Top Marketing Pet-Peeves To Avoid This Holiday Season
By John Nash, RedPoint Global
The holiday season is upon us, and marketers are gearing up to capitalize on the busiest time of year. To ensure that they are embarking on a successful season, it is important to understand how an irrelevant or mistimed message can impact and even jeopardize a customer’s loyalty. Below are the top marketing pet-peeves that can upset a customer, prevent a sale and hinder the opportunity for a long-term relationship. If any of these are diminishing your marketing effectiveness this season, now is the time to put them on your fix-it list to make sure it’s the last time they happen.
Sending a message about something a customer already bought
All too often, after researching and then subsequently buying a product from a brand, a customer will receive repeated messages about that same product. This untimely outreach by the brand can be extremely frustrating for the consumer when the message is offering a discount for the same item the customer just bought.
Inundating a customer with too many messages in too short of a time
Customers see thousands of advertisements a day, especially as the number of touch points across devices grow: 74% of U.S. Internet users said they are seeing more ads overall, and when MarketingSherpa asked U.S. adult Internet users why they unsubscribe from email lists, one in four said they did so because they receive too many emails. Customers will increasingly become averse to a brand’s outreach efforts if their inboxes are being inundated with repetitive messages.
Repeating irrelevant messages
Accenture found that 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that recognize, remember and provide them with relevant offers and recommendations. An irrelevant offer can come in many forms. A typical example during the holiday season is when a brand sends repeated messages to a customer who bought a product as a gift for someone who has different product preferences than he/she does. Another example is targeting the wrong person in a household, especially when family or friends share computers, loyalty cards, laptops or tablets within their house or apartment.
Targeted messages to customers can be a make-or-break deal. Companies and organizations that leverage personalization have seen upwards of a 19% sales lift by creating a more personalized journey for the consumer. Similarly speaking, 41% of U.S. consumers have ditched a retailer or brand because of poor personalization. To make sure you’re staying in a consumer’s good graces, here are three tips that can help you avoid common holiday marketing mistakes.
1. Process customer data in real time
Being one step behind a customer is of a little value to both the marketer and the customer. It can even waste precious time and resources in an already busy time of year. To avoid this mistake, it’s important for marketers to leverage technology that prepares their data in real time, so that when it’s time to execute, nothing stands in the way of speed, agility and accuracy.
2. Understand the cadence of the customer
Having the correct timing and pattern of messages is essential. To gain this insight, it’s important to know where a customer is within their path to purchase and how aggressively they should be targeted. For example, a loyal customer who has a rewards card may look forward to email campaigns more than a customer who has only shopped with the brand a handful of times. It’s important that customer outreaches are tailored to reflect these nuances rather than a spray and pray approach.
3. Have the full context of the customer
Sending irrelevant messages is the most obvious way to tell a customer you don’t have a full understanding of who they are. 62% of companies have between six to 20 engagement systems, which create data silos. Marketers need to create a unified customer profile and a single point of control of data, decisions and interactions to consistently deliver relevant messages based on the full context of the customer.
To avoid the top marketing pet-peeves listed above this holiday season, it’s important for marketers to invest in a solution that can provide a single point of control of data, decision and interactions. With solutions such as customer data platforms, which can incorporate data from each step of the journey, each touch point adds value to the customer’s profile. However, these marketing strategies are not quick fixes. To best leverage these technologies, it’s important for marketers to address these issues now so that they can change their customer experience before the next holiday season.
John Nash has spent his career helping businesses grow revenue through the application of advanced technologies, analytics, and business model innovations. As Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at RedPoint Global, Nash is responsible for developing new markets, launching new solutions, building brand awareness, generating pipeline growth and advancing thought leadership.