Below, we’re discussing everything you need to know to tap into data to unleash effective marketing strategies with high yields, along with tips to update your current approach to data and consumer marketing.

Data-Driven Marketing: Defined

Data-driven marketing uses information about consumers, including preferences, shopping and purchasing habits, and potential motivations, to personalize marketing efforts. Using data, marketers can build personalized brand experiences to showcase products and services to clients who are the most likely to buy or engage with the brand. Data has typically been collected from third-party cookies or through direct consumer interactions (first-party data), but with the phase-out of third-party cookies, marketers will need to consider alternative first-party strategies.

2022 Trends in Data-Driven Marketing

Here are some of the top trends to consider when creating your data-driven marketing strategy.

Utilizing More First-Party Data

Third-party data can be difficult to use effectively thanks to federal regulations, such as the GDPR Cookie Consent and Customer-Centric Privacy law, as well as regulations and privacy restrictions brought forth by search engines such as Chrome, Bing and Safari.

To combat this hurdle, more marketers are starting to use first-party data that’s been captured from their own website visitors, in-store visitors and customers to create more consumer-focused and personalized marketing campaigns.

Consumer Touchpoints Have Increased

According to data published by Venture Harbor, the average consumer journey now involves anywhere from 20 to 500 touchpoints, depending on the value and complexity of the purchase they’re making. That means for every purchase, consumers will typically interact with a brand at least 20 times before completing the buying process. These touchpoints can include interactions with social media, website, advertising, retail store, email, blog or phone calls.

Because the number of touchpoints has become so high, it’s important for marketers to ensure that the brand experience is cohesive regardless of how customers make contact. Of course, the benefit of these touchpoints is that marketers also have more opportunities to gather first-party data and create personalized, targeted marketing campaigns for potential customers that already know their brand.

Businesses can begin mapping out the touchpoints by journey mapping the entire customer experience.

Personalization is Key

As consumers share more of their personal data online, it’s important that marketers realize they want something in return. It’s vital for marketers to provide consumers with personalized recommendations and heightened brand experiences, especially since 80% of consumers surveyed in a Smarter HQ poll stated that they’re more likely to purchase products from brands that market to them, personally.

Begin gathering data from analytics platforms, data management platforms (DMPs), customer relationship management software (CRMs), tag management platforms, demand-side platforms, and email platforms.

Once you have the data, begin delivering personalized content through 1:1 ads, targeted landing pages, emails, blogs, suggested products, add-ons, upgraded versions, etc.

Brand Loyalty is Taking a Backseat

There once was a time when brands relied on the loyalty of their customers to keep them in business but, today, the concept of brand loyalty is taking a backseat to the customer experience. Today’s consumers have higher expectations and, in fact, a recent study indicated that 32% of those surveyed would stop purchasing from a brand after just one negative experience and this is particularly true in parts of the world like Asia, where millennial populations are highest. We’re living in a very brand-saturated market with shorter attention spans, so you have to be everywhere…at the right moment…delivering the right message…to the right prospect…quickly and easily. This is where you can leverage data to personalize the customer journeys.

Automated Marketing is Vital

Automated marketing means scale. You can create 50 different funnels for your target personas and deliver unique experiences for each prospect…this saves marketers time & money. Using AI to automate processes such as data collection, email distribution, workflows, customer service, etc., is the only way to scale effectively and efficiently. Some examples of automated marketing are dynamic web content that changes based on visitors’ interests/attributes, lead nurturing via triggered emails, social media posting, product recommendations, SMS/MMS, push notifications, and so on. Automation makes it easier to manage every marketing task, from basic email sends to complex campaign management and data analysis.

The post Top 5 Data-Driven Marketing Trends in 2022 appeared first on Upward Commerce.

In today’s digital age you need an edge over your competitors, and that edge comes in the form of 1:1 marketing. If you don’t know what that is, read more below:

Understanding 1:1 Marketing

This is a strategy crafted using digital technology and data analysis that focuses primarily on marketing tactics and messaging aimed at a prospective or existing customer. So, what you end up with is a fully customized program designed to fulfill the needs of individual buyers. Whereas mass marketing targets a broad audience or demographic, 1:1 marketing and personalization essentially appeals to a single customer, and is therefore considered the truest form of targeted marketing.

