Tag: Market Automation

8 Technology Trends Enabling the Future of Personalized Customer Journeys (2020)

According to Frost & Sullivan, customer experience will become the key brand differentiator by 2020, edging out both price and product. This means eCommerce personalization is here to stay, and brands who can’t connect with the customer to create satisfying experiences will struggle to remain competitive.

Markets are increasingly becoming saturated with similar, high-quality products at slightly varying price points. It’s no longer enough to offer the cheapest goods or even the best product. Paying attention to how customers interact with your brand both before, during, and after the buying process is critical for a winning strategy.

So how can digital marketers create a highly interactive and satisfactory customer experience for their brands? The answer lies in leveraging the best technologies to build immersive, personalized customer journeys across every channel. 

5 Technologies That Are Shaping Personalized Customer Journeys

These eight technology trends enable brands to provide the ultimate personalized experience for the customer.

1. Web Content Management Platforms Facilitate Personalization

“The democratization of capabilities has provided greater agility for marketers and enabled WCM to be formally regarded as key to delivering engaging digital experiences to multiple audiences.” – Mick MacComascaigh and Jim Murphy, Gartner authors

Web content management (WCM) platforms are evolving as the need for personalization influences the software capabilities brands need to implement their customer engagement strategy. Almost all WCMs can automate metadata to optimize content categorization. 

Compared to manually categorizing content, which can be ineffective and inaccurate, automating this process closes the gap created when using drop-down lists for tagging, for instance.

2. Augmented Reality Provides an Engaging In-Store Experience

Consumers no longer need to go to a physical location to purchase a product. Retailers today are considering this by using AR technology to provide an immersive experience outside of the store.

This is a key strategy for the future of retail as 71% of consumers say they would shop more frequently at a store that offers augmented reality and 40% would pay more for a product if they can experience it through AR.

Brands like Lacoste are already using AR apps so that customers can try items of clothing through the app to experience how they would look and feel. Other examples of AR technology include in-store AR mirrors that show you wearing a piece of clothing and signage around stores that can connect to your cellphone to pull up reviews of a product.

3. Voice Interactions to Add to the Audiovisual Experience

According to a survey of 500 IT decision-makers, 88% believe that voice technology would give them a competitive advantage when it comes to enhancing the customer experience. 

As voice technology becomes more and more functional and engaging, customers won’t think twice about interacting orally with brands through apps. The Starbucks barista app––which allows users to speak orders into their phones––is a prime example of consumer-facing voice technology.

4. Smart Cars Bring the Brand to the Driver

Cars today are no longer pieces of assembled hardware. They are built around sophisticated software that brands can utilize to create an on-the-road experience for customers. 

For example, General Motors cars come with a featured called Marketplace on the car screen, through which drivers can place orders from brands like Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts. The technology offers consumers both convenience and experience that comes to them, rather than the other way around.

5. Artificial Intelligence Suggests Relevant Data to Customers

AI and machine learning are the difference between a brand that stops at personalizing emails by using the customer name and one that can give customers exactly what they want by offering relevant information.

Perhaps the most powerful example of a brand that uses this technology for maximum advantage is Amazon, which reportedly drives 35% of its sales through its recommendations feature. Artificial intelligence can determine customer behavior by mining through the troves of data generated by their browsing and purchase histories. Machine learning continues to improve this process by using new data to narrow down the customer profile further.

Create Personalized Customer Journeys That Don’t Sacrifice Your Content

The technology certainly exists to enhance brand experiences for customers. But implementing that technology without sacrificing the heart of the experience—your content—will be a tough task if you don’t have a modern, flexible content management system (CMS), such as a headless CMS, in place.

Not only will a headless CMS organize all your cross-channel content in one place, but it can also help you create more engaging personalized customer journeys.

14 Credible Ways To Use Wigzo Web Push Notifications (and what not to do!)

We can’t help but emphasize the importance of using web push notifications to improve customer engagement and retention rate of your business. In the last 6 years, there’s been a spike in the interest to apply the push strategy from firms of different sizes and from different industries.

While push messaging was originally associated with the mobile medium, the strategy gradually trickled down to the browser. Today, push notifications deliver 50% higher open rates than emails. And that’s pretty cool because businesses shouldn’t have to wait for the prospective buyers to open and read their emails.

The businesses should be able to engage with the target market even if the latter is not present on the website. That’s the beauty of push notifications!

Wigzo’s “push” helps clientele achieve higher engagement rate

While emails and social media are still important tactics to stay in the purview of the customers, they are no longer the most effective ones. Even though the push technology seems a bit distracting, it has been able to catch the attention of consumers and convert them into loyal buyers.

1) Inc42 makes use of web push notifications to be able to interact with their website visitors regularly. Wigzo was able to give a boost to Inc42’s average daily visitors and achieve an average CTR of 18%!

