It’s all too easy to view today’s consumers as internet-savvy, mobile-enabled data miners who pounce on whichever store or brand offers the best deal. Brand loyalty is perceived by many to be a vanishing commodity.
In response, many companies have ramped up their content delivery, expecting that the more interaction and information they provide, the better their chances of holding onto these increasingly distracted and disloyal customers. But for many consumers, a rising tide of marketing messages is far from empowering, conversely it becomes overwhelming. Marketers risk pushing customers away from their brand, with what can come across as being relentless and often ill-conceived efforts to engage.
Today there is an app for practically anything and almost every enterprise seems to have one. Startlingly few are truly successful at building brand loyalty though. Customers need to find content pushed to them of real value. Many have uninstalled an app when the content came too thick and too fast or worst of all, provided limited value. Today’s consumer is empowered, and they demand relevance. To that I say, seller beware.
Finding the right level of engagement
At the other end of the engagement scale are organizations who converse with their clients far too little, perhaps sending just a notification or two of an upcoming sale as a holiday approaches. Engaged customers are any company’s biggest asset and given it is customers who make or break a business, we all need to do everything possible to keep them engaged at all times. It’s like walking a tightrope though, a real tough act.
In a perfect world, the quality and innovation of any brand’s goods or services would carry the company but the curveball to this is us. Humans. Many of you will have heard of Dale Carnegie. He was a pioneer in the psychology of the successful personality and he perhaps framed it best when he wrote, “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion…”
Connecting customer experience and engagement
Customer experience (CX) and engagement are inseparable bedfellows given that great engagement stems from a satisfying experience. But CX and engagement are also linked to loyalty, as loyalty stems from how the customer emotionally identifies with a brand. Research by Gallup shows that a fully engaged customer represents a 23% higher premium in relationship growth, revenue, and profitability.
Here at Mitto, we know how important relationship ‘stickiness’ is for our own business – how likely our customers might be to follow through on an intended purchase, use our services repeatedly and recommend them to others. Mitto has found that the single biggest driver of stickiness is decision simplicity. We make it as easy and fast as possible for consumers to gather, understand, and navigate information about our brand and solutions, weighing their purchase options. All companies should.
2020 is proving to be the most difficult year in living memory for many of our enterprise clients. We are witnessing how important it is for them to engage with as many of their customers as possible.
While Mitto’s solutions bring together so many great digital channels in one easy to digest way, at the end of the day, SMS has received renewed vigor thanks to its ubiquity and the unparalleled engagement it drives.
The messages brands need to convey right now need to be simple and given how easy it is to interconnect with us, we let any brand focus on the core stuff that matters to their client base. We make it happen by keeping it simple. Always.
