Marketing
The marketer-consumer personalization disconnect
Not only do retailers and brand struggle to foster personalized experiences, they also struggle to understand customers well enough to know they’re missing the mark.
April 4, 2023 by Jon Reily — EVP Commerce & Loyalty, Bounteous
Nearly three out of four marketers think their organization excels at personalization, but only 34% of consumers think the same, according to a March 2022 report by Sailthru. In other words, not only do organizations struggle to foster personalized experiences, but they also struggle to understand their customers well enough to know they're missing the mark.
This disconnect emerges from what we might call the commerce chasm, or the gap between how customers behave and an organization's ability to understand why. Understanding the reasoning behind customer behavior is essential to anticipating how customers will behave in the future, allowing businesses to better serve them.
Three steps marketers can take to close the commerce chasm and offer more effective personalized experiences include showing customers you don't just know but understand them, asking customers how you can help, and creating and following a plan instead of chasing shiny objects. These principles apply to both B2B and B2C.
Don't just know your customers; Show you understand them
Consider a businesswoman who flies often for work. She might take four flights each month with the same airline, and over time, the airline will learn a lot about her: whether she checks bags, what she orders on the flight, and personal information that can streamline check-ins, for example.
A common step that brands fail to make is to go from knowing all this about a customer to using that information to show the customer that the brand understands her. For example, the brand might clear the easy bar of automatically filling in the customer's credit card information. But most brands won't go a step further by sending an email before the flight to allow the customer to pay for drinks before travel — or to spare her that email if she never orders non-complimentary in-flight beverages.
Some marketers might see a detail like this and regard it as minor. But these are the touches that make a regular customer happy to repeatedly patronize a business — or, if bungled, that make the customer wonder why they are so loyal to a brand that doesn't understand them.
This is not just a B2C problem, either. The same applies, for example, to an auto parts distributor that receives regular orders from auto manufacturers or retailers. Behind the business placing large, regular orders is a person who, like an airline traveler, has grown accustomed to personalized, digital service. Anticipating that person's needs is the difference between churn and retention.
Ask your customers how you can help
Many marketers rightly perceive a paradox in personalization: 53% of consumers say they want personalized service, but half also say protecting their data is more important than personalization. This challenge is only intensifying with privacy changes from platforms like Google and Apple as well as proliferating data privacy regulations.
Marketers can tackle this challenge by building a zero-party data strategy premised on regularly asking the customer for their preferences and explaining that such information is vital to providing a superior experience. Customers don't appreciate the perception that a brand is covertly collecting their data. But many are happy to leave reviews or tell a brand how to better serve them. Marketers should cater to customers' desire for better service by organically integrating data collection into the customer experience in a way that is self-evidently helpful.
Consider an attire retailer. The retailer can ask consumers about their preferences when they first navigate to the site to help them find items, after checkout to better serve them next time, and after an item has been delivered or after the shopper has had the item for a week to offer complementary products or facilitate an exchange if necessary. These are intuitive ways to collect feedback that are unlikely to come across as creepy, and by collecting this information, brands will better be able to fuel the customer-driven personalization that closes the commerce chasm.
Follow a plan, not shiny objects
Often, where B2B and B2C, but especially B2C, marketers go wrong is in collecting data and acting on it without integrating it into a holistic strategy of continuous and collaborative innovation. The saying of the day is that data is the new oil. But data lends itself to subjective interpretation, and if interpreted without a broader plan in mind, data can lead to impractical decisions.
Ostensibly data-driven initiatives often come about like this: An analytics person or marketer comes across an intriguing data point, such as the pronounced efficacy of Pinterest ads with shoppers ages 20 to 35. The company then devotes resources to Pinterest ads, buoyed by the data-driven conviction that Pinterest campaigns will hit performance KPIs.
While possibly effective in isolation, this isn't necessarily the most strategic use of time or money. Instead of chasing individual platforms or data points, brands should have an ongoing sense of their digital priorities, how best to reach customers, and how much each move matters in the broader picture of customer satisfaction.
The commerce chasm persists in large part because brands get mired in tactics instead of building and executing long-term strategies. The way to rise above tactics is to start with strategy, and effective strategy emerges from a holistic view of customers. By asking customers how they can help, showing customers the brand not just knows but understands them, and following a plan, brands can create cycles of innovation that foster happy customers — and the stronger growth they bring.
