Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Now that 2020’s global pandemic has taught most of the world how to live and work completely from home, marketers planning their 2021 strategy are asking one big question:
“Will this uncertain time change the way people spend money?”
McKinsey — which recently polled consumers in over 48 countries about their 2020 spending habits — says, “Yes.”
One of the biggest findings in the McKinsey study was that 75% of consumers have changed brands at least once during the pandemic.
McKinsey’s research also noted four other key shifts in consumer spending behavior that could majorly impact brands in the near or far future.
In this blog post, we’ll walk you through all five shifts noted in the McKinsey study, while giving our insights on how marketers and brands can navigate them.

How Purchasing Behaviors are Changing in 2020
1. Brand loyalty is being tested.
At the beginning of the pandemic, as entire cities began to close non-essential businesses, consumers raced to stores or hopped online to order essential products they’d need in the coming months. This caused a major disruption in supply chains and product shortages around the world.
And, even in the earliest days of the pandemic, consumers were paying heavy attention to how companies handled shortages and bursts in product demand.
While some brands saw an influx of new customers that they once lost to bigger competitors, other companies lost customers to because they simply couldn’t keep up with a high demand.
“Over 60% of global consumers have changed shopping behavior, many of them for convenience and value. In the US, the percentage was 75%,” the McKinsey study notes.
When it comes brand shifts outside the U.S., a whopping 91% of Indian consumers and 82% of Chinese consumers say they’ve changed brands at least once since the beginning of the pandemic.

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According to McKinsey, the top three reasons consumers changed their habits or brands were value, availability, and convenience.
As you can guess from the data points above, the risk of losing a customer to another brand is higher than usual in 2020. Even if a product appears essential or valuable to a prospect, they might not buy it if another brand can deliver a similar item faster.
How Brands are Navigating
At this point, some large brands are working to better align teams to ensure that products can be discovered, ordered, and delivered quickly — even in times of high demand. Meanwhile, some smaller brands are making their products more available online and in-stores to prospective customers who can’t get an item quickly enough from brands they’ve used in the past.
According to a post from Repsly, which included data from anonymous name brands, companies that thrived in 2020 used data and company-wide communication strategies to identify areas at risk of high product demand around March and continued to align with teams including marketing, service, and supply chain teams to ensure their shelves and warehouses stayed stocked.
In another recent report from McKinsey, researchers similarly predict that successful high-demand brands will develop an integrated approach between their supply teams, sales, and marketing departments. McKinsey also discourages brands from raising prices in times of high demand and focusing on other vital business and customer experience strategies instead.
“Operational concerns may be even more important than pricing strategy, including stabilizing the supply chain, keeping products on the shelves, addressing customers’ urgent needs, and maintaining quality,” the McKinsey report explains.
2. Consumers aren’t rushing to grab their wallets.
Before the pandemic, Gen Z was the major age group that prioritized essential products over other purchases. Meanwhile, other generations were more likely to splurge on products based on their brand name or non-essential perks.
But, after business closures and financial uncertainty related to the pandemic, consumers in all generations are reconsidering spending habits.
Even as cities, businesses, and workplaces slowly reopen, shoppers plan to stay cautious about their budgets.
In the U.S. alone, 40% of consumers say they’ll continue to be mindful of where they spend money, while 31% plan to buy less expensive versions of items to save money. And, whenever they make those purchases, 21% of consumers aim to do more brand and product research than they had for pre-pandemic purchases.

