Putting engagement first in marketing

Mar­ket­ing strate­gies have evolved, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the past year, to deliv­er deep­er mul­ti­chan­nel expe­ri­ences, more cre­ative tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions for cus­tomer reten­tion and bet­ter data-dri­ven insights into cus­tomers’ needs. Here, five mar­ket­ing lead­ers share their per­spec­tives on mul­ti­chan­nel strat­e­gy and how to enrich the expe­ri­ences cus­tomers have of their brands, as part of a vir­tu­al round­table dis­cus­sion. 

Taking a holistic approach 

Mar­ket­ing has shift­ed from a focus on chan­nels to a more holis­tic approach. Those achiev­ing excel­lence in the deliv­ery of cus­tomer expe­ri­ences are engag­ing more effec­tive­ly with tech­nol­o­gy, data and insights. Devis­ing a cus­tomer-cen­tric approach to mar­ket­ing is made pos­si­ble through more effec­tive mobile mar­ket­ing. 

For Man­tas Ratom­skis, head of CRM and reten­tion at vir­tu­al health plat­form Kilo Health, cre­ativ­i­ty is key to nav­i­gat­ing issues relat­ed to pri­va­cy, changes to cook­ies and mobile mar­ket­ing. He says that hav­ing the right tech­nol­o­gy part­ner – Kilo Health works close­ly with Air­ship, a mobile-first cus­tomer engage­ment plat­form – is cru­cial to achiev­ing this. 

For many, the future of mar­ket­ing relies on a clear, engag­ing approach to mes­sag­ing. At NatWest, mes­sag­ing must evolve through­out the cus­tomer life­cy­cle. Angela Byrne, man­ag­ing direc­tor of shared expe­ri­ence and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, says the invest­ment in the tech­nol­o­gy used to man­age this was once a lengthy and cost­ly invest­ment. Now, tech­nol­o­gy can be imple­ment­ed more eas­i­ly and adapt­ed more read­i­ly, enabling greater engage­ment and bet­ter expe­ri­ences for cus­tomers. Steve Tan, vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of EMEA/APAC at Air­ship, adds that the future of mar­ket­ing will be more about react­ing and deliv­er­ing in real time, and that it will be more cus­tomer focused. 

How­ev­er, with greater capa­bil­i­ty to deliv­er one-to-one expe­ri­ences and engage­ments, mar­keters must strike a bal­ance between per­son­al­i­sa­tion and the val­ue of the brand. Per­son­al­i­sa­tion has led mar­keters to focus too great­ly on the gran­u­lar details about each indi­vid­ual cus­tomer. A stronger strat­e­gy, the speak­ers agree, is to exper­i­ment and remain cre­ative around the depth of per­son­al­i­sa­tion, while also ensur­ing data is well under­stood. Tech­nol­o­gy capa­bil­i­ties are also improv­ing, allow­ing mar­keters greater insights at faster speeds than ever before. 

Balancing personalisation 

Ratom­skis high­lights how 20% of a company’s cus­tomers typ­i­cal­ly pro­vide 80% of the rev­enue. Focus­ing too much on indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­sa­tion, he sug­gests, will dilute the resources devot­ed to those loy­al – and valu­able – cus­tomers. Oth­ers agree that, while every cus­tomer is valu­able, con­stant­ly attract­ing new cus­tomers is time-con­sum­ing and inef­fec­tive, while also car­ry­ing the poten­tial for brand dilu­tion. By under­stand­ing what the most engaged cus­tomers want and need in terms of their rela­tion- ship with the brand, mar­keters can deliv­er bet­ter strate­gies and expe­ri­ences. 

For Nuffield Health, this was nev­er more appar­ent than dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, when the com­pa­ny lost a third of its gym mem­bers. Hol­ly Ainger, mar­ket­ing direc­tor at Nuffield Health, says the com­pa­ny approach­es per­son­al­i­sa­tion by analysing cus­tomer data to deliv­er more rel­e­vant expe­ri­ences, lead­ing to a long-term rela­tion­ship between the brand and the cus­tomer. The key to achiev­ing this, she and Tan agree, is by har­ness­ing the pow­er of first-par­ty data. 

