HOW SICK ARE YOU OF READING ABOUT 2020 CORONA-RELATED TRENDS AND THE NEWWWW NORMMMMALLLL?
Well, if you’re sick of reading about it as much as I’m tired of writing about it, then I feel ya. For real.
But, then again, what can we do? The world is full of baffled people who thought over the past 6 months that the craziness of this year is behind them. Or that they have figured out how to do their thing amid all the tectonic forced changes to the most basic way we live, work, love, breath – but are still finding themselves readjusting every other week.
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With Q4 kicking off and yearly summaries around the corner (right after what seems to be a chaotic holiday shopping season), we thought it’s a great time to stop for a second, take a deep breath, look behind and around us, and see what tangible marketing lessons we can take with us for the future. The near future as no one is really looking too far beyond that nowadays.
To do that, we gathered the insights of a few handpicked experts, all of which we are lucky enough to call Optimove Partners. Between them, we were able to bring you a uniquely, well-rounded set of POVs.
This is the first of what we hope will become yet another popular series of articles here on PostFunnel – The PostFunnel Partners Advisory Series. Every now and then, we’ll round up the thoughts, ideas, knowledge, and insights of our expert partner network and share them with you.
For this inaugural piece, we asked them what trends they can detect, from working with clients, on adjusting to the New Norm? What do they see clients doing more of or asking less about, what special steps or initiatives were executed that could offer a valuable lesson for others?
As a bonus question, we asked them if there is any book or podcast that they came across recently that they think people in marketing would benefit from seeing as well – not limited to marketing content.
Larry Gray – CRM, Loyalty, Digital Marketing, Data Science and Analytics
In my opinion, here are a few of the key trends of the “New Normal”:
Increase in Data Science and Analytics
Data Science and Analytics were trending before COVID. Still, with the recent and significant increase in online shopping and bottom of the funnel activity, companies are looking to better understand and capitalize on this increased customer behavior.
Product velocity is changing faster than ever. Demand could significantly outpace supply causing some businesses to decrease or increase discounting and/or reduce the number of sale items, especially with Medical and OTC products. Being able to capture these changes and make predictions on future business is going to be incredibly critical.
Even More Focus on Customer Centricity
People are stressed. The need for easy, positive, trustworthy, and smooth experiences is great. Many businesses have refocused operations and content to consumers’ fundamental well-being.
Substantial thought and energy have been placed in marketing and communications to account for people’s heightened emotional state.
Segmentation and personalization tools need to be re-evaluated and potentially even re-implemented to deliver communications with greater emotional intelligence.
The Heightened Need for Customer Journey Mapping
Customer Journey Mapping is becoming increasingly important as folks flood online shopping like never before. It used to be that businesses could learn the customer’s interests through a store visit and casual conversation with a salesperson.
Now, understanding the customer’s digital footprint and how each consumer can be understood and serviced to satisfaction will help separate companies who thrive in a COVID economy from those that flail.
Bonus Question: I regularly tune into the GrowthBySabir podcast for in-depth knowledge of all things digital marketing. It’s a new podcast by Sabir Semerkant, who has more than 20 years of experience nurturing and growing businesses. He has some of the newest and brightest leaders on the show discussing their paths to greatness.
Data Culture
Given the increasingly competitive online landscape, it’s critical that brands continue to capture their customer’s attention every step of the way. And it all starts with data. Understanding your customer, tracking their behaviors across platforms, and answering holistic business questions are the most significant issues we see brands face.
Part of the struggle is going from 0 to 1, moving from siloed data sources tracked in individual applications to having all your data flow into one place where business users can access it. And we’ve seen so many tools promise to do everything well. That’s rarely the case. Many tools do solve a problem, just not all of them, at once.
As we see it, without the right infrastructure in place, companies really struggle to create sophisticated marketing capabilities. It’s about implementing the right modern data stack from the get-go, which ultimately enables the most sophisticated marketing capabilities.
Read more about Data Culture and its founders Gabi Steele and Leah Weiss.
Dynamic Yield
eCommerce is not slowing down! A lot of the brands we work with are actively filling headcounts to help them scale. We anticipate that even once the world is “back” and store-fronts open again, a sharp focus on the online customer experience will remain.
This is why improving organizational processes around experience optimization at the executive level is a hot topic. The old way of doing things is broken, and organizations need to break silos and refocus on customers to do digital marketing for 2020 and beyond.
Additionally, we’ve started to double down on what we refer to as “Homebase Audiences,” which is an organizational framework rooted in customer centricity meant to deliver personalization at scale. Through deeper knowledge of customer wants and needs, we look to help clients generate a more accurate strategy, improve eCommerce KPIs, and achieve incrementality. (Ben Malki, Director of Customer Success at Dynamic Yield)
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Trust is critical. It is clear to us that brands need to take the extra step to gain and maintain customer trust. To do so, being data-driven is key but not enough: there is a need to think of the ‘Why’ behind the KPI in order to generate long term learnings that can help the business maintain or grow their position in the market.
I also see brands focusing on high impact initiatives that can have a larger impact on the organization. With that, a greater amount of thought is going into what experiences or campaigns are prioritized. Brands understand that now is the time to learn from customers and make the necessary effort to create a loyal customer base.
Bonus question: One of our team members recently watched the Michael Jordan documentary, “The Last Dance,” and her two most significant takeaways were to “Be willing to take risks” and “Success requires total dedication to your craft and a constant drive to improve.”
MJ’s persistence to improve and refine his skills can also be correlated to the importance of testing and iterating until we get the right results. (Sandro Lubas, Team Lead, Senior Customer Success Manager at Dynamic Yield)
Read more about Dynamic Yield here.
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Stay tuned for more on PostFunnel’s Partner Advisory Series.
