We have all felt the pain of too much “noise,” from overflowing personal and professional inboxes, to unceasing and unwanted spam calls. Even traditional means like postcards, flyers, and brochures add to items we recycle, or in a fit of pique simply throw away.
But think about the consumer-based emails, for example, that you do read, or even look forward to getting. Maybe it’s a clothing brand, or a newsletter from your favorite outdoor gear store. We all have brands we like and return to again and again. Why do we keep going back for more? Because we feel a loyalty toward the brand, and there’s a good chance that the company behind the outreach does a good job of communicating with us — where we like being communicated with.
Companies experiencing successful efforts to grow their customer audiences and inspire loyalty don’t possess a mysterious alchemy — they know and act on something powerful: “Consumers with strong emotional connections to retailers will visit their stores 32 percent more often and spend 46 percent more money than those without emotional bonds.”
How do you build emotional connections with your target audience? The answer is: personalizing communications so those on the receiving end believe you are speaking directly to them. More than that, customers now expect you to up your game when it comes to how you communicate with them.
Now, what works for one company won’t necessarily work for another — finding the right omnichannel combination of personalization outreach efforts takes trial and error, but once you discover the right marketing mix, you can expect to see increasing engagement and conversion rates. Typically, this takes time and money to stumble on the set of actions and messages that move the needle. However, at Wrench, we believe that AI is a big reason why multivariate testing will become a thing of the past (more on that in a bit).
OK, so customers expect personalization, but what are some other best practices to keep in mind?
– Put some time into figuring out the messaging that opens emails, and increases your click to open, click through rates, and calls to action.
– Keep it short and sweet — people have short attention spans and will likely read whatever you send them on their phones.
– A special program, like a loyalty program, can help you quickly establish relationships with a large audience, and nurture those relationships over time — particularly as you collect data from their activities.
The main point here is that traditional marketing programs won’t yield the same results, and your competition has only gotten more fierce. You have less time to engage and convert, because in your absence someone else will.
At Wrench, we did our fair share of A/B testing to see what worked best, and then used our learnings (and a larger budget) to launch a campaign. But we kept thinking: there’s got to be a better way. So we built an AI-driven platform that works with any CRM to take a deep dive on your contact data. It pulls information on top line messaging that is highly likely to resonate, and the best way to reach prospects. For more information, drop us a line, or stay in touch — we’ll be posting to the blog on a regular basis.
