And, better yet, how do we do it?

Customer engagement has been a buzzword for a while now. The internet is packed with articles about creating ‘meaningful customer engagement’. At Dotdigital, we’re guilty of it too. As a customer experience and data platform (CXDP), we have the tools you need to connect with customers and our learning resources are packed with advice on how to drive cross-channel customer engagement.

But what does it really mean when we refer to ‘customer engagement’ is it really as important as people say? We want to demystify this buzzword. In this article, we’re going to explore what customer engagement is, how important it is, and give you some hints and tips about engaging customers online.

What is customer engagement?

The internet is littered with various definitions of customer engagement, but one thing they all share is this: customer engagement is about the interactions between you and your customers. These interactions can happen on a variety of channels and help strengthen your relationship with customers.

Customer engagement begins with a customer’s first interaction with your brand and extends beyond the point of purchase. Ongoing interactions between your brand and your customer are a clear sign your customer is engaged. Customers consuming content on social media, websites, blogs, and email marketing are all engaging with your brand.

Delivering cross-channel experiences gives customers the choice to decide where they engage with you. By offering them a choice, you’ll be able to discover the type of interaction and content they find valuable. This will ultimately lead them to develop a stronger emotional bond with your brand.

You need to deliver content and experiences that add value to create meaningful customer experiences. When customers feel as though they are getting more than just a product or service from your brand, they connect to your brand.

Why is customer engagement important?

Brands are so often concerned with acquisition, clicks, and conversions, that it can be easy to forget the importance of the moments in between. Engaging customers between and beyond purchases will strengthen their emotional connection with your brand. Stronger connections between your customer and the brand will help you retain your hard-won customers.

Beyond simply driving customers down the marketing funnel, customer engagement is about connecting beyond the key touchpoints in your customer journey. Successful customer engagement will keep your brand at the top of the customer’s mind when it comes to the decision-making process. It’ll also make them more responsive to your marketing efforts.

Cross-selling, up-selling, and average order value are just a few metrics that will increase as your customer engagement improves.

The benefits of customer engagement?

Investing time and effort in customer engagement can bring many benefits to your marketing, driving growth and improving customers’ relationships with your brand. Here are several advantages of prioritizing customer engagement as part of your marketing strategy:

Higher customer retention and loyalty

When customers are engaged, they tend to stick with your brand for a long time. This can help to reduce the number of customers who leave your brand while increasing the lifetime value of each customer. When customers feel connected to your brand, they are more likely to become loyal customers who recommend your products to their friends and family.

Higher customer satisfaction

By creating a personal relationship with your customers, you can increase their satisfaction and trust in your brand. When customers feel valued and respected, they are more likely to have positive feelings towards your brand. This can help create a positive image of your brand in their minds and encourage them to choose your brand over competitors.

Improved brand reputation and presence

By engaging with your customers through social media and other channels, you can help to boost your brand’s reputation and presence in the market. When customers have positive experiences with your brand, they are more likely to share those experiences with others. This can help to increase your brand’s reach and attract new potential customers.

Greater competitive advantage

In today’s crowded marketplace, brands that excel at customer engagement have a distinct advantage over those that don’t. By delivering exceptional customer experiences, fostering emotional connections, and consistently exceeding customer expectations, your company will gain a competitive edge that propels growth and attracts new customers.

How to measure customer engagement?

As marketers, we understand the importance of metrics. If we’re going to dedicate our precious time and resources to improving customer engagement, we need to know how to measure the outcomes of our work.

Below are just some of the ways you can start measuring customer engagement levels. Of course, depending on your business and your goals, your definition of engagement may rely on different results, but these are a good place to start.

Average order value (AOV)

The average order value is the average amount customers spend when they make a purchase. This number will tell you how much customers generally spend when shopping on your website. Repeat customers spend about 7x times more than one-time or new shoppers.

This means the higher this metric is, the more repeat customers are returning to your website. If you’re retaining more customers, that’s a clear indication that your engagement efforts are working.

Social interactions

On social media, the total number of interactions is a great way to measure engagement levels. Replies, likes, retweets, comments, and tags will give insight into how successful your social campaigns are. It will also reveal the type of content your audience values. This should help inform your marketing strategy in the future.

Social media ‘impressions’ are not a sufficient way to measure engagement because it is used to measure advertising reach. That means users are only engaging passively – if at all – as they scroll past.

Purchase frequency

Purchase frequency refers to how often customers complete a purchase online or at your store. You can calculate this by dividing the number of orders in the last 365 days by the number of unique customers in the same period.

No. orders in the last 365 days / no. unique customers in the last 365 days

This will help you get a better understanding of your customer lifecycle. When you know how long it takes your average customer to make another purchase you can see how engaged they are and where you need to ramp up your engagement efforts.

Repeat purchase rate

Your repeat purchase rate is the percentage of customers who have made more than one purchase within a set timeframe. This rate will give you a clearer idea of the effectiveness of your customer retention and engagement strategy.

To calculate this rate, you simply need to divide the number of customers who have made more than one purchase over a set period by the total number of customers in the same period.

Newsletter open rates

Email marketing metrics can be tricky to measure customer engagement. This is mainly because email marketing typically involves multiple campaigns going to varied, segmented customer databases. To measure customer engagement with your email marketing, it’s best to focus your metrics on a single campaign going to the bulk of your contacts.

Newsletters are the best option – especially if you send traditional, content-focused newsletters, as opposed to sales-driving newsletters. From there, you can draw insight from open and click-through rates on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Pages per session

How many web pages a customer visits in a single visit to your website (“session”) is a great indicator of how helpful and engaging your content is. The higher the number of pages per session the more interested customers are in your brand and your products. If your numbers are low, there may be a problem with your site structure or the quality of your content.

Tracking this will help you identify any issues, making planning, and improving your customer engagement strategy in the future easier.

Net promoter score (NPS)

NPS is used to measure customer loyalty and how likely customers are to recommend your brand to their peers. You can collect this data by regularly surveying your customers. For quantitative results, you can ask customers to rate their experience with your brand on a numerical scale:

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?”

Or, for more insightful, qualitative feedback, you can use open-ended questions to find areas of your experience to optimize and improve:

“How could we improve your experience?”

How to engage customers online

Engaged customers are good for business. They have a stronger, more emotional connection with your brand. The more engaged they are with your brand, the more they’re going to spend with you, ultimately having a positive effect on your bottom line too.

So, how do we start engaging customers better online?

1. Personalized experiences

Modern customers don’t like impersonal marketing. 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized marketing messages. With such a high demand for personalized customer experiences, you must make it a core part of your customer engagement strategy.

Due to the meteoric rise of ecommerce giant Amazon, shoppers expect personalized product recommendations to elevate their experience.

However, this is just one way you can personalize customer experiences. Asking customers what they want is a quick win. Using your preference center, you can gather all the data you need to deliver one-to-one experiences.

You can also use behavioral data to delight customers with unique interactions with your brand. Using purchase or browsing history in your content is a great way to show customers you know them.

2. Gamification of content

Gamification is set to take the marketing world by storm. By adding this to your email marketing, you’re giving customers a reason to engage with your marketing for longer.

From a consumer psychology perspective, gamified content creates a positive association with your brand. 

When customers play and win, they’re more likely to remember your brand and engage again in the future. These are fun experiences that require greater engagement from audiences than watching a video. They have to actively participate to gain the benefits, making it one of the ultimate tactics for customer engagement.

