DUBAI, UAE — New-age marketers worldwide and in the MEA region have come up with a slew of effective strategies to understand their potential customer base – particularly the millennials – that makes the brand-customer relationship building a granular and intense exercise, not to mention a continual one. To cope with this dynamic scenario, brands depend on collecting, collating, and using data from innovative technology platforms.
Although many currently-used tech stacks are swift in collecting, storing, and processing massive amounts of data, they lack the ability to harvest specific data for marketers. Therefore, marketers cannot deconstruct this data and construct insights from it to make real-time optimizations.
On the other hand, with the use of advanced analytics platforms, marketers can not only bridge these gaps but also go beyond, to measuring consumer engagements, gaining insights into their brand equity, learning to reach different customer segments, and responding with their offerings. This leads to personalized brand experiences for customers and higher brand-building ROI for marketers.
Analytics and insights in real-time
Marketers are looking for platforms that can leverage unified marketing data from various channels and campaigns and simplify analysis. They are seeking real-time marketing analytics that combine the data glut with powerful analytics tools to help them sieve out the required information and weigh the efficiency of their digital marketing campaigns. By applying technology and analytical processes to marketing-related data, businesses can decipher what drives consumer actions, change their marketing campaigns, and optimize their ROIs. Analytics answer questions like which marketing campaigns a customer resonates with and where to reach them.
Brands need tangible data that tells them how their campaigns are performing in real-time to optimize for improvement. The data should also connect campaigns to website traffic and other metrics to understand how various channels impact customer behavior. It should guide marketers toward future marketing and content strategies, increase the efficiency of their ad spend and test the viability of new products, channels, and markets.
Marketing analytics can benefit consumers too. They ensure that consumers receive targeted, personalized ads that fulfill their needs and interests rather than mass communications that can get junked as spam. Modern consumers appreciate hyper-personalization in campaigns, products, and services.
Going beyond demographics
Customers love personalization and value it over general campaigns. Personalized marketing goes beyond addressing the customer by name in marketing emails. It’s about reaching the right person with the right message at the right moment and with the right suggestions. For this reason alone, brands should know whether sending an email at 9 PM on a Monday works well for Riyaz, or an SMS at 6 PM. Does Noor need breakfast recommendations at the break of dawn, or is she a late riser?
Personalized messaging offers a competitive advantage to companies because it is something customers value and are happy to receive. A 2019 survey on personalized marketing attitudes revealed that 90% of responding U.S. consumers are annoyed by brand messages that are not personally relevant. In today’s highly competitive digital marketing world, buying decisions are influenced by relevant and timely content. This is the time for technologies like ML and AI to intervene and use this data flow for personalization.
With new tech stacks, brands can create omnichannel campaigns that deliver messages to customers on channels and at the time of their (customers’) choice. This also leads to market segmentation that channelizes content to the right consumers in the right way, rather than bothering the entire audience with a generic message. This helps brands engage better with their customers resulting in more efficient campaigns and improved return on investment (ROI).
Micro and macro views at the same time
Splitting the market into sub-groups makes it more approachable and helps brands curate highly targeted campaigns for different sections of customers. For example, a 25-year-old’s motivation to purchase a car might be different than the need that drives an older person to buy a car. So, the same car can be positioned differently for the audience. Or the auto manufacturer can engage different brands of cars to different customers with varying campaigns on channels that these customers frequent. With the right technology platform, it’s easy to move from a macro view to a micro-targeting strategy. The right messaging is one of the most significant motivating factors for consumers to click, convert and stay with the brand.
Integrated platforms are the magic bullets
Marketers are looking for a simplified, integrated Martech stack so they do not waste time jumping between tech platforms or manually seeking information from different platforms to arrive at conclusions. Integrated tech stacks save time, make marketers more efficient, and reduce spend on campaigns. While engagement platforms equip marketers with data about a customer’s behavior and engagement preferences, analytics platforms deliver segment-level information, and attribution platforms offer acquisition data.
Businesses that enhance their platform ecosystem with interconnected tools realize better ROIs and win over customer loyalty. Marketers are not only in a race with their peers and competitors but also have to keep up with the fast-paced digital lifestyles of their customers. The only way to sustainably win in this non-stop sprint is by using intelligent, integrated platforms that offer advanced analytics and actionable insights to drive gainful business outcomes.
Kunal Badiani is Regional Head, MoEngage – Middle East, Africa and Turkey.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and may not reflect the editorial policy or an official position held by TRENDS.