The shift of power in the buying process has drastically changed over the years. What was once solely decided upon by big business is now being dictated by consumers. The customer now holds greater power as a buyer, deciding how a business runs itself. What’s more is how customers themselves have changed over the years. Once upon a time, it was all about price for customers, but now, they are more concerned about the overall experiences businesses deliver.
A few ways customers have evolved are, for example:
- Customers prioritising experience value over price
- Trusting social media and online reviews more and advertising less as accurate sources on brands and products
- Buying less functional products and more products that add value to their lives
- Expecting products to be available wherever they are
- Sharing complaints with the world online instead of with the retailer
To keep the modern customer happy, your business needs to cater for their various needs, including their need to:
- Engage with businesses and buy products anywhere and everywhere
- Be known and understood by the brands they use
- Experience personalised engagement at the right time and via the right channels
- Trust how businesses handle their data
Dominoes caters customers need to engage and buy products anywhere by allowing them to order a pizza through various channels.
Challenges of pleasing the modern customer
At the core of what customers want today is simply to have businesses study and understand them well enough so they can give them experiences that best resonate with them. This is difficult without the correct tools and solutions because most of the time, people do not even know themselves well enough to notice some of their buying behaviours. Apart from that, businesses struggle effectively collect customer data for personalisation. This leaves businesses with challenges, such as:
- Only utilising 58% of their potential due to no integration
- Incorrect use and management of customer data for personalisation
- Inability to deliver true personalisation
- Poor end-to-end experiences
- Online consumers are mobile, shopping anywhere and everywhere
- Delivering high personalisation and good data management can be costly
What businesses need to do
1. Become omnichannel
A big part of delivering better customer experiences is to give your customers what they want. As mentioned before, customers want to engage with brands and buy from them wherever they please. In saying this, they are not only referring to their physical location. They are also talking about channels. Some customers prefer interacting with brands through their websites and phone numbers. On the other hand, we have others who want the option to interact with businesses and buy products within apps and social networks. By adopting an omnichannel strategy, your business is better able to cater to more, if not all its customers.
2. Integrate data collection
Ok, so you have become omnichannel and now your business delivers and receives engagement across various channels. How do you now ensure that all interactions are consistent (regardless of channel)? Not just that, but how do you also make sure that all data collected is integrated throughout the business? Automation is a great tool to help with this, specifically automation of data collection, data integration, updates, and other related factors. However, the most effective solution is integrating your data so customer information, interaction history, and preferences are easily accessible to the relevant staff. This allows personalisation to take place faster and more easily, thanks to improved data management.
How SAP Emarsys increases customer value with personalization
SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement Platform helps you deliver omnichannel customer engagements. It is through this key function that SAP Emarsys improves your customers’ lifetime value. So far, a few global brands have used this solution and can record email revenue growth, return-on-ad growth, and increases in revenues through process automation. We can credit this to SAP Emarsys’ three main functions:
- Deliver real-time personalisation at scale:
SAP Emarsys integrates AI to connect your customer interactions across different channels, including Email, SMS, apps, and social platforms.
- Accelerate time to value:
AI-driven campaigns are pre-built into SAP Emarsys and new data and channels are easily onboarded to quickly connect you with your clients.
- Produce measurable results:
With every campaign, SAP Emarsys produces results you can see, as well as AI- and data-driven recommendations on the best marketing moves to make for even better results.
How Digitrade increases customer value with personalization
The Digitrade eCommerce platform integrates into systems, third-party solutions, and whatever you need integrated into your eCommerce website. This alone makes it a powerful personalisation tool, as it allows you to connect your entire business operations to the platform. As a result, you can deliver hassle-free buying experiences to everyone who purchases your products online.
Digitrade’s integration capabilities also allow you to integrate a powerful marketing solution into your online store, for instance SAP Emarsys. This opens your business up to so many more features and opportunities to deliver the most competitive online experiences.
Get both Digitrade and SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement Platform to truly realise your business’s online potential. Book a demo with us to learn more about either one or both solutions, and we’ll be more than happy to help you perfect personalisation.