Customer expectations drive the competitive marketplace. Brands are chasing customer expectations blindly.
For global brands, retention is becoming more difficult than acquiring customers. Customer loyalty programs hold the key to the retention of existing customers. It is an excellent way of driving sales and retaining customers.
Though COVID-19 hit brands hard on their journey of chasing customers, the expectation curve of customers witnessed a surge. The rapid changes and evolution in the digital world taught brands a harsh lesson. To deliver a seamless customer experience, digital adoption became mandatory. The rapid adoption of digitally-driven processes revealed the loopholes in their Martech ecosystem.
To leverage the customer loyalty programs, marketers need a Martech ecosystem that helps them manage campaigns on multiple channels, integrate data seamlessly, and analyze a complete picture of their customer’s journey.
Growth of Martech in loyalty
The marketing technology landscape of 2019 revealed over 7,000 vendors in the Martech industry. This number was merely 150 in 2011. Loyalty and engagement are a small part of this Martech industry. The Loyalty category had just four vendors listed in 2011, growing to 171 listed in 2019.
The current trends in loyalty marketing
The ability to deliver first-party data solutions is in high demand. Providing seamless and automated communication to customers has become an integral part of the strategy. In addition, the end user’s need for a personalized and omnichannel experience has also caught up with the trend.
Today, the customers initiate their buying journeys on mobile devices & end their purchases in the physical store. The customer’s expectations are getting higher every year. The only way to achieve these expectations for brands is a holistic approach to the Martech ecosystem.
Brands constantly need to find the best tech stack that aids in accomplishing marketing goals. The goal of the technology is to solve challenges faced by the marketers to meet customers’ expectations.
Importance of integrating loyalty with Martech
- Personalized experience – The key to winning customers’ loyalty is providing a customized experience. But it isn’t easy. Keeping track of customers’ actions, likings, purchases, and personal data is almost impossible for a human. But it can’t be an excuse for your customer. Thus, integrating the right Martech ecosystem can do the work to provide a personalized experience for customers at multiple touchpoints.
- Data privacy – The customers are ready to share their data in exchange for a better experience. The only condition is the trust in the brand’s capability of securing their private data. Technology enablement with the platform is essential to ensure data security and privacy. Choosing the Martech ecosystem tailored to your data security needs can help win customers’ loyalty.
- Automated Communications – Customer expectations are accelerating, and brands have no choice but to meet those expectations. Delivering a seamless omnichannel experience is hard to achieve. Personalized content and tailored marketing campaigns are nearly impossible without automation. Automation helps brands to quickly respond to customers across different channels. Demand spring’s marketing automation platform insights revealed that 96% of marketers have implemented a marketing automation platform to enhance their business functions.
- Scalability – Technology has been the primary enabler behind scalability. However, managing, filtering, and identifying high-value data is challenging. Integrating loyalty with Martech platforms that are AI & ML driven can help achieve goals. AI & ML not only help in identifying high-value data but also in predicting user actions. Brands can create personalized campaigns at scale with the help of AI-driven loyalty platforms.
Three tips for choosing the right Martech stack
- Never choose the costly prebuilt ecosystems that don’t align with your business requirements. Instead, spend enough time in the market to understand the best ecosystem.
- Research and find the best technology partners and consultants in your space. Discuss how the correct tech and marketing strategy can help achieve business goals.
- Adopt an ecosystem that is flexible, robust, and easy to integrate with multiple partners.
Integrating campaigns with technology
With the advancement of technology, brands have the superpower to integrate data-driven enablement directly into their customer loyalty campaigns. However, they need to consider two essential aspects of it.
- Campaign management
- Campaign strategy
The dashboard is one place to manage it all for campaigns. Advanced dashboards include analytics, APIs and bundles the insights into one interface. Allowing different channels, offers, loyalty programs, and campaigns to integrate seamlessly, brands can deliver omnichannel experiences.
While the campaign strategy focuses on the overall view of the performance of programs, it helps brands to make data-driven decisions. In addition, the strategy helps to make efficient use of the technology. The strategy allows brands to enhance the efficiency of tech resources. Having a comprehensive goal focused Martech strategy ensures you don’t miss any touchpoint for enabling customer loyalty.
If you have the right strategy and technology, things become easier for the marketing team. The free mind of marketers gives birth to creativity. For example, Domino’s started a straightforward point-based system. But they made it successful with the help of Domino’s AnyWare platform, which supports customers ordering from TV and social media. Smartphones, voice assistants, and whatnot. Dominos integrated the loyalty platform with AnyWare and delivered a unified customer experience.
Choosing the right loyalty platform for integrating in Martech ecosystem.
In 2020, The total number of vendors in the overall Martech ecosystem touched 8,000 as per Chiefmartec report. This Martech ecosystem is spans across categories like advertising & promotion, content & experience, social & relationship, commerce & Sales, data & Management. Loyalty lies in the social & relationship segment. The same report revealed that there are 1,969 vendors in this category.
But what makes a loyalty platform deliver results? Here are the four essential features it must have:
1) Data analytics – Customer data is more valuable than gold for loyalty platforms. With data analytics, brands can make better business decisions. Using user data, loyalty platforms can deliver customized offers, personalized emails, and more.
2) Technology Platform – Customers expect a consistent experience across devices and platforms. API-driven loyalty platforms are the perfect solution for brands to go beyond device or platform constraints. APIs are quick to deploy and can be used on multiple platforms helping brands track customers everywhere. A loyalty platform that focuses on customer data security and privacy wins among the rising competitors. The platform needs to be scalable to accommodate a growing customer base.
3) Strategic Consultations – After launching a loyalty program, it needs to be managed on an ongoing basis. Brands need to identify the best practices in the industry, identify areas for optimization and launch loyalty campaigns with precise customer segments to include personalization. Strategies need to be crafted and deployed at the right time to ensure customers are engaged in their association with your loyalty program.
Conclusion
Consumer needs and behaviors are changing rapidly. To stay at the top of customer’s minds and win loyalty, brands need strong Martech support. Building a flexible and robust tech stack is essential to solving industry-specific requirements. With a holistic approach to delivering an omnichannel experience, Zinrelo focuses on 360-degree customer loyalty. Zinrelo is empowering brands across the globe to deploy loyalty in the Martech ecosystem.
