immigrants. Overall, two-thirds of Hispanic moms prefer information in Spanish or Spanish and English together.
We're social
Moderate, high, and completely acculturated Hispanic moms are using the same social media as the general population, including Facebook (87%), parenting social media (50%), Instagram (36%), blogs (46%), and Pinterest (30%). Our research also shows that 47% of Hispanic moms use parenting social media for product and brand recommendations. So for marketers interested in these segments, it's definitely worth investing in bilingual social media efforts to deepen your engagement with this growing and receptive audience.
We're mobile
I love my smartphone, and our research confirms that Hispanic moms are heavy users of mobile technology: 82% own a smart phone, 72% own a laptop, and 51% own a tablet. According to a 2012 study, 48% of Hispanics access the Internet from smartphones, versus 38% of non-Hispanics. So if you want to reach Hispanic moms, optimize your site for mobile devices.
Our research also shows that two-thirds of Hispanic moms notice mobile ads, and that moderate and highly acculturated moms are most receptive to mobile ads in Spanish and English together. So be sure to integrate these two languages into your communications as seamlessly as possible.
We're looking for deals
Hispanic moms are receptive to messages from their favorite brands – especially if those messages can help them save money. Moderate, high, and completely acculturated moms tell us they're most interested in following brands on social media for coupons and discounts. They're more likely to click on an ad if it has a free sample (53%) or if it offers a coupon (57%). So be sure to include these incentives in your marketing mix, and follow up with more in-depth messages on parenting social media sites and Spanish-language blogs.Â
Throughout my own journey – from a low-acculturated mom who didn't speak English to a fully integrated, multilingual professional – I've definitely noticed which brands "get" me and which brands aren't trying hard enough. As the buying power of Hispanic moms increases, more marketers are going to have to step up their game if they want to earn the lasting loyalty of this vast and influential group of consumers.
By Clarisse Cespedes
Is personalisation really worthwhile- or are marketers missing the mark?
Tags:
BPLANET_ISTOCK_THINKSTOCK
When we walk into a shop or a restaurant we appreciate the personal touch, and being treated as an individual goes a long way. Now, with consumers spending more of their time online, marketers must take steps to maintain the “personal experience†across a brand's entire digital presence.
Building up a rapport without having the opportunity to meet face-to-face isn't easy, but there are ways to achieve it. The emergence of Big Data, for example, is allowing marketers to drill down into an incredible level of detail, and this in-depth understanding of who is visiting the website, mobile site or app, enables marketers to target customers with things that make the whole journey more relevant.
Just like being in a clothes shop and the assistant suggesting things they think you might like, thanks to Big Data, brands can offer their customers articles, adverts or products which are more relevant to them.Â
When done right, personalisation is a win-win for both the customer and the brand. There is a treasure trove of information on people visiting a site that marketers can use to deliver an online experience that, much like a real-life service, is tailored to suit the customer.
This way, the consumer has a better experience through things like exclusive offers, or information on products that interest them, resulting in three key elements of loyal behaviour; willingness to buy more, reluctance to switch and likelihood to recommend.Â
Time wasted?Â
Personalisation has evolved very quickly. A few years ago, you’d be lucky to get a simple “welcome back†on a website, let alone a web page specific to you. By trying to transform into an integrated, multichannel business and through harnessing Big Data to learn about each online shopper, brands can now greet their customer with a site that suits them rather than just a simple “hello againâ€.
Nonetheless, despite the benefits to the customer of a personalised experience, our "Click Here: The State of Online Advertising" research found that just 23% of those surveyed find customisation valuable, which suggests brands still aren’t getting it right.
This is an important wake up call to brands and should make us question if it is a worthwhile practice, or if brands and marketers are simply missing the mark.
We only need to look to brands like RSA, one of the world's largest insurance companies, to know that when personalisation is done properly it works.
RSA is able to determine what kinds of services customers want and, in response, continually optimise online experiences. By capturing insights into its customers' interests and preferences, it is addressing its customers as individuals and the results speak for themselves. Conversion is up 2% and profits are up by almost £1 per sale, proving that personalisation can and will have value to the customer - as well as a huge impact on the bottom line.
The same Click Here: State of Online Advertising research found other brands doing it well include online giants Amazon, eBay and TripAdvisor, with their helpful product and page suggestions inevitably playing a big role in them being named by consumers as top brands for personalisation.
Creating demand
Online marketers clearly understand the benefits of personalisation, with 52% of those surveyed claiming that being able to effectively personalise content is central to their marketing strategy, and 71% claiming it has a big impact on ROI.Â
If brands want to maximise the benefits personalisation has to offer, they need customers to not just be accepting of it but to actually demand it. It is only when individuals experience and appreciate the same personal touch online as they do in-store that a strong, two-way relationship will emerge.
The only way marketers can create this demand is to do personalisation well, and for this to happen there should be a number of considerations. First, there needs to be a seamless experience for the customer across all channels, campaigns and marketing activities. Marketers can then analyse the customer's digital journey to decipher when conversion is highest, and create the personalised experience that has the most potential to grow conversion or engagement. Timing is also key in the online marketing process, and it is important to capitalise on the customer’s interest in your products as early as possible.Â
Fortunately, the technology now exists to do most of the hard work, deciding which content and offers are most relevant to the customer. But while the machines can look after most of the data and analytics, a blend of data-led and intuitive marketing often works best.
If marketers continue to improve their understanding of the individual customer, delivering what they want, when they want it, customers may join marketers in realising the real value of the "personal touch".
Tresilian Segal is head of marketing Northern Europe at Adobe Marketing Cloud.
