Unlock Personalized Customer Experiences to Create Brand Loyalty – 4 Keys

Consumers expect personalized brand interactions, and marketers want to deliver them to stay competitive. But to create more relevant and focused messages, marketers working for communications firms must enhance their data and analytics use practices.

More than 78% of consumers will only engage with personalized offers that reflect their previous interactions with the brand.1

Personalization can improve customer experience and increase conversion rates for marketers. Specifically, 68% see a lift in closed sales as indication of personalization success.2

Data can transform campaigns, helping marketers personalize their brand and offers to diverse customer groups. From initial customer recognition—identifying a consumer before direct engagement begins—through understanding that customer’s needs and offering relevant products, data can help you communicate with your ideal consumers across the channels they use most.

Learn how your organization can start the personalization journey and improve customer experiences. Read on to discover four essential steps that can lay the groundwork for helping you leverage data and analytics to enhance your customers’ experience and engagement through improved personalization.

1. Acquire a better understanding of your target consumer with data

Fresh, differentiated data can help you lay a stronger foundation for a long, high-value customer relationship. If your current view of customers is based solely on proprietary data, it may lack hyper-relevant insights such as household makeup, spend capacity, credit availability and estimated income. These data enhancements can help ensure the right audience receives exposure to your marketing messages and offers. And they help you personalize a digital strategy that’s more likely to perform.



Consumer economic capacity data can help you more accurately predict customers’ lifetime value.

Top City with Highest Millennial Influx Most Likely to...

Detriot Metro, MI

Own their own home (49%)

St louis, mi

Have children (31%)

pittsburgh, pa

Have highest increase in millennial households in the past 5 years

new york metro, ny

Rent their home (69%)

boston metro, ma

Not have children (80%)

While Baby Boomers...

Have a total income of almost

$103,000

9% higher than the average U.S. household

Spent about

$48,000

in discretionary spending



For example, connecting data from device sales, family plans (possibly including the number of children and presence of a spouse), social media, home entertainment package sales and location give you a good idea of what products and services your customers will need next. But the addition of rich economic capacity data helps confirm they have the resources to purchase new hardware and service subscriptions, saving you, and them, the embarrassment of a stellar promotion going sour when a credit check fails.



Power your online display campaigns with the same kinds of customer insights that inform your offline efforts.

Find out more in our new interactive tool about Equifax Digital Targeting Segments.



To stay ahead of your competitors, you need timely integration of new data collected across your enterprise. This data linkage can help provide a more holistic picture of your customers and is key to personalization. When your data is linked, both internally and with third-party sources, you’ll not only see transactions but better understand the many ways they interact with you. Customers may engage online, in stores, and through customer support. And linking data also triggers other important insights about their lifestyle and purchase behaviors. Get a more comprehensive view of customers so you can more intelligently talk to them. . . across all your brand channels.

2. Anticipate customer needs through predictive insights

Because consumers expect immediate gratification in their experiences, organizations need to develop personalized customer journey strategies and relevant campaigns based around them. Reliable intelligence can help you better address small segments of buyers, thereby accelerating their engagement, conversion, satisfaction and retention.



An enhanced behavioral profile of your current best customers can help you target your offers to purchase-ready consumers.

Millennial Financials by City

virginia beach, ca

Lowest average assets $44,931

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK

Highest growth in millennial income: 66% in the past five years

BOSTON METRO, MA

Highest average assets $170,073

While Baby Boomers...

Control over 46% of total U.S. invested assets with almost

$320,000

in average assets per household

Hold about 40% of the nation’s credit balance with about

$112,000

in average outstanding debt per household



Which factors matter in predicting the next best product or service for your customer and prospect groups? Behavioral triggers expose propensities toward specific product or service adoption and help predict their future personal customer journeys. Ultimately, you will have identified consumer segments that should perform well and help you meet your business objectives.

Using this approach of linking proprietary data with third-party economic capacity data, one telecommunications company achieved 21% conversion in a campaign.