3. Loyalty programs

Loyalty programs are a great way to give back to your customers. When they feel as though their valued, as though they are getting back as much, if not more than they invest in you, their connection with your brand will be stronger than ever.

When you use a tier or points-based loyalty program you’re adding value to every interaction a customer has with your brand. This helps make them more invested in your brand. If they don’t shop with you, or enter your social media competition, they will miss out on the additional value they could earn.

Maximize their fear of missing out – the FOMO effect – by implementing a loyalty program that’ll boost their long-term engagement and keep driving them back to you.

4. Chat widgets

Live Chat is not only great at removing obstacles on the path to purchase, but they’re brilliant for year-round engagement with your audience.

It’s a one-to-one engagement on a grand scale. If a customer has a product query or concerns about delivery, your team is on hand to handle it, before it becomes a problem. This level of quick and efficient customer care will raise you high about the competition.

By making your customer services teams available to customers, brands are demonstrating their commitment to the customer experience. And when a customer feels that, they’re going to develop a stronger emotional bond with your business. Putting the customer’s needs first is always a winning tactic.

5. Social competitions

Running competitions on social media is a great way to boost engagement if ever you see your numbers dipping.

Using a competition on social media, you can get customers to share, retweet, comment, or tag your brand. This not only encourages them to engage with your marketing for a chance to win, but it also turns them into ambassadors, helping to amplify your brand to their followers who may be unfamiliar with you.

Simply having customers follow your brand on social goes a long way toward keeping them engaged over time.

Final thoughts on customer engagement

Customer engagement isn’t solely about driving profits – although that is a massive benefit of an engaged database.

It’s about empowering customers to interact with your brand on the channels they want and delight them with unique and personalized experiences. The more you do this, the stronger their connection to your brand will be. Engaging customers and adding value to their experience will keep your brand at the front of their minds.

The better engaged they are, the longer you’ll be able to retain them, and the more loyal they will be to you. Ultimately, this will help your business grow, reduce customer churn, and increase your company profits as loyal customers spend more money with you.

In other exciting news, we are thrilled to announce the acquisition of our long-term partner, Fresh Relevance. With this move, we are able to provide you with the best CXDP experience, empowering you to consistently deliver customer experiences that go beyond expectations. Read more about it here.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started.

Save time and do more with WinstonAI

WinstonAI, Dotdigital’s marketing intelligence engine, has continued to grow and evolve. From send time optimization and product recommendations, to generative AI assistance, WinstonAI is on hand to make your work life easier. And with this release we’re adding even more features to our generative AI capabilities, helping you streamline your campaign creation process.

Grammar and spell check

What is it?

Built into the campaign builder, WinstonAI will scan your campaign content and provide a spelling and grammar check across email, SMS, surveys, and pages and forms. This will let you know of any errors found and offer suggestions, leaving you in control to adopt as you see fit.

WinstonAI is powered by GPT and our partnership with Microsoft ensures that all data is always secure.

Why is it important?

WinstonAI grammar and spell check allows you to save time, so you can focus on the more creative and important elements of your campaign.

• Reduce time spent proofing campaigns
• Streamline sign-off processes
• Communicate with confidence
• Reduce typos and grammar errors
• Keep standards high and maintain brand reputation
• Spend more time focusing on creative and strategic elements of your campaign

How to get started

Our grammar and spell checker, powered by WinstonAI is now available within the campaign builder. To note, if you don’t want to utilize WinstonAI, there is a toggle option to disable WinstonAI suggestions, so you always have complete control.

SMS in one-click

What is it?

This new WinstonAI feature enables you to easily convert email campaigns into SMS messages with just one click. WinstonAI will do all of the hard work for you and suggest an SMS campaign with copy that is aligned with the message of your email campaign.

Why is it important?

A cross-channel approach is key, and SMS adds a lot of value to your marketing mix. With incredible engagement rates, 60% of SMS are read within 1-5 minutes, and the ability to cut through the noise of a busy inbox, SMS campaigns should be a part of your marketing strategy.

This new feature means you can focus on the message first, and the channel second. Creating SMS has never been this easy, allowing you to increase your reach in no time at all

• Save time and drive far more engagement with just one click
• Deliver cross-channel experiences in seconds
• Focus on creating your message first, and channel second

How to get started

When you’ve finished writing your email in our campaign builder, simply click on the WinstonAI icon and select “convert to SMS”. You’ll then find the suggested SMS campaign in the SMS editor and all that’s left to do is hit send. If you’re not sending SMS yet, start by setting up a free trial in your account.

Shorten SMS

What is it?

Ever written the perfect SMS campaign only to realise that you’ve gone over the character limit? WinstonAI can now analyze your text and provide a shortened version that is suitable for mobile messaging while retaining the essentials of your original content.

Why is it important?

Adhering to the 160-character count limit for SMS texts is crucial to avoid sending multiple consecutive messages and impacting your billing. The WinstonAI shorten SMS feature simplifies the task of condensing lengthy messages, without losing their core meaning. You will also receive the character count of the shortened message.

How to get started

You’ll find the WinstonAI Shorten SMS tool in the SMS campaign editor. Simply click on the WinstonAI icon and select “shorten message” to receive your alternative text.

Elevate your strategy with enhanced SMS

SMS is a great tool to have in your cross-channel strategy. It lands in the palm of your customers’ hand and gets the message across in rapid time. This release we’re launching a host of improvements to your SMS experience. This includes making SMS campaign creation easier, offering improved SMS number capture, and delivering detailed new reporting.

Advanced revenue attribution for SMS

What is it?

Get more insight into campaign performance with our new advanced revenue attribution for SMS. By tracking both direct and assisted campaign revenue, you can now easily identify how different touchpoints are performing throughout the customer journey. This is already available for email and now we’ve added the capability to SMS to ensure you can effectively report on campaign performance across both channels.

Why is it important?

Customer journeys are anything but linear and each touchpoint deserves recognition. ROI is a crucial metric for any business so reliable, detailed reporting is key. A comprehensive understanding of the marketing journey and every individual campaign’s impact is invaluable for managing budgets, future campaign planning, and campaign optimization.

How to get started

Find out more about our revenue attribution models in the help center. To benefit from assisted revenue attribution you must be on a CXDP or Amplify package.

Commerce SMS capture

What is it?

Consumers are shopping on mobile devices more than ever before, so we’re making it easier for our ecommerce partners to maximize every conversion opportunity. Merchants using Magento, Shopware, Shopify, or WooCommerce can now capture SMS numbers as part of the check-out process. Shopify merchants are also able to offer an SMS-only checkout to their customers.

Why is it important?

Embrace the mobile shopping trend by integrating SMS capture at checkout and letting consumers decide how they want to be contacted, keeping your brand connected to the pulse of the customer.

• Acquire more marketing contacts that are opted-in to receiving SMS.
• SMS checkout allows customers to complete their purchases faster.
• Send tailored mobile offers and discounts via SMS.
• Send order updates directly via text messages keeping shoppers informed throughout the whole purchase process, leading to higher satisfaction.

How to get started

You must be a merchant using either Shopify, Magento, Shopware, or WooCommerce and SMS. Head to the help center and search for your ecommerce platform to find out more.

Think bigger with extensive integrations

Our integrations allow you to bring your whole customer journey together and share data every step of the way to better inform your marketing strategy. We know how important fast, accurate data flows are, so we made our API even better.

New integrations area in Dotdigital

What is it?

