Does your marketing need more (customer) empathy?

Customer empathy is about understanding who your customers are, their pains and needs and what motivates them – THEN delivering campaigns and experiences that meet those needs.

It’s empathy that allows us to be open to another person’s point of view, feelings and considering these when we make decisions. Sometimes when people think about automation, even marketing automation, it can seem very removed from this human-to-human connection, but really that’s at the heart of successful customer activation.

Forrester’s 2014 CX study found that emotion “has a bigger influence on customer loyalty” than cognitive or logical factors. Whilst reports by both Forrester and Temkin Group have shown the link between improvements in customer satisfaction and company revenue.

SO HOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS ‘ON A DEEPER LEVEL’?

You need to be listening: It can be really easy to be in broadcast mode and forget to listen (in email, in everyday life, even with your family). Take time with each campaign to think about what you’ll find out about your subscribers and how you’ll use that information to improve the next campaign. The data you capture can refine your targeting criteria or enhance the personalisation in your messages.

You need to be asking: Surveys are a fantastic and often undervalued tool in the marketer’s toolbox – particularly when you use them to enrich the data you hold. What subscribers are willing to share with you comes down to trust, yet most companies will only ask subscribers about themselves at the very beginning of the relationship when trust is at its lowest. Think about your customer’s journey with you and identify more opportunities to ask them questions and learn about them.

You need to be acting: Test and iterate using what you learn about your subscribers to see how their preferences really translate into actions. Rich data about your subscribers only has true value when you use it to activate your customers and your marketing.

GET TO GRIPS WITH YOUR DATA

If you want to avoid irrelevant marketing messages and disjointed customer journeys then adopt a 360° view of your customers. Few things stand in the way of delivering an exceptional customer experience more than silo databases!

A clean, marketing-focused data model enables you to capture that valuable targeting information and transform it (quickly and simply) into content that your customers will welcome.

CREATE PERSONALISED EXPERIENCES

Personalized emails have been shown to deliver 6x higher transactional rates than non-personalized emails (Marketing Profs) – which is plenty of motivation to move away from ‘one size fits all’ content. It doesn’t just stop at email though, the uplift from personalisation goes across all marketing channels and your website too.

Consumers are calling for more personalised relationships with brands too. Research by personalisation partner, Fresh Relevance, revealed nearly half of shoppers (41%) would drop a retailer who sends irrelevant offers. By suggesting the right product to the right customer at the right time, marketers can increase their conversion rates and guarantee campaign performance.

So, when you are planning a campaign, remember to use the information subscribers have given you and inject it into your messages. Personalisation doesn’t have to just be about the content though. Target key moments in a subscriber’s lifecycle, such as 1-year since they subscribed or their first Click&Collect order, to give that injection of personalisation and boost customer engagement.

TARGET YOUR CONTENT TO CUSTOMER PERSONAS

Focusing on your subscriber as just one person can really help you nail your message and your proposition. Segmentation allows you to home in on those casual visitors vs. regular buyers and adjust your approach to suit.

Identifying those customer personas in real-time, using your 360° customer view, lets you combine that great personalised content with effective lifecycle automation. A double winner! Add to that a tool like Actito which lets you personalise and target by persona, as well as respond to changes in that behaviour, and you’ll set yourself up for success.

Where to start? Personalise to your personas based on your biggest lever – this could be average spend or how frequently they purchase. That way you’ll see the impact quicker.

In this new, almost entirely digital, world empathy has never been more important – human connection is what we all need right now. So, why not make today the start of a more personal, more empathic and more impactful future for your marketing activation.