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How Brands are Navigating
While consumers might have made purchases with motives related to fun, entertainment, brand name, or other perks before the pandemic, many are now more budget-conscious than ever.
For the most part, consumers are primarily zoning in on essential product purchases. And, if someone does buy a less essential product, such as an item that entertains them, they’ll do thorough research to ensure they’re getting the best value for their money.
At this point, many essential and non-essential product companies have caught on to consumer budget concerns and have begun to leverage online marketing strategies to ensure that consumers can discover their products, learn about their value, and determine that they’re worth purchasing.
Particularly, companies that sell essential products have created campaigns, advertisements, and messaging reminding consumers of how important the items are. Meanwhile, companies that sell less essential items are getting creative to identify new value propositions for their products or brands.
For example, in the ad below, Procter & Gamble acknowledges the COVID-19 crisis, explains how it will be donating products to families and philanthropies in need, emphasizes the importance of their household and health items, and reminds viewers of how its brand has helped consumers disinfect their homes for generations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4xF40TnlS0
The P&G ad is effective because it highlights that the brand offers affordable and available products that people trust for cleanliness, shows how the company is actively aiming to help people impacted by the pandemic, and reminds audiences of how essential its products are to global households.
In another example, Ice Breakers, a mint company that sells products that might be considered less essential, made an ad to highlight how eating mints before you put on a mask can prevent smelling your breath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXU7JFKaSJQ
While the P&G campaign acknowledges why its brand’s products are essential to people around the globe, the Ice Breakers ad cleverly places new value into a non-essential mint product that people might not be rushing out to buy at this time.
3. Shoppers need ecommerce.
McKinsey notes that “most categories have seen more than 10 percent growth in their online customer base during the pandemic.”
Additionally, across most product categories, at least 30% of U.S. and U.K. consumers expect to make even more online purchases after the pandemic.
How Brands are Navigating
While many bigger brands are amping up their ecommerce strategies, a few prominent tech giants have begun to offer solutions that can help smaller or medium-sized brands, such as boutiques, retailers, or restaurants, generate revenue online.
For example, Facebook recently launched a tool called Facebook Shops, which enables any company with a Facebook or Instagram Business page to create a mini-online store that links with all platforms owned by the social media brand. Meanwhile, meal delivery apps like DoorDash temporarily reduced commissions of local restaurant orders so those business owners could sell food virtually while earning fee-free revenue for each order.
4. Health plays a role in purchasing decisions.
With the pandemic impacting thousands of Americans, people began to consider their health and safety more than ever before — even when purchasing products.
In the past, health-conscious consumers might have glanced at back labels of various products, the interest in health and safety has gotten even deeper. Now, they might ask, “What’s the packaging process for these products?”, “Are the cashiers in the grocery store given PPE?”, or “How are businesses actively preventing the spread of germs?”
While health and safety of consumers and brand employees might not be the biggest purchasing motivator, it’s one people are thinking about much more in 2020.
Ultimately, when big or small businesses take action to show that they genuinely care about people, consumers might identify with, trust, and value them more.
How Brands are Navigating
Although it might sound easy to buy an ad spot with a commercial that simply says, “Our brand cares about you,” this approach might not convince your audiences that the message is authentic.
Many of the brands that are thriving in this time demonstrate how they care, rather than just saying it.
For example, as global mask shortages occurred in the early days of the pandemic, fashion companies like Louis Vuitton and Burberry diverted clothing production to make face coverings.
Aside from creating PPE, other companies have donated to causes related to the pandemic or taking extra steps to keep their customers and staff safe.
Target, which is considered an essential business, has been publishing online content about how the company’s aiming to help customers, employees, and communities at this time.
Rather than centering its YouTube page around content that highlights products, sales, and deals, Target features a playlist aimed to help shoppers and communities during COVID-19.
Along with health and safety tips related to shopping, videos on the playlist explain how Target is working to create safe in-store experiences and smooth online shopping options for customers.

Aside from creating videos on how the chain is aiming to help customers navigate COVID-19, the brand has also created a $10 million pandemic relief fund which dedicates $1 million to assisting Target employees. This demonstrates that Target is taking action to help its community, customers, and employees who work in essential in-store roles.
5. Shoppers have become homebodies.
According to the survey, 70% of consumers don’t want to resume activities or work outside of their homes just yet, despite pushes to reopen the economy. If they won’t leave home to work, travel, or dine out, McKinsey notes that many won’t leave home to shop either.
When looking into the near future, “More than 3 out of 4 [consumers] who adjusted their behaviors due to the pandemic said that easing government restrictions will not change their cautious behaviors. Consumers are following guidance from medical experts for reassurance,” notes McKinsey.
How Brands are Navigating
Brands can’t just assume that people will flock back to stores as businesses reopen. While some consumers might not feel comfortable or safe leaving the house immediately after a pandemic, others won’t want to shop in physical stores because they know they can buy almost any product they want online.
At this point, successful brands are trying to continue to meet customers where they are, even if they don’t leave the house.
While some brands are building out online stores and digital services, others that don’t sell a physical product are launching online events or virtual experiences to gain awareness, continue to generate revenue, and delight their customers.
One example of a brand that made an in-person experience into a virtual offering was an animal sanctuary called Sweet Farm. When the California-based farm, which runs on donation revenue, closed to the public amidst the pandemic, its owners created a virtual offering where businesses or individuals could pay $65 to $750 for a farm animal to guest star in their virtual hang out or meeting.
The campaign was cleverly titled, “Goat-2-Meeting,” a play on GoToMeeting — a popular video meeting software.