Byrne adds that con­nec­tiv­i­ty is impor­tant in terms of data man­age­ment. Align­ing dif­fer­ent sys­tems requires an invest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy and the imple­men­ta­tion of the right APIs. In doing so, com­pa­nies can deliv­er a seam­less, mul­ti­chan­nel expe­ri­ence for their cus­tomers. 

The speak­ers agree that bet­ter cus­tomer expe­ri­ences can lead to greater reten­tion and improved loy­al­ty. But achiev­ing this requires a clear under­stand­ing of cus­tomer data and the tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ty to act on it at the right time. The pan­dem­ic has influ­enced many brands to re-exam­ine their cus­tomer reten­tion and loy­al­ty strate­gies while also pro­pelling them to offer more cre­ative and use­ful dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences for their cus­tomers. 

Focus on loyalty and retention

Ainger’s pas­sion about loy­al­ty and reten­tion shines through Nuffield Health’s response to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. To ensure those who remained loy­al felt val­ued, the com­pa­ny cre­at­ed a dig­i­tal fit­ness plat­form, allow­ing cus­tomers to work out any­where. To retain cus­tomers, Ainger had to exam­ine the churn rate and analyse the best approach toward sup­port­ing peo­ple in their rela­tion­ships with the brand. The suc­cess of this has extend­ed beyond the pan­dem­ic as Nuffield Health is con­sid­er­ing ways of mon­etis­ing its app for both mem­bers and non-mem­bers. 

Bupa Glob­al, the spe­cial­ist offer for high net worth indi­vid­u­als, faces a sim­i­lar chal­lenge in regards to peer-to-peer rec­om­men­da­tions and cus­tomer reten­tion. Mar­ket­ing and cus­tomer direc­tor Neil Kir­by says cus­tomer feed­back is essen­tial to dri­ving reten­tion. Insur­ers, how­ev­er, thrive when cus­tomers do not need to use their ser­vices. That presents a para­dox because those who have actu­al­ly used Bupa’s ser­vices are more like­ly to rec­om­mend them. 

To tack­le this, Kir­by imple­ment­ed a two-pronged approach. First, Bupa Glob­al deliv­ered ser­vices that could be used on a reg­u­lar basis, such as phys­i­cal ther­a­py, opti­cians and den­tal treat­ments, to encour­age peo­ple to engage with the brand. Sec­ond, the com­pa­ny reached out to cus­tomers direct­ly to ensure the human con­nec­tion was fos­tered in the cus­tomer jour­ney. This yield­ed greater sat­is­fac­tion and reten­tion. 

Com­bin­ing the dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal expe­ri­ences deliv­ers a seam­less, mul­ti­chan­nel cus­tomer jour­ney that cap­i­talis­es on the brand’s val­ue and ensures loy­al­ty in the long term. Tan says it’s impor­tant to dri­ve rich per­son­al expe­ri­ences through­out the cus­tomer life­cy­cle. In response to the grow­ing use of mobile inter­ac­tions between cus­tomers and brands, Air­ship has unveiled a live chat func­tion­al­i­ty that enables com­pa­nies to have one-to-one con­ver­sa­tions through brand­ed apps or over SMS. There will be no end to the oppor­tu­ni­ties for increased cus­tomer engage­ment as brands deliv­er seam­less expe­ri­ences and mul­ti­ple ways to inter­act with data guid­ing how that is deliv­ered to each cus­tomer. 

All agree that data is essen­tial to under­stand­ing the needs of cus­tomers, but a cre­ative and strate­gic mul­ti­chan­nel approach will lead to greater suc­cess. Mar­keters are primed to achieve this because of the pro­lif­er­a­tion and ubiq­ui­ty of mobile, the increased acces­si­bil­i­ty of tech­nol­o­gy for automa­tion and a clear­er under­stand­ing of the role per­son­al­i­sa­tion and insights can play in cus­tomer rela­tion­ships. 

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it airship.com

Pro­mot­ed by Air­ship