What Makes It Work?

To fully realize the potential of 1:1 marketing, businesses need to obtain as much personal details about a prospective buyer as they possibly can. Thankfully, we live in a time when individual customers willingly or unwillingly share vast amounts of data. Once this data is analyzed, leverage it to offer targeted and customized recommendations and offers. Design messaging to attract the individual customer based on their interests, past behavior, and other information.

1:1 marketing works best through digital media and has yielded great results for advertisers. Track information via beacons, cookies, or interactive web tools. Each of these resources offers up a ton of data that are commonly used by advertisers to streamline the ads shown to viewers and individual users on their channels.

How to Create Your Own 1:1 Marketing Strategy?

This is a four-step method that involves:

• Identification: During this process, collect data. Gather demographic data like age, sex, and location.
• Differentiation: This step of the marketing plan involves analysis. Help your business segment users into easily identifiable niches for better targeting.
• Interaction: Use the collected information to establish contact with your existing or potential customer. Reach out to them using the methods and the medium that is most likely to elicit a response.
• Customization: All the personalization happens at this stage. Use the available opportunity to close the deal.

How Can 1:1 Marketing Benefit You?

Now that you have a better grasp of what 1:1 marketing involves, it’s time to come down to the brass tacks. Specifically, how it can benefit your business. While we’ve touched upon it above, you might have more doubts in your mind regarding the impact of this sort of personalization on your business and consumers. Well, implement the strategies properly, and you might be looking at the following rewards:

Enhanced Customer Experience

Your customers feel better about sharing their personal details with a brand when they are getting something in return. Once they realize the sensitive data they are providing will improve their chances of receiving a more personalized experience, they will be more than happy to fill out your forms, take part in surveys, download whitepapers, and indicate the best preferences and purchases. Remember to keep the data safe, however, as Talend found that 53 percent of consumers break up with a brand as soon as they become victims of a data breach.

More Revenue

Identify and respond to the proper channel for individual customers if you wish to increase your ROI. The right automation technology makes it easy for marketers to identify the channel being used by customers. Then, you can easily follow up across channels due to the omnichannel approach.

Greater Brand Loyalty

Consumers who submit data want to be treated by brands as individuals with unique preferences. Dedicate resources and time towards implementing a successful loyalty program and you can gain a competitive edge both in terms of customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

More Consistency

Consumers interact with brands via different channels, including mobile, social, email, etc. Sometimes they use all of these in one day. For that reason, brands need consistency more than ever before across all their channels. Your in-store experience needs to match the app experience you provide users, which in turn should be compatible with your email messaging.

Concluding Remarks

1:1 marketing is highly effective but complex. A long-term process, it involves efforts from everybody on your marketing team. Don’t be intimidated by the sheer volume of data and strategies needed to pull it off. Take it slow and enjoy the major long-term gains.

The post Understanding 1:1 Marketing & Personalization – How to Create Your Own Strategy appeared first on Upward Commerce.

So, what drives consumers to complete an online purchase? There are a number of driving forces when it comes to generating a conversion, but dollars and cents are by far a game changer. Surprisingly, price determines more than brand loyalty (according to a 2017 consumer trend report by Kibo). Consumers are willing to trade up on brands if the price is right. But what if you can’t budge on price without losing profit? You can find out what’s important to your consumers and win their hearts & wallet this way.

Here’s what consumers indicated as a factor that influenced their purchase behavior:

1. Interactive Content

Think interactive videos, interactive infographics, galleries, polls & surveys, interactive white papers, contests/sweepstakes, and calculators. Interactive content keeps users engaged with your content and also gathers rich data so you can profile your prospects.

2. Product Reviews

Product reviews give shoppers the trust and confidence needed to make a decision. Encourage your customers to leave feedback on your products. If you can add the ability for reviewers to upload an image or video of your product, you are looking at better storytelling and more reviews.