In our new integrations area you will find a comprehensive directory of all of Dotdigital’s tech integrations, including Dotdigital-built, verified partner and app extensions such as Facebook and Google ads. The integrations area is categorized and has search and filtering functionality, plus each integration will have a profile with a description along with instructions on how to install.

Why is it important?

A core part of our offering as a CXDP is our ability to connect with your entire marketing stack. You can now easily find the integrations you need to create a seamless customer experience that delivers conversions and improves ROI.

• One centralized database for improved visibility and connectivity.
• Have the confidence that the integration you’re reviewing is either Dotdigital built or verified, making choosing new tech easier.
• Discover the steps needed to self-install, or how to get in touch with our partners.

How to get started

You can visit the new integrations area from your Dotdigital account. Not a customer? You can also check out our integrations in the partner directory here.

API V3 and improved rate limits

What is it?

Our all-new API offers a top-of-class CXDP experience. Whether you’re wanting to push data into Dotdigital or send it back to other systems, this new API is changing the game. We’ve also enabled higher rate limits for our existing APIs.

Built with the latest RESTful technology, with service versioning embedded from the start, our family of APIs allow you to:

• Integrate quickly with any other system
• Make up to 6,000 calls per minute so data will always be up to date
• Read data in 30ms – that’s five times faster than you can blink

Why is it important?

These new services are the first of a new batch that will be focused on ensuring our customers and partners can integrate even more seamlessly with Dotdigital. This enables you to freely exchange data which in turn drives incredible customer journeys using our communications and automation capabilities.

• Our CXDP allows high-speed data access without burdensome rate limits.
• Sync insight data as you can now retrieve all modified records since your last call.
• Contacts can be identified using any identifier for improved visibility.
• Consolidate many API calls into one by optionally including other contact related data when getting your contact details.

How to get started

Visit the Dotdigital Developer hub for all information relating to our APIs.

The new Dotdigital is now available to all customers

We’ve spent the last few years re-building Dotdigital from the ground up to be able to offer you the functionality of a powerful data platform, paired with our customer experience and marketing automation tools. In short, Dotdigital is now a CXDP.

What is it?

We’ve kept all the things you already love about Dotdigital, and amplified them. Built on our core values of sustainability, privacy, and security, we are continuing to grow the platform to support your business in even more areas.

Dotdigital’s data platform functionality combines email and SMS data to create a unified, single source of truth for your contacts. Unified contacts allows you to bring your data into one place, enabling you to build a deeper connection with your audience.

Why is it important?

Unified contacts, gives you more insights than ever before – all in one place. You now have more ways to identify customers, so you can match up associated data with identifiers including (email, mobile number, and unique contact ID).

A joined-up customer data platform allows you to create an engaging, cohesive customer journey. In today’s market, going beyond the expected is key for brands who want to stand out, be memorable, and offer an exceptional experience.

• Engage with your customers on their preferred channels for optimal engagement and an improved customer experience.
• Deliver a seamless cross-channel experience with multiple touchpoints across the customer journey.
• Gain a 360° view of your contacts to better understand them enabling you to market directly to their interests.
• Deliver campaigns that engage at scale with hyper-personalization techniques and tools that appeal to your audience.

How to get started

We’ve done all the work, unified contacts is now a part of your Dotdigital account from today.

Other key updates

New look and feel: homepage and better UI

You’ll notice a new, refreshed homepage now featuring key performance metrics and personalized recommendations to help you identify key opportunities and effectively manage your to-do list. We’ve also upgraded our navigation and redesigned the SMS editor, making the platform easier and more intuitive to use.

A Dotdigital PWA

We’ve developed our own progressive web app (PWA) for the Dotdigital platform. This app makes it easier for you to access the Dotdigital platform. Simply pin the new app to your task bar at the bottom of your screen for instant, easy access. Head to the help center to find out more.

Shopware multi-store support

Shopware merchants can now connect multiple storefronts to one Dotdigital account in order to communicate with customers more effectively. Having a multi-store setup connected to one back end store can save time and admin work, this is especially valuable for ecommerce merchants that serve multiple countries.

App blocks for partners

The new partner app blocks enable to partners to build their own blocks for customers to use in the EasyEditor. This gives you more control and flexibility over what layouts you use in your campaigns. Plus, automatically matching campaign style functionality saves you time by removing the need to manually adjust the style via the code.

SMS regulations for Singapore

In order to send SMS in Singapore, marketing providers need to be able to block incorrectly formatted sender IDs, as these are considered a risk for illegitimate messages. Our latest update supports this change – get in touch with your Customer Success representative to enable the change in your account.

At Dotdigital we know it’s hard to keep up with the sending rules and regulations of different countries. We keep on top of it for you so that you can continue to send SMS in 220+ countries across the globe confidently.

Improved login experience

We’re increasing the login inactivity window from 2 hours to 3 days. So you can go away for a long lunch or even a long weekend, without being logged out of the platform.

Join the webinar

Utilizing back in stock notifications

In the fast-paced world of ecommerce, staying ahead of customer needs and expectations can make all the difference in boosting sales and customer satisfaction. Let’s explore some examples of back in stock notifications that demonstrate their value to your ecommerce store:

1. Seasonal products: Seasonal products often face high demand and nothing disappoints a customer more than finding their favorite holiday items out of stock. Back in stock notifications allow a customer to act quickly when the item is available again, making sure it arrives just in time for any special occasion.
2. Limited editions: Offering limited edition products is an excellent way to showcase your brand’s creativity and create a sense of urgency in the market. By having back in stock notifications in place, customers are less likely to miss out and limited runs can maximize their exposure.
3. Pre-orders and product restocks: Anticipation for new launches and restocks can lead to a high volume of inquiries. Back in stock notifications will keep your customers informed about restocks and save time replying to inquiries.
4. Analyzing product demand: Back in stock notifications also provide valuable insights into the demand for specific items, allowing you to optimize your inventory management strategy.
5. Promoting slow fashion and sustainability: By analyzing product demand data from back in stock notifications, you can adopt a more sustainable approach to product development. By understanding which items are most sought after, you can create products that stand the test of time and reduce waste and overproduction. Ultimately this will contribute to your brand’s long-term profitability and positive impact on the environment. 

Why Back in stock notifications are important

Back in stock notifications are not merely a convenience for your customers; they play a crucial role in fostering a positive shopping experience. Here are some reasons why implementing these notifications in your ecommerce store is vital for your business success:

Minimize customer frustration

An out-of-stock item can be frustrating for your customers. By providing a proactive, automated way for them to receive notifications when the product is available, you help manage their expectations and avoid disappointment.

Create excitement with your customers

Studies show the brain releases more dopamine in anticipation of a reward than when receiving a reward. This means that subscribing to a notification and waiting for the product to be restocked is arguably more exciting than going and buying that same product from your competitor.

Retain customer interest

Customers won’t always remember to check your site for the return of an out-of-stock item. Back in stock notifications help you retain customer interest and capitalize on buyer intent. A well-timed alert will create urgency and increase your chances of an immediate purchase.

Decrease churn and increase loyalty

By using back in Stock notifications, you can demonstrate to your customers that you value their satisfaction. With this feature, customers can quickly return to the purchase funnel and avoid missing out on their desired products when they become available again. This fosters customer loyalty and shows them that you are committed to providing exceptional service throughout their entire journey. Ultimately, this can increase their customer lifetime value.