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According to Sweet Farm, the campaign, which began in March, was so successful that there was a waitlist for animal meet and greets by April, Sweet Farm has also partnered with more sanctuaries to increase meeting availability and share donation revenue with other organizations that care for animals.
How Marketers Can Navigate 2021 — and Beyond
This year, marketers and businesses were tested by the global pandemic and economic landscape. As you consider what’s next for your brand, keep these consumer behavior trends in mind:
Consumers crave value and availability.
More than ever, consumers will choose to shop from a company because of product value and availability, rather than brand loyalty. Business owners who’ve relied on loyalty and credibility to make sales should also monitor their supply chain and pricing to ensure that their products are worth the price and accessible to customers. Meanwhile, lesser-known brands can use a competitive analysis or other tactics to learn where they can help consumers that are struggling to find affordable or high-demand products.
Digital transformation is key.
Brands can no longer assume a billboard or foot traffic will generate vital revenue. At this point, many companies that were once mostly physical are building online stores, leveraging different online channels for marketing, and thinking outside of the box to create virtual offerings that will delight and retain customers.
“Human” brands will reap benefits.
In 2020, customers began to care more about how businesses treated employees, how they kept customers safe, and how companies stepped up to help others in times of uncertainty. Ultimately, brands with leaders who genuinely care about people will get better reviews, word of mouth, and positive awareness than brands that throw caution to the wind.
Looking to learn more about how businesses are evolving in 2020? Below you’ll find content from HubSpot’s Adapt 2020 series:

Adapt 2020: An Educational Series
5 Ways Go-to-Market Strategies Will Change in the Post-Pandemic Economy
4 Pivots Companies are Making in Light of COVID-19 [New Data]

submitted by /u/OnpassiveToday [link] [comments]

 

With the development of eCommerce, proliferation of marketing channels and vanishing customer loyalty to Brands, modern CMO gets under enormous pressure to take proper care of Customer Experience. But if taking care of the Brand image requires some marketing budget and proper cooperation with media houses and agencies, then a proper approach to Customer Experience requires switching CMO attention to create a proper relationship with its colleague from the same company – a CTO. Why? They have access to customer data. 

 

The roles of CTO and CMO have changed significantly in the recent years. It is required that every modern CMO not only oversees marketing initiatives, but also understands how marketing can be driven by data, analytics and modern machine learning algorithms. On the other hand CTO is no longer only a strictly technical role present in IT companies. Any company which is willing to survive in the modern world becomes an IT company now, an IT company which requires a CTO – CTO who not just understands technology, but understands how this technology can support business objectives.

 

What is the reason behind these changes and how needs of both of them can be fulfilled by new technologies?

 

$ 3 trillion in potential value creation from Customer Experience

 

According to recent study by McKinsey & Company there is a huge potential upside in value creation by means of personalising user experience with brands and businesses. Total of estimated uplift is between $1.7 trillion to $3 trillion – where the highest value can be created in retail ($800 million), insurance ($600 million), travel ($450 million) and banking ($500 million).

 

 

This potential added value can be created by fully understanding and using entire potential which personalization at scale has. Reaching for this award requires modern marketing to create best in class experience for customers across all communication channels and devices, along the entire customer journey.

 

In order to take part in the race and win your share of the cake it is crucial to implement and integrate the right technologies, work with right and rich data and use modern personalization techniques supported by AI & machine learning.

 

Technology stack supporting CX Value creation

 

McKinsey points out four main parts of the technology stack required to succeed in personalisation: Data, Decisioning, Design and Distribution (Execution).

 

 

The key issue coming out of this graph is the necessity of having all of these really well integrated. And if want to have all this really well integrated there are two options:

a perfect relationship between a CMO and CTO with perfectly working together teams behind them
or

a ready made platform which will make all of this work without too much hassle which is somehow CTO & CMO cooperation ready

 

Creating CMO & CTO cooperation readiness

 

Data required for best in class personalization is often hidden, trapped. This data needs to be enabled on one common platform, which is easy to integrate with multiple different data sources. This is the responsibility of the CTO to ensure this data is discovered and made available to a platform on which CMO can create unique marketing processes based on this data, use modern AI solutions and use them in communication with a customer on all possible channels.  

 

Very common problem is when a company uses multiple single solutions for communication with its audience – this causes that decisioning logic resides in individual, channel-based, black-box systems. CTO’s and CMO’s responsibility is to unify this logic and use an integrated decisioning engine that uses machine learning and AI models to take individualised and personalised marketing activities across all channels with consistent communication with a customer.

 

With a proper platform marketer can encode knowledge into processes, leverage instinct with AI and properly segment customers. That type of platform can integrate channels, enable data across those to coordinate communications and react to customer needs. 

