As Consumers, We Reward the Brands We Like With Activity
Vijay: “That has become a currency for brands to grow, that has become a currency for marketers to harvest. And so, there is a very important shift in how we think about how brands grow. And as a result, companies and brands that get their customers to be more active, drive growth.”
More Active Customers Drive More Growth
In the current landscape described by Vijay, it doesn’t matter if you are a social media network or a publication that’s monetizing through ads or a subscription company, it’s still about active consumers. And this is the only way to drive a brand forward.
Vijay: “Whether you are tomorrow’s bank, whether you are tomorrow’s automobile provider, whether you are a consumable, whatever you are, you really have to grow your brand through active customer growth.”
What is an Active Customer?
Vijay defined the active consumer as someone who is frequent, recent, and loyal, not episodic and transactional. Nonetheless, active consumers immerse themselves in the brand experience and connect with the brand in multiple and different touchpoints. Active customers are people who have high velocity and a wide breadth of activity. They engage with the brand often and also with multiple products and offers of the brand. They universally consume the brand across all devices and touchpoints.
Tomorrows Marketers Will Focus on Driving Active Customer Growth
And this idea draws the concept of the activation marketer. In order to define an activation marketer, Vijay talked about what activation marketers do differently compared to other marketers.
Activation Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing is all about the channel while activation marketing is about the experience.
Vijay: “If you have to make customers more active, you have to start by understanding who they are, you have to start by understanding where they are in their customer journey, what kind of experiences have they had, and use that understanding to drive the next best experience.”
Building better customer experiences is only possible when you place your customer at the center — here are some key differences that characterize the new approach:
- Using customer data to optimize experience instead of using marketing data to optimize channels
- Instead of using a one size fits all approach and group people into segments, we need to use a different paradigm that uses technologies like AI in order to be more
relevant
- Once you’ve made a decision on how to engage a customer, you want to adopt a distribution model of communicating which is not siloed. A new model that is unified, connected, and where you can orchestrate the entire customer experience.
How can Blueshift help activation marketers?
Vijay: “We want to help enable the next generation of marketers to start driving that connected, intelligent customer experience.”
How? By unified data and engagement. Activation Marketers need a SmartHub CDP to help them unify data.
Blueshift Announcements
Vijay also made some big announcements revealing some of Blueshift’s future plans.
- Introducing the Blueshift App Store – With the App Store, Blueshift is bringing together a number of connected services that can influence customer activity. And more importantly, it will also let you publish custom apps that will enable your team to extend the customer journey across any marketing channel.
- Interest Alerts – Activation marketers need to activate at the moments that matter. Interest Alerts makes launching push notifications or other types of communications based on something that your customer is interested in simple and flexible.
- A Community of Activation Marketers – This is maybe one of the most exciting announcements shared at Engage21! When it comes to getting the most from the Blueshift platform, our users are a vast pool of knowledge, but we haven’t had a central place to share tips, ask questions, and connect. Until now! In the coming weeks, Blueshift is launching an entirely new community website where you’ll be able to learn from and connect with top marketers.
- Blueshift Academy – Another exciting announcement is the expansion of Blueshift Academy! This is our free, online training resource where all marketers, not just Blueshift customers, can invest in themselves and their careers by staying up to date on the latest trends in data activation, customer experience, omnichannel marketing, and more. We already have a great collection of marketing certification courses available, but this month we will be launching a fantastic new course focused on mobile. Check all the courses available here!