High-quality experiences like these not only keep customers coming back to purchase from your store but also contribute to a higher average spending and long-term engagement, ultimately resulting in a more profitable relationship with your customers.

Get started with Back in stock today

Implementing back in stock notifications in your ecommerce store will have numerous benefits, including minimizing customer churn, improving inventory analysis, and enhancing overall customer experience. 

Dotdigital offers back in stock notifications for BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, and Shopify, with more integrations arriving later soon. Don’t hesitate and start taking advantage of this valuable feature today. Get in touch with our team to kickstart your journey and give your customers a shopping experience they’ll love!

Key takeaways from the Retail Innovation Conference and Expo

Let’s discuss the key takeaways from sessions at #RICE23: 

1. Leverage generative artificial intelligence (AI)

One of the most intriguing and innovative concepts presented at this year’s #RICE23 was the potential and utilization of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the retail industry. As retailers aim to deliver more personalized, efficient, and engaging customer experiences, the introduction of generative AI proves to be a game-changer in meeting these expectations.

A prime example of generative AI in action is WinstonAI. WinstonAI draws on Microsoft Azure’s generative AI technology (GPT-3.5) to offer suggestions and inspiration on how to take your campaign content to the next level. Built directly into the Dotdigital platform, WinstonAI can now easily provide you with hints, tips, and advice on how to improve your email marketing and customer experiences. 

If you want generative AI tools like WinstonAI to meet your expectations, it’s crucial to dedicate time and resources to train them. By refining these AI models with suitable data and feedback, you can unlock your full potential to develop more powerful marketing campaigns.

2. Deliver personalized customer experiences

In the era of fierce competition, driving customer loyalty and retention goes beyond offering high-quality products or services. To create meaningful connections, brands must prioritize personalization and create positive customer experiences tailored to individual preferences. By cultivating a loyal and dedicated customer base, businesses set themselves apart from the competition.

Harnessing the power of customer data is crucial to this strategy. Data guides brands in crafting unforgettable customer experiences tailored to their target audience. By gaining insights into customers’ preferences and needs, businesses can develop innovative products, launch strategies, marketing campaigns (both offline and online), custom packaging, superb in-store experiences, and user-friendly website designs that elevate their brand from the rest.

The solution lies in adopting a human-to-human (H2H) marketing approach. This paradigm shift emphasizes treating customers as humans with emotions and stories rather than mere data points. By humanizing your marketing strategy, your brand will stand out from the competition and foster stronger relationships with your target audience. This deeper connection ultimately influences their decision to choose your brand over others.

3. Embrace creativity

If you want to stand out and attract the attention of the tech-savvy Gen Z audience, creativity is key. This generation appreciates new and unique ideas, and they are more likely to try out brands that break away from the norm. Don’t hesitate to be innovative with your products, marketing strategies, or brand stories to set yourself apart from the competition. Additionally, make sure to communicate with this generation on their preferred channels and engage in meaningful conversations.

Liquid Death is a brand that has effectively used creative marketing to establish its own unique identity. While they sell canned water, their success comes from their entertainment and content-driven approach. Their marketing strategies aim to create an exciting and unconventional image that stands out among competitors and captures the attention of customers.

4. Build a community

Cultivating a sense of community within your brand is pivotal to forging lasting, personal connections with your customers. This intimate relationship fosters a sense of belonging, support, and empowerment, transforming casual customers into passionate, engaged champions who actively use your products and services.

The power of a strong brand community offers: 

• Enhanced virality: When customers feel connected to your brand, they are more inclined to share content and products within their networks. This organic sharing significantly expands your reach and fuels viral growth.
• Natural brand advocates: Members who are deeply engaged with your brand community will readily share their positive experiences, recommendations, and testimonials with their circles, establishing trust and credibility among potential customers.

5. Maintain your digital presence

It’s important to keep your digital presence up-to-date to create a positive perception of your brand. Your ecommerce site and martech stack should evolve with changing consumer expectations, as customers often form their first impression of your products and services through your digital presence.

If your website is outdated, it may harm your brand’s reputation and give potential customers the impression that you are not up-to-date with current trends. This could affect their decision-making process and lead to losing customers. Therefore, it’s important to update your website regularly.

To maintain your digital presence, you can: 

• Update your technology stack: As technology evolves, so do the expectations of tech-savvy consumers. Invest in tools and integrations to deliver a seamless user experience that meets consumer demands.
• Refresh your design: A visually appealing, modern design can significantly influence a brand’s image. Regularly update your website or email design elements, layout, and color scheme to reflect the latest design trends and maintain a fresh, contemporary appearance.
• Monitor your competition: Keep an eye on your competitors’ websites and take note of any updates or changes they make. This can help you stay informed of the latest industry trends and anticipate consumer expectations.

Summary

During #RICE23, experts in ecommerce, social media, and martech discussed valuable insights. In today’s rapidly evolving retail industry, it’s essential for brands to keep up with industry trends and consumer preferences to succeed. Thankfully, we were right there, soaking it all in for you, so you don’t miss a beat in keeping your business on top of its game! 

We entered 2023 still in the shadow of the pandemic; inflation continued to rise, the war in Ukraine continued, and there have been plenty more headlines since then. People everywhere can’t help but ask – is the worst behind us, or is there more bad news to come?

This is the trend that is likely to influence spending for some time. Consumers will have a constant battle on their hands between seeking stability and wanting to move on. 

Right now, consumer spend isn’t slowing down. Most people are spending to make up for lost time due to Coronavirus. This is called revenge spend.

• In 2022, online revenue increased by 23%
• Shopify announced a record-breaking BFCM weekend
• Forrester predicts that spending will increase a further 5%

But when you combine this type of spending with economic concern, the result is a demanding customer base with high expectations. Consumers are looking for quality over quantity and are more selective about which brands they engage with. Consumers may be eager to spend their money, but they’re not looking to throw it at anything and everything – it’s targeted spend. 

This should be a wake up call for marketers everywhere. Due to economic difficulty, marketers are under pressure to improve ROI, take stock of existing set up, and even re-arrange teams, but now is not the time to slow down marketing efforts. Consumers are looking for places to spend their money, and someone needs to tell them where.

Keep reading for practical tips on how to keep up with high consumer expectations and come out on top in 2023.

Effective tactics to overcome purchasing objections

The key to overcoming purchasing objections is to build trust with your customers and leverage it across the whole purchasing journey.

There are many ways to build trust, including press releases, features in industry magazines, utilizing a founder’s or company story, and aligning your company mission with the beliefs of your customers. 

Building trust among consumers is incredibly important, and one of the most effective trust signals is reviews. Customer reviews should be incorporated throughout the buying journey to better overcome objections at the different stages of the purchase. For example, you should feature reviews on your website’s homepage, product pages, and even at the checkout. Also, reviews should be used in wider marketing, such as social media and email campaigns.

Another important trust signal to customers is done through responsible marketing, data processing, privacy, and security. Consumers want to trust that a brand will use their data responsibly and with the right level of security to feel comfortable making a purchase. 

Growth strategies that will work in a difficult economic climate

There is no silver bullet when it comes to growth. The most important thing is to do the basics really well, stay consistent and trust that customers will come. 

One effective growth strategy that is often overlooked is focusing less on acquisition and more on loyal customers. Take the time to find out who your best shoppers are, their behaviors, and what they respond to. Analyze why these customers purchase multiple times and use this research to drive more shoppers to do the same. Your top 20% of customers are responsible for 80% of your total revenue. This is the group that brands need to focus on to grow. 

