The following is Part 1 of a two-part series on driving customer loyalty in a digital world.
With so much consumer data and media channels in today’s marketing mix, it’s a real challenge to find an approach that’s narrow enough to keep the organization focused, while broad enough to allow for continual change and growth.
A recent Constellation Research “Quark Report” beautifully captures the mindset and actions necessary for creating relevance and personalization in today’s competitive, technology-driven marketing environment.
Five Approaches
The report—“Five Approaches to Drive Customer Loyalty in a Digital World; Delivering Right-Time Engagement for Relevant, Long-Term Advocacy and Lifetime Value”—defines the way forward for today’s marketer quite well. Author Natalie L. Petouhoff, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, contends that there are five approaches marketers must adopt to drive customer loyalty without being invasive. They are as follows:
- Connect customer channels and touchpoints– This is all about connecting the dots and creating the best understanding of the customer and the customer’s context. From this insight comes the powerful combination of predicting behaviors and personalizing experiences.
- Provide social collaboration capabilities – Modern organizations are pulling data together from many sources, across many organizational boundaries. Collaboration tools are the key to strong processes that give the customer an excellent experience.
- Drive right-time interactions and engagement – We’re past the days of customer interaction being tied to transactions, though our legacy systems are often stuck there. Right-time interactions and engagement need newer systems that are engagement design tools instead.
- Use behavioral customer data for real-time decisions – Analytics, using a blend of historical and right-time data, is the only way to predict customer behavior and the best possible response. This isn’t after-the-fact engagement, it’s in-the-moment engagement.
- Advance loyalty management capabilities – Brand loyalty is its own animal that, when nurtured carefully, can lead to higher lifetime value and brand advocacy.
The new name of the marketing game is getting beyond “one and done,” aka one-time purchasing. Doing so means retooling technologies and change managing the organization to get there.
Analytics Beyond Dashboards
The report also highlights the importance of using analytics as something more than just a dashboard. Rather than just measuring what has already happened, Petouhoff describes using analytics as a precursor to interaction with the customer so that real interaction can happen in the moment when it matters, not after it’s too late. Using analytics the right way means aligning all of the pieces that allow the capture and response “to any event, in real time, on any channel or device.”
To know more about how to drive customer loyalty in a digital world, attend a webinar hosted by Natalie Petouhoff, the report’s author and see how you, too, can deliver personalized, relevant engagement in a world of abundant data and diverse channels.
Up next: Taking these five areas one step further, Constellation Research shares its recommendations on driving better business results through an integrated approach to driving loyalty. Check back for Part 2.