2) With the help of Wigzo’s smart segmentation technology, eCommerce store Mr. Button is able to track user interaction and tailor the push messaging accordingly.

If you are still unsure about how Wigzo can help your business amp up its customer engagement level, learn of these new ways in which you can:

1. Recover abandoned shopping carts

If you are an eCommerce firm, then this is perhaps the biggest issue you will ever face! It is really hurtful when the almost-customer suddenly decides to leave a loaded cart behind and move on. With a push message, you can create a sense of urgency to bring him or her back on the website and to complete the purchase process.

2. Send time-sensitive price alerts

Not all of us shop on a whim. We wait for the right deal or a flash sale to shop like a boss! So if the price of a product – that a consumer previously showed interest in – dropped, make sure (s)he hears it from you first through push. After all, who wants to miss out on a deal? This is all but a tactic to nudge them to make interaction on the website.

3. Notify subscribers about an ongoing sale

You may run different discounts for different products. Whether it an end of season sale or a limited period discount – make sure you catch the attention of your consumers before their focus shifts on some other online store. A real-time notification and they will get instantly hooked!

4. Offer location-based tips and discounts

This is a form of hyper-personalization, and will surely bag you a quick conversion. If your website also has a physical store and the prospective buyer happens to be in the vicinity, shoot a quick message to nudge an action from him or her.

5. Re-engage inactive customers

The market is literally spoilt for choice. And consumers today like to hop from one online store to another. So it isn’t surprising to search for a hack that can help you re-engage with such dormant buyers. Pique their interest by sending a notification around a referral program you have started or any other offer that may add value to them.

6. Validate your customers

Just because the consumers have created an account or shared contact details on your website doesn’t mean you take them for granted. Validate their actions by sending a small “thank you” push notification or best – offer them sort of a discount. They would dig that!

7. Leverage social proof

Consumers can be a little hesitant to take the plunge and buy something online. But you can resolve that with the push technology. Show them how many other consumers have bought the same product or how happy they are with your services. A little social proofing goes a long way!

8. Cross-sell and upsell

If your consumers have already chosen a product, don’t let that stop you from increasing the average order value. Give recommendations. Entice with them an add-on (cross-sell) or show them an upgraded version of the product chosen (upsell).

9. Keep the customers informed of their purchases

Once they have ordered a product, make sure you keep them informed about its shipping details through real-time push notifications. That would take some burden off their shoulders!

10. Retarget product or service drop-offs

This kind of messaging is apt for those consumers who put the products in the cart but leave the checkout process mid-way. As they still haven’t left the website, it gives you an excellent opportunity to send a reminder about the cart.

11. Send “back-in-stock alerts”

Your consumer excitedly came to your website to buy a specific product but found it to be out of stock. Don’t let that be the end of it. Once the product is restocked, send a push message updating him or her about the same.

12. Recommend products

So you noticed a consumer checking out a range of sci-fi novels on your eCommerce store. You can pop-up and recommend sci-fi non-fiction that would interest him. Consumers are lazy by nature. If you do a majority of the homework for them, they would love you!

13. Ask for customer feedback on product delivery

Getting feedback is an old-age marketing tactic but it works well because it makes the customers feel important. So once the order has been delivered, send a push message asking for a “token of affection”.

14. Inform about reward loyalty programs

This is a slightly targeted tactic. Make a list of long-standing customers and send them a notification – thanking them for being loyal and offering a credit of $10 or so to show your gratitude! They would hop to your website in a flash!

The Don’ts consider using Web Push Notifications

An effective Web Push Notification campaign can easily outperform Email Marketing and other sorts of campaigns, that is if executed well. After having done some discussion on the ‘Do’s’, here are some ‘Don’ts’ that you must keep in mind when dealing with Web Push Notifications:

  • There isn’t a good idea to get too greedy. If you are too frequent with sending notifications to your customers, close to a 10% users decide to opt-out solely for that reason. Instead, it is more relevant for you to send more contextual notifications based on their behavior and interests and your engagement rate is bound to go higher.
  • Relying on native opt-in prompts? Well, you shouldn’t. Although you might witness a higher opt-in rate initially this will only result in a high amount of churn.
  • If you are keen on using the native prompt, the better and more effective idea would be to build a custom prompt that pops-up right before the native prompt. This will result in better communication of your brand. Even if a user decides to deny it, a custom prompt will enable you to ask again later.
  • It is important to remember the purpose of push notifications. Basically, push notifications are meant to drive users to click and engage with your business. Therefore, the platform isn’t really ideal to explain your customer about detailed and finer points that you have to offer. Instead, link a landing page where your offers are more explained. Remember, the best performing notifications are usually the ones that have catchy titles, precise descriptions, and vivid images.

Over to you

Frederic Voyer, CEO, Swaaap.com aptly puts it right: “Push notifications have been a main factor to ensure that the users in our community are engaged and actively interacting with each other to meet each other’s business needs.”

So what are you waiting for? Get up and get going!