According to Matt Johnson, the key to winning over customers is by being the closest to them. The way you interact with your customers after they make a purchase is important for building loyalty and growing your business. Treat your repeat customers differently, show them you understand them, and make them feel special. Use data and segmentation to deliver this level of personalization at scale. Collect zero-party and first-party data to understand your customer better and bring that into your marketing tech stack to run more effective marketing campaigns.

Three tips for effective data acquisition and usage in 2023

1. Better personalization and segmentation

The best way to spot shopping behaviors and trends that you want to target is by looking at your customer data from all sources in one single view. Combine this holistic approach to data with a powerful segmentation tool to easily create lookalike segments to send personalized, specific marketing.

2. Customer insights beyond the norm

Use custom data fields to collect customer attributes that you can use to further personalize the entire shopping experience. For example, if a skincare brand knows a customer’s skin type or age, they can tailor everything from the onsite experience to paid social posts so the end user will always see relevant content.

3. Build authenticity

Collect higher quality reviews that include images and videos. You can also showcase user-generated content (UGC) on your website to be more genuine. This will help you to stand out and look more authentic. It will also help deliver the right content back to the customer through the right channels and at the right time.

How can businesses create meaningful hybrid customer experiences?

The first way to bridge any gap between physical and online shopping is effective data collection and utilization. Collect your customers’ data at every point and leverage this during in person as well as online experiences. So when a customer visits your pop-up or brick-and-mortar store, they will be recognized as a previous customer and reap the benefits. 

Another key way to create meaningful offline customer experiences is through the unboxing experience. Leverage your ecommerce data to deliver personalized notes and offers to customers as a part of the delivery experience. 

Events are also a great place to build relationships with customers offline. Businesses should consider how in person experiences like events can be used as part of their strategy to strengthen their connection with customers and also as a way to reward them for their customer loyalty.

Are you up for the challenge?

Consumers everywhere are still spending money on brands they love and that offer engaging and personalized experiences. Are you ready to meet their higher expectations? To satisfy shoppers, use data to build authenticity, trust, and offer personalized shopping experiences that make them feel special.

REVIEWS.io was founded in 2010 to focus on authentic and genuine reviews to help customers make a real difference to their business. The solution has been built to put clients at the heart of everything REVIEWS.io do and support their customers’ businesses to monitor and grow their reputation online through the power of review collection, management, and publication.

REVIEWS.io is a global Dotdigital partner. Dotdigital and REVIEWS.io together help you seamlessly target your audiences and send personalized campaigns based on their review history. Strengthen your email campaigns, click-through rates, and increase your revenue using our joint technologies. Or why not learn more about our partnership with REVIEWS.io.

What is customer intent?

Customer intent is often confused with buyer’s intent – i.e. the thoughts or actions directing customers to make a purchase. In basic terms, that would be the moment a shopper enters a brick-and-mortar store and heads to the jeans aisle. Their intent to buy is clear.

However, in the wide world of marketing, buyer intent doesn’t take into account the wide range of online actions customers can take before converting.

Some actions can be simple, such as an immediate click-through from your homepage to a product page. But with the extensive range of channels customers can interact with you on, there are many actions that, when added together, can express their intent.

Why is customer intent important?

Today’s customers demand fast, friction-free experiences. They want brands to understand what they’re after and help them achieve their goals in real-time.

At the same time, marketers are asked to do more with less; to make marketing budgets go further.

Identifying moments of customer intent is essential to meeting both goals. For marketers, data insights that highlight micro-moments of customer intent provide you with more opportunities to convert customers and drive revenue.

For customers, brands that use customer intent can deliver personalized messages at the right time, making them feel valued and driving them into action.

Why is customer intent more powerful than demographics?

Marketers who exclusively rely on demographic information to target customers risk missing more than 70% of potential mobile shoppers.

Demographic information and marketing preferences are great tools to help marketers build a customer profile and understand what they want from you. Unfortunately, they offer little insight into what they’re looking for in the moment.

When customers are looking for something; a product, a solution, or a service, they go to the web. More often than not, they turn to their smartphones. These intent-filled micro-moments are what brands need to target to connect with people.

How do you identify customer intent?

Marketing is no longer as simple as ushering customers down the funnel. The customer journey isn’t linear but cyclical and chaotic. We expect shoppers to visit our sites repeatedly and communicate with us on multiple channels before they’re ready to make a decision.

So now we know that we’re looking for intent-filled interactions to signify customer intent, how do we determine what these moments are?

Collect actionable data

Demographic and preference data is essential for creating personalized and engaging marketing messages. However, you need to collect more than just customer data. Actions such as category page views, product page views, registrations, on-site searches, and landing page clicks should all be measured.

These can help you identify patterns in customer behavior before they convert, such as how many times they visit a page before the point of conversion. You will then be able to target specific high-intent actions to drive customers towards completing your goal.

Spot the key customer starting points

Your homepage might be the page most frequently landed on, but it doesn’t reveal real customer intent. Instead, you need to decide where the customer journey begins. Site searches are always good indicators of customer intent. Shoppers are looking for something specific so you should act on this and make the journey to conversion as simple as possible.

Similarly, specific category pages or feature pages can clearly indicate what customers are looking for. If a customer knows what they’re after, then this is a vital place for you to track and target.

Create pre-intent content

Understanding customer intent goes hand-in-hand with understanding the pain points that have driven them to your website in the first place. By strategizing your content marketing to focus on these specific pain points, utilizing blogs and learning resource pages, you can capture customer intent before they realize yours is the solution they need.

For example, if your brand offers a kitchen fitting service you can create content targeting first-time homeowners with a checklist of things they need to consider when renovating a kitchen. This will help you pre-emptively capture customers interested in finding out more about your service. You can then guide them through your customer journey and lead them to the point of conversion.

How to use customer intent in your marketing automation?

Targeting intent-filled micro-moments increases revenue. There are several scenarios where customer intent can trigger timely, relevant, and personalized marketing messages.

Abandoned browse and cart abandonment emails

Active carts or high-intent page visits demonstrate clear intent. To turn this intent into conversions you need to build abandoned cart or abandoned browse programs. Our Global benchmark report shows that acting quickly can make a big difference – 45% of abandoned carts are recovered within 2 hours. So, it’s important to re-engage your customers quickly and guide them back to your site to boost the likelihood of securing a sale.

Repeat page hits

As part of your work identifying customer intent, you should have a clear idea about which pages on your website are essential to your customers’ journey. Using this intelligence, you can create automation programs that are triggered when a browser views the same page three times.

For example, if you’re a furniture company and have noticed customers frequently visiting your payment plans page, you can use this insight to trigger a campaign. When a shopper views the page numerous times, a friendly ‘ask us anything’ email might be just the push they need to convert.

Customer engagement

Customer modeling tools such as eRFM and lead scoring help you measure subscriber engagement. You can identify which customers are actively interacting with your brand and which have lapsed.

Customer modeling triggers campaigns when customers move between audience groups. So, when a customer stops engaging with your marketing and falls into a needs-nurturing or lapsed group, you can automatically enroll them into a win-back automation campaign.

Similarly, when an unengaged subscriber starts re-engaging, you can leverage the data you already have on them to deliver a personalized campaign that enhances their customer experience. Product recommendation blocks and dynamic content are just a couple of ways to drive newly engaged customers to convert.

