Author: Olivia Jackson, Senior Account Manager at Eagle Eye
The acceleration and necessity to shift to digital in 2020 has opened up a world of opportunity for retailers, and as we start to see light at the end of the tunnel with restrictions lifting, I thought it worth revisiting what role personalisation will play in this post-COVID world.
Having hosted a webinar (catch up here) and written a three-part blog series on the power of personalisation for retailers (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3), I felt it appropriate to discuss how data will continue to play a crucial role in successful personalisation.
Building personal relationships with your new, digitally engaged customers
During the year we stayed home, the digital marketplace was awash with competition, with retailers vying for customers’ attention and spend. A by-product was the vast amount of customer data that retailers now had access to. This presents retailers with the opportunity to start building powerful 1:1 connections and prosperous long-term relationships, without the complication of offline interaction.
Research from KPMG highlighted that personalisation is the strongest determinant in driving customer loyalty, with value second, across 19 of 27 markets profiled. Why is it so powerful? By demonstrating a retailer understands and is empathetic towards a customer’s needs with relevant and timely communications, it can drive an emotional connection, which ultimately drives loyalty.
Still, personalisation is not without its challenges, and it is often cited that customers’ lack of desire to share their personal information is a hinderance to the successful execution of personalisation. However, with the shift to digital and the consequence of better data, retailers can start by personalising their communications simply based on order history and search preferences, and as they start to build trust with the customer, they can ask for more data that is relevant to the next stage in the relationship.
Re-engage with relevance
For those customers that were around pre-pandemic, don’t forget about them. It’s more cost-effective to re-engage a customer than try to acquire a new one, so ensure you are using communication channels tailored to their preferences and past behaviour. Not sure of the best way to communicate with them? Ask them. Research from Epsilon indicated that customers who are engaged with a brand via personalised experiences are expected to make over 15 purchases in one year, and Instapage found 92% of online shoppers were influenced to make a purchase based on personalised shopping cart recommendations at checkout.
Learning from behaviours and making predictions are still as relevant as ever – part 3 of my series looked at the future of personalisation, with machine learning and AI playing a role in prompting a customer’s next action, tailored to them. Voice technology is also growing in importance, especially post pandemic, with 77% of customers expecting more touchless technologies as we navigate this different world.
Ultimately, personalisation tactics should make a customer feel valued. By setting a clear strategy, marketers can assess their success by the impact of change that occurs as a result of personalisation tactics. Those retailers who are successful will be those open to pivoting strategy to best suit the needs of customers and is ultimately where personalisation post pandemic can play its role.
To discover how Eagle Eye can help you leverage personalisation to build 1:1 relationships with your customers, please contact us.