The four main points on the path to consumer-first marketing

Understand the data, listen, act, and analyze to build marketing initiatives your team loves to manage and your consumers love to experience.

We all want to feel like we’re interacting with individuals and organizations that understand our needs and wants.

Showing this understanding for consumers delivered via messages that are contextual is a bit more complex, and the only way to convey it is with actionable data.

Marketers need a strategic plan, automated processes, and analytics to assess cause and effect, while continuing to put consumers first to demonstrate this understanding.

Let’s break down the four main points on the path to consumer-first marketing that keeps the love alive:

Understand

Data drives experiences and creates opportunities to demonstrate that you care about consumers

This quick list represents many opportunities to engage and build stronger relationships, with messaging that shows consumers you know them.

Birthdate
Anniversary
Shopping History
Web Engagement History
Social Activity and Sentiment
Current and Home Location
Timing
Product Availability or Replenishment
Device Preference
Propensities – Deeper Analytics
Anything and everything — Hungry? Thirsty? Need an umbrella? Thinking about purchasing new golf clubs?

Understand what consumers are interested in and basic demographic information to offer the right suggestions at the right time.

Listen

Listening as a marketing organization equates to taking the time to understand consumer profiles, tune in to social media commentary, evaluate feedback from key customer interactions, and gather data points across every interaction (from marketing to customer service).

This process is essential to enable an understanding of new communication opportunities across the lifecycle. And it’s key to addressing unique consumer situations at any point in time.

Listening is essential to knowing the consumer and marketers must put this at the core of their ongoing efforts.

Act

Map out strategies to address the data points that are available. And (Read more...) new messaging across channels to determine the collective impact on engagement.

Where there are data gaps or latency, build out plans to access and activate data as soon as possible. If your organization isn’t doing this yet, then get started to surpass your competition.

Here are some recent examples of marketers showing consumers the love:

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) displays local weather and activities that are of value to consumers.
Anthropologie offers a pre-shopping opportunity for mobile app users to entice customers to purchase certain signature pieces early.
Marriott takes note of anniversaries, and requests an informational update to keep data current.
TripAdvisor provides the scoop on trending Seattle travelers’ wish lists!

Analyze

Making informed decisions relies on the analysis of what’s been done previously, how well it worked, and what was learned.

The next step is building future plans based on that analysis. Embrace the data and get into an ongoing cycle of testing, learning, and optimizing to build out marketing initiatives your team loves to manage and your consumers love to experience.

In conclusion…

As email and cross-channel marketers, it’s time to strive for consumer-first experiences to demonstrate the love.

What is your organization doing to show consumers more love in 2016?

Catherine Magoffin is Director of Strategic Services at Selligent

The four main points on the path to consumer-first marketing

Understand

Listen

Act

Analyze

In conclusion…

Related reading