Summary

Customer intent is the secret weapon for creating effective, relevant, and persuasive marketing campaigns. By examining your audience’s behavior, segmenting them based on their intent, and delivering tailored content that speaks to their individual needs, you’ll unlock unprecedented levels of customer engagement, conversion, and growth. So, tap into customer intent today, and take your marketing strategy to the next level.

Unfortunately, there is a significant disconnect between expectation and reality in CX. In research carried out by Adweek and Accenture Interactive, they found that while 80% of brands believe they deliver a superior customer experience, only 8% of customers agree.

Brands have to go further and break down boundaries to meet customers’ expectations.

What are interactive customer experiences?

Customer experiences have changed. Brands can do more with customer data. From personalization to augmented reality, savvy shoppers know brands can deliver exceptional experiences.

As a result, CX is less about fulfilling wants and needs and more about meeting increased expectations. Customers compare experiences with diverse brands across different industries. That means that a shopper who has a positive experience buying plants online expects a similar experience when buying anything; groceries, takeaways, jewelry.

Interactive experiences will help you continuously meet these experiences. Interactive content personalizes customers’ interactions with your brands and boosts overall engagement.

Think online questionnaires, web-based calculators, or gamified content. It’s content that lets users personalize and participate in it.

In-email customer experiences

Interactive experiences can come in many formats, but in recent years, email marketing has made massive strides towards providing customers with unique experiences.

AMP for email

AMP for email is a powerful tool that revolutionizes customer experience by allowing you to build web-like experiences right in their inbox. It allows readers to interact with your email and choose their own path.

This innovative feature is an excellent asset when it comes to showcasing various aspects of your brand, products, or services. While offering captivating and personalized customer experiences, you can also guide users towards accomplishing a specific goal. However, you also want to drive users to complete a specific goal. Using an AMP-powered carousel feature, email recipients can flick through your highlighted products or campaign photographs before clicking on your email’s main CTA. For example, a ‘register your interest’ button.

Similarly, customers can discover their own pathways by choosing what content they’d like to see in your email campaign. You can later use these insights to deliver a more personalized experience throughout their journey.

Real-time personalization

To create long-lasting relationships with customers, it’s important to provide a hyper-personalized experience. Real-time personalization is a way to achieve this by using up-to-date customer data. Typically, pulling in a subscriber’s first name using data field is an example of this.You can also use location data to provide location-based dynamic content, to make the campaign super relevant to the customer. By segmenting data and getting to know your audience, you can create targeted content that resonates with them. 

GIFs and videos

GIFs and videos bring joy and delight to your email openers. They grab your subscribers’ attention immediately, keeping them engaged and scrolling down your marketing.

Embedded videos have a great engagement rate which ultimately drives more conversions. Animations and videos make communicating complex ideas simple. In a matter of seconds you can explain your latest product launches and business updates.

Advice from interactive experience experts

Odicci helps brands boost customer engagement and drive customer loyalty with interactive experiences such as quizzes, games, and product finders. These are the top tips on creating interactive and engaging emails from CEO Founder of Odicci, Jacques Prothon:

Creating emails that work: how to jazz up your email design

Just because customers are interested in receiving emails doesn’t mean that you’re keeping them engaged. Thankfully, there are many things you can do to ensure your customers are engaged with your emails. We’ve listed six ways to jazz up your email with interactive experiences.

Gamification: can you beat the high-score?

By introducing gamification into your customers’ experience, you can enhance their engagement and increase clicks and conversions. By asking people to play a game such as a memory game or a matchmaker you are tapping into the creative potential of your subscribers. Add an engaging moving gif design to drive clicks and enjoy your dwell time stats go through the roof as people will be engaged for a long time on your website. Thanks to this pinball game Virgin Holidays experienced a 47% click-through rate.

FOMO: are you one of our lucky winners?

By using elements of accomplishment, envy, ownership, and scarcity you are driving your audience towards clicks. When signing up, subscribers are expecting to receive some type of value, such as a coupon, free gift, or a contest entry. If you want subscribers to continue being engaged with your emails, keep providing something of value and make them interact online with an online scratch card or shake your phone to reveal a prize. Feelunique is driving subscribers to an interactive summer spin for a chance to win special discounts.

Enhance customer experience: swipe your preference

To enhance customer experience Central England Co-Op used an interactive “Tinderesque” swipe survey behind email to collect customer preferences and deliver more personalized emails. The swipe survey running behind an email marketing campaign drove a 28% click-through rate with 20% of surveyed customers sharing their preferences. The swipe survey is a great experience to boost clicks and drive engagement.

Rewarding customers: thank you, here is something for you

Subscribers are looking for positive experiences with brands. One of the most popular customer rewards in use by many brands is when a subscriber reaches a certain level of a loyalty program. Paperchase uses various experiences to reward members of their TreatMe Loyalty program, here is an example of Spin the Wheel on PayDay for TreatMe members only.

With loyalty you can also combine experiences with other moments such as birthdays, special moments in the year, or the launch of a product by giving exclusive access.

Customer Feedback: how did we do?

After a purchase or a delivered service use interactive experiences to ask for feedback and make that experience engaging, fun and above all easy. TeamSport used a Net Promoter Score survey to get feedback from customers after their races. Valuable information is collected for each track and customers can be rewarded afterwards.

Intrigue: what does the future hold?

Instead of engaging your audience with a standard marketing message, use email to create interest, curiosity or intrigue. Use a clever hook to invite subscribers to an interactive personality quiz or a product profiler and deliver a personalized brand interaction

A great way to deliver the message and drive clicks from your emails to these engaging experiences is to use moving GIFs that demonstrate how the reward, game, quiz or interactive promotion works in a few seconds. Using moving GIFs is the perfect way to show what engagement and reward(s) subscribers can expect. To get the best results you can create moving GIFs that are personalized or tailored to a segment, or audience.

Summary

As we know email marketing is one of the best tools to drive sales and convert leads. With interactive experiences it is possible to substantially increase your click-through rates and conversions whilst delivering great value to your audience. Don’t be intimidated these interactive experiences can be published in just a few clicks. Give it a try or contact Odicci for more information about our pre-built interactive experiences, with more than 80+ out-of-the-box experiences you won’t be disappointed.

We can no longer concentrate on experiences in silo. Email marketing is consistent in every customer journey. It’s there throughout every key touchpoint but it’s not good enough to focus on improving the email experience alone.

Modern customers are more impatient than ever. They want things now and they want it across every channel. For brands to meet and exceed these expectations, we need to dive deeper into the customer experience. What do customers want, what are their motivations, what potential pain points might get in the way, and how can you anticipate these to drive customer retention and loyalty?

What is the customer journey?

The customer journey tells the story of your customer’s experiences and interactions with your brand across all touchpoints. Traditionally customer journeys can be considered to have five key stages:

1. Reach: this is your chance to reach new customers while their deliberating, researching, and comparing products and propositions.
2. Acquisition: when customers land on your website or subscribe to your email marketing they’ve officially been acquired. This stage should be about building trust.
3. Conversion: after you’ve educated your new audience and customers are ready to convert you should be providing value and building a strong relationship.
4. Retention: to retain your newly converted customers you need to be showing customers that you care about how they feel and the benefits that come with their loyalty.
5. Loyalty: brand loyalty is of the utmost importance; loyal customers turn into brand advocates and that’s the name of the game.

Mapping the customer journey

Whether you’re an ecommerce, B2B, or non-profit business, how your customers interact with your brand will be unique. You need to consider all experiences customers have when interacting with you.