 

Another problem to solve is that these days marketers are overwhelmed by the amount of content and the speed of change required by personalization. Platform of choice for CTO & CMO should enable content automation, mixing of small modules with CDP data and use them seamlessly in omnichannel communication. 

 

The common goal of CTO & CMO is to integrate all channels, enable data across those to coordinate communications and react to customer needs. That approach is a pillar of value creation with Customer Experience.

 

Low technology burden as basis for effective CMO & CTO cooperation

 

As we stated in one of the first paragraphs, the modern CTO must understand how technology can support business objectives and the ultimate goal of business is to bring revenue, on other hand he is aware how expensive integrations and data science are, where human cost is the highest factor. CMO is under pressure of delivering results with modern solutions. But obviously these strategic objectives would be not possible to realize if both CMO and CTO would be engaged in too simple things, that we are actually taking on us.

 

 

We have created a platform with minimal hassle for the CTO, where all website monitoring and personalisation requires just one code and this code needs to be added only once. Data integration can be done via P&P or simple API. AI models are immediately available to use without any additional configuration.

 

That is why we can offer our customers unattainable on the market 2 month onboarding time. This is perfectly aligned with our Proof of Concept which is the primary way our customers start the journey with SALESmanago. First month is about integration, second about the execution of marketing campaigns and processes which aim at addressing some specified business KPIs. 

 

And at the end of the day, thanks to our approach CMOs and CTOs at our customers companies simply have a very limited number of quarrels and disputes.

marketing automation

marketing automation

Last Updated on December 7, 2020 by Rakesh Gupta Big Idea or Enduring Question: Now (After Spring’21 Release), you can send rich-text Emails from Lightning Flow using – Send Email core action! You read that right; so, continue to read on! Salesforce … Continue reading →

Send anxiety is real and no matter how long you’ve been in email marketing or how experienced you are, send anxiety never really goes away. In fact, customers tell us that one of the biggest mistakes they fear when sending an email is to include a broken or missing link. 
Messed up links can cost you more than just time and embarrassment. If you’re in publishing, your newsletter is your product and any missing or broken URL hurts your brand reputation.
According to Verizon Media Australia Pty Ltd, “We usually triple check each link and then send tests to at least two people in the team to make sure it’s all correct—we work in publishing and it’s incredibly important for each story to link out to the correct URL.”
You’ve gone to all this effort to craft engaging copy that compels your reader and you’ve designed a call to action that’s bolding and enticing. But when your readers click, there’s nothing. Or they end up at the wrong place on your site. Now you’ve missed an opportunity to convert subscribers and you can’t be sure you’ll be able to recapture their attention.
We aim to make marketers feel confident in every send, regardless of their experience level. Because of the amount of time and anxiety that goes into checking, double-checking, and even triple-checking your links, we’re introducing a new tool so our customers can send emails with confidence and efficiency.
Frontier Touring says: “The Link Review tool has quickly become a natural part of my proofing process.”
Introducing the new Link Review tool
Now, Campaign Monitor has a Review links button in our email builder. Here, you will be notified of any missing or broken links in your current email. You’ll also get an alert if a link has not been updated if the email was copied from a previous campaign.

Lulu Press says: “[The Link Review tool] brought a lot of confidence in sending emails. It cut back the time I spent checking links which involved me sending test emails to myself and clicking through all of the links to double-check that they were working correctly.”
If your email includes a broken or missing link, you’ll be prompted to review and update the link while still in the email builder.
Send with confidence
Universal Magazines told us, “I think everyone who has ever sent a campaign email has had concerns about sending bad links. A bad link can cause a range of problems and, in the very worst cases, can negate the whole intention of sending a campaign email in the first place.”
We know how much time and effort you spend creating your emails, not to mention the time you spend double-checking to make sure everything in your email is pixel perfect. The copy, design, lists, and personalization all have to be confirmed before hitting send and it’s easy for something as innocuous as a misspelled URL to slip through your checks to disastrous results. 
At Campaign Monitor, we know that a missing or broken URL link in your email is a common mistake that can be a headache to fix. 
Not only is a broken link a pain for you, it harms your brand’s reputation, prevents your email from delivering the results you expect, and often means additional time and resources spent trying to remedy the error. 
After all the time you’ve spent crafting every detail into an effective email, don’t let a broken link steal your results.
Wrap up
Our Link Review tool means you can have confidence that a simple mistake won’t ruin your results. You have more important things to worry about, such as how you’re serving your customers and running your business. Now your pre-flight checklist has one less task on it.
The post Introducing the Link Review Tool appeared first on Campaign Monitor.