Conference Recap: How to Create Continuous Customer Engagement

A shift in customer expectations

Did you know that customers share more data with companies now than they ever have before? In fact, customers share over 2.5 quintillion bytes (who knew they made numbers that large) of data every single day. And the rate at which new data is being created is rapidly increasing, with most of the world’s data created in just the last two years.

Customers leave behind this staggering amount of data through both explicit interactions, like completing a profile and entering their personal information, or through implicit interactions like opening an email or favoriting an item. All of those actions leave behind a trail of insights and preferences that marketers can use to their benefit. But, recently there has been a rise in privacy data privacy concerns. A recent study by Deloitte found that 81% of US consumers feel that they have lost control over the way their personal data is collected and used.

But why is that? Research has shown that the majority of consumers feel as though the personal data they share is used to benefit the company, rather than the end consumer — which presents a huge challenge of dismantling distrust. It’s not all doom and gloom though, the most consumers also agree that they’d be willing to share more of their personal data if it is being used to enrich their brand experience and provide certain perks.

Long story short? Consumers won’t remain loyal to brands that ask for a ton of personal information and give nothing in return.

Connected data is the key to delivering the experiences customers want

It’s not as if marketers want to be “all take” and “no give” — most marketers are striving to make better use of their data. Disconnected tech, data silos, and legacy systems are often what stand in the way of using your customer data to its full potential. What marketers need is a CDP (Customer Data Platform) to transform the vast amounts of data you receive into personalized customer experiences.

“In 2011 my team and I had this crazy thought: what if we aggregated our siloed data and organized it customer by customer in order to send more personalized emails. For us, it was a large departure from our typical batch and blast messaging and so it took 5 months to get up and running. The first year grew attributable revenue by 60% year-over-year. The second year? 50% growth. The third year? 45% growth. That growth rate year-over-year was unheard of!” Josh Francia

As amazing as the growth this change brought was, the source of revenue was even more interesting.

“Our revenue growth wasn’t coming from where you’d expect. It was coming from our existing customers. Our revenue contribution from our existing customers went from less than 5% to almost 20% in just a couple of years. We had unlocked our first-party data by making it accessible to the marketing and product and other teams.” Josh Francia

At that time, this way of organizing data and processing marketing decisions didn’t have a name, but now the process of unifying data to unlock its full potential is considered a main tenant of the Customer Data Platform. And now, the basic concept of the CDP has been enhanced by developments in the data science world with technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). These technologies, in combination with customer data, can better help marketers understand the Who, What, Where, and When of marketing to make your messages as effective as possible.

Want to learn more? Watch the full webinar on-demand or talk to a SmartHub CDP expert to learn how Blueshift can help you.