Mapping your customer journey can be particularly helpful to identify motivators and potential obstacles across customer touchpoints. While customer journey maps are often depicted as timelines, modern customer relationships are lifecycles.

The cyclical nature of lifecycles means there’s no end to the journey. Driving customer loyalty is the ultimate goal. Brands have to continually deliver relevant, timely, and personalized messages to retain customers. If you don’t, you’ll not remain at the top of customers’ minds and brand awareness will quickly fade.

Visualizing the customer journey will help you pinpoint key channels for each stage. When you know which channels to target, conversion and retention will be easier to optimize.

Why are customer journeys important?

Understanding your customer journey makes it easier to determine what customers expect from their experiences with your brand.

In marketing, emailing especially, expectations keep changing. From personalization to privacy, we’re in the middle of an irreversible revolution. Customers want personalized experiences, one-to-one conversations, relevant messages, and timely notifications. At the same time, they’re increasingly wary of brands, reluctant to hand over their personal information unless they get something in return.

The needs, wants, and motivations of your personas will vary according to the channel they prefer at each touchpoint. Customer journeys are also important for you to develop a customer-centric approach to your marketing. By understanding your customer’s journeys, you can tailor the experience to their needs.

The more you offer personalized, relevant marketing across your marketing channels, the happier your customer will be. And a happy customer is a loyal customer. Ultimately, you’ll find retaining customers and turning them into brand advocates far easier.

How to improve the customer journey

Maintaining good marketing results requires continuous optimization. As customer expectations adapt, so must your strategy. You should be regularly reviewing your customer journey to ensure you’re providing customers with the most seamless experience possible.

Stage 1: reach

To effectively target your audience, it’s important to collect customer data such as zero-party data. This is information customers willingly and intentionally share with you. It’ll help you build personas for your audience that can be used to create targeted ads on Google and social media.

Ensuring you’re reaching the right people will provide you with a much stronger list of engaged contacts. But, remember, you should only be collecting necessary customer data and you shouldn’t be collecting any information you don’t need to use.

Stage 2: acquisition

You don’t want to lose a newly acquired customer by sending them irrelevant messages. 37% of customers are willing to unsubscribe from brands sending them impersonal and generic email marketing.

Ask customers what they want to hear. Or, better yet, offer a self-service content model where your subscribers can pick and choose what subjects they hear from you about. Irrelevant messaging will only make customers lose trust in your brand, so avoid it as much as you can.

Stage 3: conversion

Conversion is the point where marketing and customer service come together. Both departments should be working in tandem to ensure customers have as smooth an experience as possible.

Channels such as live chat can help remove blockers on the path to purchase, but can also be used as a data collection tool. You can discover areas on your website that need improving or find out frequently asked questions about your products or services.

By collecting customer data along the way, you can create engaging and delightful post-chat email automations to improve overall experiences and help build strong, long-lasting relationships with your new customer.

Stage 4: retention

This is the stage where your customer data really takes on a life of its own. You should only be collecting data that you intend to use to personalize experiences and post-purchase is where you should be focusing.

Using explicitly expressed interest as well as purchase history data you can deliver personalized product recommendations or content to keep customers engage and retain them for longer. You can also team zero-party data with eRFM or lead scoring to create distinct pathways for highly specific and targeted customer segments.

By using customer data to personalize your marketing messages and offers, you can create a more relevant customer experience that is more likely to drive conversions and build customer loyalty.  

Stage 4: loyalty

The loyalty stage is all about making the customer feel valued. By optimizing the earlier stages in the customer journey you’ve already earned their trust, demonstrating your commitment to using customer data appropriately and that you value customers’ privacy. Now you need to level up the relationship.

Inviting loyal customers to join review panels or loyalty programs can create even stronger bonds with your customer. It will help them feel more invested in your brand giving them a reason to stick around and continue to choose you over your competitors.

Whether you’re a consumer brand actively working on capturing Gen Z’s attention, or a B2B business planning new ways to reach your decision-makers audience – we’re all thinking about how we will stay relevant.

The Dotdigital platform changes with you and your audience

We mean it when we say our platform is constantly evolving. At Dotdigital we typically have four big product launches a year. Each launch brings new functionality or improvements to much-loved existing features.

We work closely with customers and analyze market trends to determine what updates will take your marketing game to the next level (and beyond your competition). In addition, our team is always looking for ways to integrate with other technologies to make your martech stack even more powerful.

Want to know what we’re working on next? We have a public roadmap where you can even submit your own ideas (just click on the tab on the right side of the page). You can also sign up to be the first to hear about product updates, free resources, and other news here.

Now, let’s look at what rules we’re applying and what you can do within Dotdigital today to get ready.

Rule #1: Integrate your martech stack and bring all your data into one place

Integrating your martech stack and bringing all your customer data into one place is important for effective marketing. Every marketer can relate when I say it can take a lot of different tools to power the engine we call our marketing team. Depending on what works for your business you might be using a loyalty platform, a PowerBI tool, or a prospecting tool in addition to your main marketing platform.

The key is bringing it all together. Integrating your martech stack improves efficiency and allows you to get the most out of each technology – and it helps you save money.

New to the Dotdigital integration hub

In 2022, we expanded our new self-serve integration offering with some much-requested partners. In just a few clicks, you can integrate Dotdigital with Zendesk Sell, Google Sheets, Eventbrite, ZoomWebinar, Typeform, Trustpilot, and more. So whether you’re trying to better sync up with your sales team, or access your reporting data in Google Data Studio, we’ve got the integration for you.

Cross-account analytics for all your entire marketing function

For years, Dotdigital has been known to be a great fit for complex, global companies and our platform is adaptable to seamlessly integrate into any martech stack. Multiple business divisions, regions, or brands can easily be managed with our parent- and child-account setup.

Plus, with multi-language and multi-currency support, each account can be tailored to fit the team’s needs. Account analytics brings all of the data from your global marketing function into one dashboard. See which of your teams are performing best, use actionable insights to foster a cross-team learning culture, and easily track against business and growth objectives.

(Account analytics is also available for customers using a single Dotdigital account).

Rule #2: Know your customer like you know yourself

That’s a big statement, isn’t it? But for marketers, that’s what it’s all about. Understanding your audience to the point that you don’t have to think about when and what they’ll purchase next, or what you need to say for them to download that piece of content.

To go into this detail at scale is only possible when you have a platform to bring the pieces together. To help you on this mission, we’ve recently released some major updates to Dotdigital. 

Lookalike segments in your single customer view

Your single customer view (SCV) is where you dive into an individual customer’s story. You learn their engagement patterns and see persona characteristics at a glance. Besides using SCV to better understand your audience, we can now turn an individual customer into a marketing persona ready to use in your martech stack strategy. Create a segment that automatically pulls together all contacts who look, behave, and buy like the one you’re looking at.

Analytics for every address book

When you’ve already decided who you’re sending a campaign to and are working on getting the message just right, address book & segment analytics are ready to help on the job. New in 2022, address book analytics give you quick insights into your audience’s engagement, web, and commerce behavior. Use this knowledge to optimize the content in your campaign and ensure every message lands.

User-generated content in your campaigns

Your customers of today and tomorrow don’t shy away from putting time into researching a company before deciding to give it their time, money, or even attention. In fact, it’s now thoroughly ingrained in their decision-making process. This makes putting real customer reviews and user-generated content front and center in your marketing more important than ever. Dotdigital lets you pull your latest customer reviews into any campaign with integrations such as REVIEWS.io, Trustpilot, or Yotpo.