Another benefit of overlaying unique data on consumer households comes when consumers sign a contract for your products or services. By prequalifying consumers before offering them the latest high-end device or media package, you reduce risk by knowing your customers can qualify for the products and services they desire — even before they even ask for them.

Of course, data alone won’t get you the best customers to market to. Integration of data sources, and the use of cutting-edge tools and technology that transcend foundational analytics, can help you create personalized offers that improve customer experiences and the efficacy of your marketing.

Learn how unique data, innovative analytics, technology and expertise can help you drive profitable growth.


3. Better exploit the channels where customers spend time

You undoubtedly collect data from direct engagement across the channels your customers and prospects use, such as social media, mobile and the web. You can achieve a data-driven understanding of consumers that illuminates their preferred channels and creates more consistent messages across the channels where your customers are most active.

But your multi-channel personalization starts with something simpler: onboarding the actionable, high-potential consumer segments you have developed offline for use in online marketing efforts. Segments you have already identified for targeting through direct mail may be leveraged for Web, email and social media campaigns. Integrated digital targeting allows you to reach your preferred consumers through their preferred digital channels.


Regardless of their location or digital device, consumers have nearly constant access to multiple media.

83% of consumers expect personalized retail experiences in store, in app and in other digital channels.3

In addition to channels consumers use to research your products and services, you can have success targeting them amid their other activities.

An addressable TV campaign using digital targeting brought a

35%

lift in new accounts for one client.

Digital targeting reduced the cost per profitable acquisition by more than

50%

for another client.

4. Create a consistent experience across digital, and brick and mortar

The winners in customer experience recognize that it is key to their marketing performance today, generating new customer relationships, and greater satisfaction and loyalty among their existing customer base. Robust segmentation helps them drive multi-channel messaging strategies, which depend on reinvented processes that engage technology adept at communicating cross-channel. That reach enables marketers in customer-centric companies to better engage high-potential consumers with consistent messages through the channels they prefer.

Find and keep high-value customers who have the ability and the propensity to purchase your offerings.

Navigating the multi-channel landscape is complex, but to be effective with savvy consumers, your marketing efforts must deliver consistent messaging across online, mobile, TV, email, direct mail, retail, call center and other marketing channels. By leveraging a vendor that has forged relationships across the digital ecosystem, you will be able to more seamlessly connect with your target audiences through the channels they view, interact with and experience.

If you can satisfy consumers’ desire to have more personalized and consistent interactions with you across live and digital touchpoints, you can improve both their brand experience and your brand performance. Utilizing a technology-enabled vendor can help you overcome impediments in data standardization and quality as well as digital distribution so you can communicate with agility.


The challenge to improve personalization across channels and provide a more seamless customer experience may be sizable, but the opportunities are greater and a source of competitive edge.

Satisfied customers are brand-conscious. Organizations can better retain and grow their customer base, as well as increase customer lifetime value, if they build their brands on superior customer experiences, leveraging growing volumes of data and innovative, flexible analysis tools.

Working with a vendor who can provide differentiated data, robust insights and relevant digital targeting can help improve customer experience and satisfaction, and your chances of success.


Learn how we can help you with Data-driven Marketing from Equifax.


ABOUT EQUIFAX
Equifax is a global information solutions company that uses unique data, innovative analytics, technology and industry expertise to power organizations and individuals around the world by transforming knowledge into insights that help make more informed business and personal decisions.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Info.DDM@equifax.com | www.equifax.com/DDM | 800.210.4323

Copyright © 2018, Equifax Inc., Atlanta, Georgia. All rights reserved. Equifax is a registered trademark of Equifax Inc. Your individual results may vary based on your actual customer data, marketing efforts, product/service type and other related factors.

1. Marketo, Customers Frustrated with Brands that Fail to Personalize, 2016.
2. Researchscape International, 2017 Trends in Personalization, April 19, 2017.
3. NectarOM and Texas A&M Mays Business School, With Holiday Season Weeks Away, New Survey Reveals 83% of Customers Expect a Personalized Retail Experience, November 1, 2017.


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