Are brands missing the point of personalisation? Are brands missing the point of personalisation?

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Are brands missing the point of personalisation?

Personalising a customer’s experience should mean that brands respond in real time to the context of each individual’s natural journey, but to achieve this requires marketers to take the lead in breaking down their companies’ silos.

Personalisation in marketing has meant a number of things throughout the years. A decade ago it meant little more than the recipient’s name at the top of an email or piece of direct mail. Five years later it meant using someone’s browsing history to target online advertising. Today – at least in theory – it has a more holistic meaning, taking in all a consumer’s behaviour, preferences and intent on their individual journey with a brand, regardless of the channel they’re using to engage.

We are able to differentiate between the fans who want to hear from the club, and those that don’t

According to Oliver Lewis, managing director of influencer marketing agency The Fifth: “Influencer marketing is growing very quickly. Spend is increasing. In a recent study, 61% of marketers said they would increase their spend this year in influencer marketing, and we have seen that realised.” Olympic gold medal-winning snowboarder Amy Fuller pointed out that brands need to move away from thinking solely in terms of reach to “something more meaningful and outcome-driven”. While campaign objectives differ, from the influencer’s perspective real trust tends to lead to a more authentic, organic and creative partnership, she said. Fuller told the audience how, as brand ambassador for Tag Heuer, she has learned first-hand the importance of working alongside brands that are “a true representation” of herself. “Tag aligns with what I do both on and off the mountain,” she said, adding: “I’d call myself an athlete not an influencer.” Tag Heuer’s Barnes agreed, telling delegates: “We do a lot of due diligence and research into people. But the more important question is: what do you want from it? Do they represent you as a brand? Is it a good match? “It’s not an ad campaign. There is no script,” she added. “It’s very different from a brand campaign.”

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Mic Conetta, Arsenal FC

Thunderhead's Wil Lynch on breaking down data silos

Realistically, though, few brands are achieving that ambition in a seamless way across channels, or doing so in real time in response to consumers’ evolving journeys. Brands often can’t control all the contextual factors that influence consumers’ interactions with them, but they do need to be alert to them in order to achieve effective personalisation. Speaking on a panel session at the Festival of Marketing (FoM), Arsenal Football Club head of CRM Mic Conetta gave the example that the team’s results on the pitch can be the biggest determinant of its fans’ experience. “That has a massive impact on how those fans want to engage with the club at that time and how they’re feeling. It’s up to us as a club to appreciate that and understand that it’s not one-size-fits-all.” Previously, Arsenal would not have directly communicated with fans following a negative result, but the approach has evolved. “Now, we are able to differentiate between the fans who nurture that contact and want to hear from the club, and those that don’t.” To personalise communications effectively in these contexts means understanding all the possible touchpoints for each fan. However, in practice that doesn’t often happen in companies.

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By Sarah Vizard?

The panel also discussed the brand success of Netflix which Brophy said had successfully increased its number of customers and those thinking about signing up, particularly among the over-55s. It was exceeding customer expectations. Sonia Sudhakar, Masters judge and director of marketing for Guardian News and Media, said Netflix is thriving because it is content-driven. She cited its success in attracting the fans of TV series that had a cult following, such as Breaking Bad and Black Mirror. “Netflix has played a blinder in many ways by focusing on hero content,” she said. “This includes documentaries that appeal to older people who are not so used to watching media in a different way. It also uses data effectively to create the best customer experience.”

Greggs harnessed a trend when they came out with their vegan sausage roll

Amelia Brophy, YouGov

He also pointed to a McKinsey study of the banking sector, showing that being able to effectively serve customers in three or more channels led to more than double the revenue per customer compared with one channel. More channels also mean more complex personalisation, making a holistic customer view even more important. Clearly a key factor in achieving this is having the right technology and the skills to utilise it. But while marketers surveyed in Marketing Week and Thunderhead’s research named legacy technology, cost and a lack of resources as their three biggest barriers to achieving customer-led personalised journeys, they may be overestimating the difficulty. As Thunderhead’s senior vice-president of customer engagement Darren Loveday said in the FoM panel session, these complaints are not the hinderance marketers believe. Today’s software tools can integrate quickly with most existing platforms, providing a shorter timeframe for paying back an investment. Similarly, the skills are usually present in an organisation, but often confined to their individual silos. The more significant challenges are organisations’ conflicting priorities and the need for “change and change agents”, Loveday said. He pointed out only 4% of marketers in the research say their general management is responsible for customer experience – a “scary number”. With that leadership lacking at the top of most organisations, it’s up to marketers to drive the change they want to see in their companies. ■

Greggs' triumph as the Marketing Week Masters Brand of the Year was based not just on the opinions of the expert judging panel but also data collated by YouGov from its BrandIndex tool, which informed the judging process. The data combined metrics ranging from ad awareness and buzz to value and quality perceptions. According to YouGov's UK head of data products, Amelia Brophy, the brands that featured on the Brand of the Year shortlist performed well on both the short- term metrics and those related to long-term brand equity. Greggs stood out, however, and at one point last year, one in five Britons recalled seeing a Greggs ad in the previous two weeks. Greggs also "harnessed a trend" with the launch of its vegan sausage roll, she told the Festival of Marketing. "We have data that says four in 10 Brits are actively looking to reduce their meat consumption, so it really spoke to that group of people and made Greggs perform in a way that we really didn't expect them to." Greggs' win also pleased TSB CMO Pete Markey, one of the senior marketers on the Masters judging panel. "They know their audience really well...but they've innovated. The vegan sausage roll is just one aspect. If you go into a Greggs, the customer experience has been enhanced," he said. "They have also been quite clever and edgy with knowing where their brand can go and how to push that brand."

How Greggs became Brand of the Year

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Marketing Week research conducted in partnership with Thunderhead found a number of likely barriers to achieving it. Only 7% of marketers surveyed believe their organisation has the right KPIs in all areas of the business to incentivise them to be customer-led. Meanwhile, 36% say a lack of collaboration or alignment is hindering them, and 30% say it is not a strategic priority in their business. According to Forrester vice-president and senior analyst Joana van den Brink-Quintanilha, also speaking on the FoM panel, companies that achieve strategic alignment are far better able to join up data sets across departments. This leads to better personalisation of the customer’s experience with more relevant contextual data about them. “For organisations to actually make those connections across different silos - across different departments and functions within the organisation - is really hard. The companies that I see doing a better job of that are those investing very heavily in socialising customer insights across all of their different silos, connecting the data so they can really have that holistic view of the customer.” The benefits of doing this can be profound, for both the customer and the business. In a separate presentation at FoM, Thunderhead’s vice-president of solution strategy and value consulting, Wil Lynch, told the audience “customer engagement is the key to unlocking business value”. Improving unsatisfactory journeys and making them customer-led will make those customers happier to stick with the brand, thus boosting retention, and ultimately revenues and profits. According to Marketing Week and Thunderhead’s research, only 35% of marketers believe their brand gives enough attention to the post-purchase phase of a customer’s journey, which can have the biggest impact on retention. Brands need to put more focus on joining journeys up across channels to improve this situation, Lynch argued. “This is about us as marketers breaking down those internal silos. There is a huge opportunity when you’re thinking about how you drive better performance, better call handling, connecting online data and making that instantly available to someone in the call centre. “We can start to offer next best actions to the call centre guys based on interactions on the website 30 seconds ago, in real time. Get that right and you’re going to drive loyalty.”

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