Rule #3: Meet your audience where they are

Forrester predicts that this year, up to 20% of your customers might be at risk. This a scary statistic for any marketer, but also one that can motivate us to plan ahead. We expect that tried-and-true marketing channels will take the front seat when creating customer retention strategies. At the same time, we want to use lead generation and retargeting more efficiently to address new audiences and future-proof our pipeline.

Lead generation with Facebook and TikTok

Acquiring future customers of the next generation is top of mind for consumer and B2B brands alike. With a new Facebook Lead ads integration, Dotdigital customers can expand their addressable marketing audience and instantly enroll new contacts into conversion-driving marketing programs. Combine this with a Zapier integration to TikTok Lead Generation and you’re all set for the next consumer wave.

Improved Facebook and Google audiences builder

Too many marketers lose money to the big ad networks without seeing any return. Why? Because they haven’t optimized it to only retarget customers who are yet to convert. With the latest Dotdigital update you’ll never have to worry about spending money where it’s no longer needed.

Not-to-be-missed notifications

There are few automations that drive as much revenue as one that gets triggered by explicit customer purchase intent. Abandoned cart campaigns are a well-established and unconquered winner here, a staple in every commerce marketer’s plan. (If you’re not on the AC train yet, I suggest you get on it, soon.)

Next up on the winner’s podium are product notifications set by the customer themselves. In 2022, we launched back-in-stock messages for our Shopify customers. With a customizable template that goes live on your storefront in minutes, you’ll never miss another purchase intent.

Advanced revenue attribution

If there’s one thing we as marketers have in common, it’s the need to demonstrate the value our efforts have brought to the business. Advanced revenue attribution in Dotdigital helps you do just that. Multi-touch attribution assigns credit to each campaign in a customer’s journey.

You’ll not only get a better understanding of what touchpoints to improve and where to focus your time, but you’ll also be able to show how the full marketing lifecycle generates revenue for your company.

No doubt the new year will bring new challenges and surprises, but with the right technology and an agile mindset, we’re ready for it. All the items covered in this blog are ready to use today and integrating Dodigital into your martech stack will help you take your marketing game to the next level. Head to the what’s new page to read more about our releases, or go straight to the help center and follow the steps to start implementing the tactics now.

As a result, it would be safe to assume that marketing budgets are reflecting this opportunity. Unfortunately, not. Marketing budgets have shrunk as businesses tighten their purse strings. The average share of a company’s revenue that’s spent on marketing declined to just over 6% in 2021. 

What is customer retention?

Customer retention is an important part of any successful business strategy. It involves building and maintaining positive relationships with your existing customers to keep them coming back. 

What is customer acquisition?

Customer acquisition is the process of acquiring new customers for your company. The goal of customer acquisition is to convert your customers into paying customers who will generate revenue for your company.

Customer acquisition or customer retention?

The rise of marketing opportunities online may make it feel like acquiring new customers and growing your marketing database is the answer to business growth. If there are more customers online looking to discover new brands, then you have a better chance of converting them, right? Not necessarily.  

While the acquisition is still a big priority for a lot of brands, competition is rife. You’re not the only brand to see the revenue opportunities offered by the new increased activity online. Brands like Google, Facebook, and TikTok want to keep users on their channels and clicking on revenue-generating paid ads rather than surfacing new brands organically.  

That means big brands with bigger budgets are the ones succeeding in converting customers. 

It’s also important to note that customer acquisition can be more costly and time-consuming than customer retention – so it’s good to focus on both strategies simultaneously.

The benefits of customer retention

Investing in customer retention is a smart move for any company looking to achieve long-term growth and success. Improving your customer retention has many benefits: 

Reduces rising customer acquisition costs

Research carried out by Profitwell found that customer acquisition costs (CAC) had increased by 60% in the half-decade from 2014 to 2019.  

During the recent pandemic, when online demand for goods first surged, ecommerce giants like Amazon and supermarkets ramped up their tactics, investing massively in paid search and delivery fulfillment. With 74% of online searches starting on Amazon nowadays, it’s been made nearly impossible for brands to compete with these industry leaders for new customer acquisitions.  

Lowers churn rate

When customers leave because they’re unhappy with their experience, it costs businesses money each time they lose one — not only because they have less revenue coming in but also because they have to spend money on marketing campaigns aimed at acquiring new leads (which usually don’t work as well as retaining existing ones).

How to improve customer retention

To retain customers, marketers need to shift their focus from acquisition to retention. The most effective way to do this is by using customer data. Customer data can be used for personalization, improving customer experience, and making data-driven decisions.

Harness your customer data to segment

Your data literally holds all the answers. Want to set your marketing team’s KPIs clearly? Check out your data. Want to know what products or services to develop? Your data will tell you. Want to know which customers are of the highest value? The answer is in your data.  

You can calculate your customer lifetime value (CLV) to help you increase sales and profit as well as boost customer loyalty. It can help identify segments that will generate the most revenue over time, enabling you to justify spending on your marketing campaigns. 

Thankfully, improved data capture, understanding of the importance of first-party data, and better access to predictive analytics tools mean that CLV can be forecast with greater accuracy.  

A great example of this is Dotdigital’s RFM customer modeling tool. By pulling in customer data from across your marketing stack, it intuitively groups customers based on the recency, frequency, and monetary value of their interactions with you. You can then build segments to target high-value and loyal customers or even customers who need nurturing.  

The end goal is to never let a customer go after you have invested in their initial acquisition.  

Whether through CLV, RFM, lead scoring, or NPS, you need to harness your customer data to target the right customer with the right message at the most optimal stage of their journey.  

Personalize your marketing for memorable experiences

Personalization is about more than addressing your email subscribers by their first names. Truly personalized messages and content take user behavior as they interact across your digital touchpoints into account, as do user preferences such as specific product recommendations, choices, and interests. 

This ensures that customers are seeing deals, promotions, and content that is relevant to them, on the channels, and at the frequency, they want to see it.  

Recent research found that customers are 80% more likely to make repeat purchases when brands create personalized experiences. These experiences can be anything from relevant product recommendations, to location-based updates. Overall, personalized communication on your website or in your email marketing campaigns can increase brand loyalty —particularly among millennials—by around 28%.  

Personalized experiences help you nurture your customer relationship by being useful, informative, and relevant to their specific stage in the journey. This will keep customers returning to your brand time and time again, leading to higher retention rates.

The long-term value of customer retention

Marketers must understand the long-term value of customer retention. Nurturing your existing customers is just as vital to your business’ success as acquiring new ones. Not only is it cost-effective, but the likelihood of converting an existing customer is 60–70%, whereas you only have a 5-20% chance of converting new prospects. 

The results will not be immediate, unlike measuring the growth of your marketing list. You need to ask yourself how you can improve the customer experience to keep customers coming back and turning into brand advocates. 

Calculating and tracking CLV and customer behavior will help you identify high-value segments and where you need to direct your marketing resources. In turn, this will ensure you’re getting a higher ROI for your marketing campaigns. Additionally, ongoing data analysis can help you identify trends and set clear KPIs for your marketing team.

Customers want and value personalized experiences. Using your customer data and intent signals, you can segment and target existing customers with experiences tailored to their needs and desires. With a strong core customer base of loyal customers, you will ultimately see customer acquisition rates improve, as they turn into brand advocates and spread the word about your business.