3. Simple Shopping Cart/Checkout Experience

Don’t force shoppers to register, make it an option. Forcing a login or registration can cause a shopper to abandon their cart. Try to keep your checkout on a single page or at least provide a progress indicator letting shoppers know they have 2 more steps to complete their purchase (as an example). Set clear expectations on shipping costs & delivery time ahead of billing – ask for credit card details last.

4. Multiple Fulfillment Options

Today customers are less willing to endure long shipping times. Provide more fulfillment options such as buy online, pickup in-store – aka BOPIS (this is a real retail acronym -I’m not making this up). AND always offer expedited shipping. Make it convenient for your customers.

5. Quantity of Product Availability

Inventory availability gives shoppers confidence to make a purchase. Consumers expect product availability no matter if they purchase on-line or pickup in-store.

6. Live Chat

According to Gartner, live chat is expected to grow 400% as a preferred digital engagement channel from 2015-2018 – growing from 2% to 10% of overall interactions in 2018. Live chat provides a personal interaction with your customers, and allows you to troubleshoot any issues right from the product page. Aside from providing real-time convenience to your customers, live chat can also increase conversions and lift AOV.

Customer Experience is Key

According to Kibo, 92% of consumers ALSO said shopping cart recommendations were a big factor in completing their purchase, and 85% said personalizing the homepage with promotions. Customers want real-time personalized shopping experiences tailored to their specific needs and curiosities.  Find a sophisticated personalization platform (ie. Barilliance, Monetate, Rich Relevance, Bunting, etc.) that empowers you to deliver customized, relevant, and meaningful shopping experiences with your customers. Web personalization is the new tool to help businesses prosper in the new #MeCommerce market.

Businesses must embrace Customer Experience to power tomorrow. Since 2000, 52% of the Fortune 500 companies have disappeared due to digital disruption and not keeping the pace. Take responsibility for the digital transformation of your business and start with what’s important to your customers.

The post Top Influences that Drive Online Consumer Purchases appeared first on Upward Commerce.

What Is Web Personalization?

Web personalization is a tactful tool used by successful businesses to create a tailored, dynamic, and highly relevant online experience for shoppers. The largest form of personalization that most businesses are actively doing today is email marketing; however, web personalization has gone far beyond just email marketing. Your website can learn and adapt to what each individual shopper wants. Curated messages and site aesthetic can change to fit the interests of each visitor to your website. By knowing a customer’s behavior, location, demographic, and other attributes, you can create customer profiles or personas that help you in predicting customer intent. Essentially, web personalization requires businesses to understand their customers’ interests and deliver a tailored one-on-one experience. While many businesses focus on broad concept and content creation, web personalization means targeting specific individuals and marketing to them directly. This technique ultimately provides customers with a brand that is designedly relevant to them.

Why It Matters

While fewer than 20% of online businesses maximize user experience via web personalization, those that do see unparalleled and improved results. Unlike too many websites whose sole purpose is to inform and reach ideal clients, web personalization utilizes your site in the most effective way possible to actualize measurable impact. Once the analytics that matter are measured, businesses will have a better understanding of what marketing tactics work best.

Web personalization simply creates a more meaningful experience for consumers. Customer needs and bias differ between individuals; the consumer database alone is comprised of dissimilar engagements, experiences, and investments with a particular brand. With web personalization, marketers effectively eliminate that bias while creating tailored content, manipulating the individual’s experience to transform site visitors into loyal customers. This results in overall better business.

Personalize with Upward

The personalized customer experience is essential in today’s vast online marketplace. With the right tools and guidance, businesses of any size can capitalize on the simple web personalization process. Upward Commerce is fiercely dedicated to providing businesses with the expertise needed to flourish within the confines of web personalization. Our company offers the ability to drastically increase website and cross-channel efficiency without compromising a business’s integrity.

The post Web Personalization: Get to Know Who Your Customers Really Are appeared first on Upward Commerce.