The idea of a true omnichannel experience, where marketers seamlessly blend touchpoints can seem impossible to achieve. With the right technology, however, today it is possible to create a unified customer experience that delights customers and drives business results.
This week at Signals21, we explored how marketers can deliver a truly consistent experience, where channels and touchpoints revolve around the customer, and personalize each and every interaction – from social to wallet, SMS to email, website to ads. Here’s our recap of week four.
COBS Bread: How Community, Commitment and Technology Bake the Perfect Customer Strategy
COBS Bread is a community-focused bakery, boasting over 125 stores, and looked to Cheetah to aid the real-time marketing and loyalty engagement expectations of its ever-growing customer base.
Previously a points-win-prizes physical punch-card, the COBS loyalty program delivers a digital customer experience that transcends well beyond one loaf, one point. Through the app, COBS are able to communicate with its customers, get a better understanding of their needs, and personalize their offers and rewards through not just purchasing habits, but self-reported preferences from surveys and customer feedback.
Through this strategy, COBS has exceeded its acquisition goals, adding 120k members in just 8 weeks.
Why Omnichannel Personalization is the Future of Marketing
83% of consumers have a preferred brand because it provides a consistent experience, regardless of where they interact with it, yet marketers still struggle to unify touchpoints and deliver true-personalization.
Mila D’Antonio, Principal Analyst at Omdia (technology researchers that help connect the dots) imparted the latest stats and research on how marketers can truly deliver personalized omnichannel engagement.
The problem has always been how to deliver the right message at the right time with the right consistency, through the right channel and the right context, so the customer has a good experience, and interactions become conversational. The answer lies in becoming data driven. When centralized and unified customer data resides at the center of your organization and is integrated from multiple systems and channels and partners, and it is analyzed and acted upon, you have the foundation in place for becoming data driven.
American Airlines & CES; How Zero-Party Data + Personalization Engine = Increased Revenue
American Airlines is one of the world’s largest airlines, carrying more passengers and boasting a bigger fleet than of its competitors. This compelling session looked at how American Airlines adopted the Marigold Engage+ to increase revenue per customer by leveraging zero-party data to personalize email content.
First, Marigold Grow was deployed to collect the ever important zero-party data, including psychographic information about how, when and where customers would plan to fly. Those insights fed into Cheetah’s Journey Designer which put each customer on a unique email path that included hyper-personalized content and offers matching their needs.
They essentially moved from the typical ‘batch and blast’ email with a one-size-fits-all offer and delivered personalized, real-time offers based on known psychographic data declared directly from the customer. This led to increased open rates, a lift in engagement scores and ultimately a lift in revenue per member.
How the Modern ESP Powers Human Connections
The term ESP has become somewhat antiquated over the years, and been replaced by various buzzwords and technical lingo. Whether it’s a CRM suite, cross-channel campaign management, or marketing cloud platform – these very different platforms are used to describe what we used to call an ESP.
The modern ESP is about delivering promotional and broadcast email marketing, marketing automation, triggers, journeys and automations. They are also expected to be multi-channel orchestrations – delivering SMS, MMS, push to app, mobile push, social connections. A modern ESP is about powering human connections and unlocking one-to-one personalization.
Don’t Tweet the Tweet if You Can’t Walk the Walk
Countless surveys show that people care. They care about the values of the organizations they work for, and do business with. In fact, a recent far-reaching survey by Marigold Engage+ of over 5,000 global consumers found 58% of consumers have rejected a brand either because of its environmental, corporate, or political values.
Representatives from Marigold Engage+ Employee Resource Group discussed how marketers can live their values and support underrepresented communities. ERGs (when they’re given maximum support and viewed as valuable and respected assets within an organization) are phenomenal support systems, help create daring leaders and give employees a place to belong.
What’s Next?
We’re preparing for our final week at Signals21: Engage week – and it’s our biggest week yet.
We have a whopping 6 sessions covering client stories Salling Group, Del Taco and VF Corp, a deep dive into customer loyalty, and an inspiring keynote from Lauren Bush Lauren.
