When everything seems to be data-driven, it can be easy to forget that customers are more than a set of metrics and numbers on a campaign dashboard. So how do marketers make sure they’re focusing on real people with unique and evolving needs and motivations?
With the large amounts of data being generated today, we have all the information we need to inform the actions that lead to high customer loyalty, even down to the individual customer level. It requires evaluating all customer interactions, both monetary (e.g., purchasing) to non-monetary (e.g., engaging via social media).
The key is measuring individual intent and engagement in real time—what we call a customer’s “pulse.” Once that’s understood, there are ways to activate your outreach based on that unique pulse, as well as how to monitor and maintain a positive feedback loop.
What is a customer’s pulse?
Based on varying needs and situations, your customer indicates how much they value and engage with your brand through their behaviors. The level of engagement they maintain over time determines their loyalty and the value that they give back to your business.
It’s helpful to think of your relationship with a customer as a system that functions on investments and returns. The pulse of your customers becomes a simple equation:
Pulse = Investments + Returns – Relationship Decay.
Investments include personal outreach, relevant social content, exclusive or early access, rewards and incentives, and all the time and energy you put into creating it. Returns come in the form of engagement: content sharing, repeat usage of a product, or a new purchase. In between investments and return is Relationship Decay, the reality that customers will gradually forget about their past experiences and engagements when your brand is not top of mind.
Graphed over time, this looks like an EKG, demonstrating the trending “health” of customer relationships. As you monitor interactions, you can see whether your customer is maintaining loyalty and engagement, and what content is helping them engage. You can then grow your investment with activities that work, and reduce those that create noise and decay the relationship.
Here’s an example: A new customer purchases something from an online retailer, starting the relationship. A week later, the retailer sends a re-engagement email, but the user doesn’t view or click it. They do, however, engage with the brand on social media actively browse the retailer’s social content. This is the start of a positive relationship—but if you’re only measuring ROI on activities that end in a purchase, you could miss recognizing that this user is actually engaged with your brand. It’s a healthy relationship, but one that requires measuring and nurturing different interactions beyond purchases.
How a customer’s pulse informs decision making
Success is traditionally measured by purchases, but given the increasing interaction consumers have with brands via non-purchase activities, this needs to change. It’s not just a matter of changing the way interactions are measured, but these non-purchase interactions drive value. After all, even when purchases are infrequent, engagement with your brand over time holds immense value. For example, in the airline industry, studies show that when a tweet is answered in five minutes or less, the customer is willing to pay $20 or more for a ticket on that airline in the future.
Back to the retail example: When the customer makes a purchase, that’s a positive engagement. If the customer doesn’t engage with follow-on campaigns, that’s negative engagement. However, if it can be determined that the customer engages via social media without any prompts, that is a positive engagement with little to no investment in the personal relationship.
The question is, what will nurture this relationship? Send a coupon code to encourage another purchase? Should it be sent by email or social? Retarget campaigns to the social channel where they showed engagement? Their behavior indicates they’re not currently interested in purchasing, but they’re engaging—so instead they should be delivered personalized content based on what we know about them.
Develop a positive feedback loop
Figuring out how to execute is the key. Connecting this information across all marketing, sales and service channels increases your ability to deliver a unified, human customer experience that is sensitive to the stage they’re in, even if they’re not ready to purchase. This requires connecting all engagement channels, back-end data and analytics, allowing the marketing/sales/analytics teams to both extract data and deliver curated content.
There are many solutions that do this, but the ones that are most successful are those that leverage the test and learn model, utilizing some out-of-the-box technologies that allow you to determine what works and the operating model to execute it more broadly. Only after the concept is proven will you have the ability to clearly define how you want to build your customer pulse platform.
Humanity: It’s not just a nice-to-have
Each customer has a unique pulse, so a nudge that works for one customer won’t work for another. Each customer has a cadence to engage, a preferred channel and a mixture of motivators that will keep them loyal to you. Your job is to understand them and react.
It’s critical to show customers that they’re valued and that you know them well enough to engage only with meaningful content (instead of adding to the noise). Differentiating your brand by consistently respecting your customer through targeted communications is the way of the future.
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Andy Ho is a principal in Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications group. His areas of specialization include new product line strategy, digital customer engagement and mobile application growth. Andy has also been involved in the development of a customer-sensing platform that helps brands measure, optimize and personalize content delivery.
