A survey by Forbes Insights and SAS concluded that 90% of marketing executives use customer data analytics to improve overall customer experience. It is fair to say that access to customer data is the key to a personalized customer experience. Data helps in pointing out customers’ likes and dislikes, demographics, and preferred products. But that’s just scratching the surface.
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of marketers still struggle to deliver personalized experiences to their customers. That’s because just data alone is not enough. Marketers need the right data and insights to understand what’s working and what’s not, and sometimes having too much of the wrong data – especially if it’s disconnected or siloed data – does more harm than good. When predicting customers’ next steps, they need the right insights.
Siloed Data Leads to Fragmented Customer Experiences
Having the means to collect relevant data and insights should be a priority for marketers. Martech tools have evolved considerably, but if your data lives across different tools, it is challenging to understand your audiences and map the right customer experience based on their preferences and behaviors. While data can indicate your customer’s affinities, insights will predict their journeys’ next steps so you can offer hyper-personalized experiences based on the changing demands.
MoEngage’s report, The State of Insights-led Engagement in North America Report 2022, found that around 40% of the 2,000 North American marketers that were surveyed manage customer engagement operations by enabling marketing, email, social and mobile teams to operate as independent teams. These numbers indicate how various functions work in silos, resulting in scattered data with no focus on insights and often leading to disjointed customer experiences.
How do you manage customer engagement resources and operations?
Lack of Real-time Data: A Pressing Challenge for Marketers
For almost 34% of respondents across industries, organizational roles, and sizes, lack of real-time analytics is the biggest customer engagement challenge. This is because marketers depend on campaign-based metrics that offer short-term campaign performance without understanding which customer segments have engaged and which haven’t. Hence, marketers miss the mark on getting customer insights that predict customers’ probability to purchase, re-purchase or churn and quickly pivot.
Using the Right Martech Stack
Marketers leverage a host of Martech solutions to further their customer engagement goals today. For 23.1% of marketers in North America, a customer relationship management platform remains the most preferred solution. Almost 60% of marketers use a mix of customer data platforms, marketing automation platforms, and customer analytics platforms.
It is to be noted that while the other platforms help gain a fair understanding of customers, multichannel customer engagement platforms (CEPs) provide a microscopic, insights-driven, and holistic view. They allow you to build a unified customer profile and drive a personalized, omnichannel experience for your customers.
The Need for Insights-led Engagement
The above insights indicate how marketers fixate on a campaign-led approach. The engagement campaigns are based on a hunch of what customers are looking for, which may not always show the full picture. On the other hand, an insights-led engagement approach focuses on your customers first. It offers a more relevant experience for your customers by considering their behavior, buying patterns, preferred channel, time, and communication frequency to render real-time actionable insights that you can build off of as a marketer. Using a multichannel CEP, marketers can analyze data at scale across channels and predict customer behavior to create customer-centric campaigns that are individualized preferences at that moment in time.
Your Checklist for Implementing an Insights-led Engagement Approach
✔Be More Customer-Centric
Prioritize engagement based on each individual’s unique journey to roll out data-driven customer-focused campaigns.
✔Eliminate Internal Data Siloes
Preserve data integrity and reduce cross-functional discrepancies to improve efficiency and productivity at the organization level.
✔Unify Data Across Multichannel CEPs
Integrate your Martech stack for a holistic view of customers and their journeys with multichannel CEPs.
✔Hyper-personalize Customer Experiences
Tailor content based on individual customer interests, previous purchases, preferred channels, and communication frequency.
Conclusion
A disconnected customer experience stems from platform capability limitations, siloed data, and depersonalized communication followed by a campaign-centric approach. An insights-led approach would allow marketers to be guided by insights to build an effective customer engagement strategy, putting customers first.
So, what’s stopping you? Start your insights-led customer engagement journey today. Learn how MoEngage can help by contacting us for a demo.
About MoEngage
MoEngage is an insights-led customer engagement platform trusted by more than 1,200 global consumer brands such as Ally Financial, McAfee, Flipkart, Domino’s, Nestle, Deutsche Telekom, OYO, and more. MoEngage empowers marketers and product owners with insights into customer behavior and the ability to act on those insights to engage customers across the web, mobile, email, social, and messaging channels. Consumer brands across 35 countries use MoEngage to power digital experiences for over 1 billion customers every month. With offices in ten countries, MoEngage is backed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, B Capital, Steadview Capital, Multiples Private Equity, Eight Roads, F-Prime Capital, Matrix Partners, Ventureast, and Helion Ventures.