It might seem like the move towards a world run by technology and automation would make brands more distant from the consumers it used to connect with more personally.
But in fact, the opposite is actually true.
[source: Clickz] Digital transformation has been at the forefront of many business discussions over the past several years. There is a growing need for digital innovation that can bring a company closer to an agile environment, and new technologies have the power to do so.
It might seem like the move towards a world run by technology and automation would make brands more distant from the consumers it used to connect with more personally.
But in fact, the opposite is actually true.
How can using innovative technology and data improve the relevance of marketing for the consumers it targets? And how can a customer-centric approach actually facilitate digital transformation?
Here are four ways that digital transformation and data can improve customer engagement.
Learning more about your customers
The first step towards improved customer engagement is to learn everything you need to know about your customers.
Thanks to the digital age, we now have the ability to access more data than ever about our customers, and so the process of digital transformation is sure to bring about additional insights into your consumers’ habits and preferences.
Whether it’s by using a spreadsheet or a fully-fledged CRM system, it is important for businesses to spend the right amount of time analyzing and understanding their target audience.
Even if your company is already using advanced methods of customer tracking and lead nurturing, it’s still useful to revisit these processes every so often with a view to updating them. The most important thing to know about digital transformation is that it’s never finite, and things are always shifting and updating. The same goes for your customers’ behavior, too.
Analyzing data
As mentioned above, data analysis can offer very useful insights towards improving customer engagement.
A closer look at the existing data in a CRM system along with all the additional data drawn in from various sources can lead to an enhanced understanding of your customers’ needs. Moreover, it can help a company evaluate its current efforts and how they can be improved through digital technology.
The higher the quality of a brand’s data, the more it can transform the customer experience by personalizing and tailoring every aspect of the customer journey.
Personalization and segmentation through the capturing of advanced data can lead to an improved and relevant customer experience, particularly when the right tools are employed. Marketing automation software, for example, can be set up to use customer behaviors as a trigger to send certain messages and notifications, creating a more relevant experience – we’ll delve further into this in the next section.
Other technologies like chatbots are capable of accruing data from their interactions with customers and adapting to customer behaviors using machine learning.
It may seem like a huge challenge to capture and analyze the vast amounts of data out there. Focus first on the information that is most important to improving your customer experience, rather than trying to capture everything at once; then, gradually you can scale this up as you undergo the process of digital transformation.
Improving relevance
Relevance is very important for a company aiming to improve customer engagement. After all, the relevance of a message to your target audience will determine whether or not it captures their attention.
One of the main reasons that organizations move into digital is to try and develop an exceptional and highly relevant customer experience. This means that a large number of companies already acknowledge how relevance can contribute to an excellent customer experience.
Once a company understands its target audience, the next step is to deliver a highly relevant message.
This derives from capturing the right data and segmenting the audience in a way that each message is sent to the right person, at the right time. What’s also important is to discover the right platforms on which your target audience can be reached – is it through email marketing, social media, instant messaging, mobile apps or somewhere else?
A combination of all these can increase the chances of a conversion, but they can also work to build a more positive sentiment towards the organization.
Location data can also be extremely useful when in creating a marketing message that is relevant to the user’s immediate surroundings. The technological advances in this direction, from location-based AR apps to beacons and voice search, have opened up a variety of possibilities for relevant marketing based on a user’s geographical location.
Building a digital strategy for the future
What’s important to understand when considering digital transformation is to realize the potential it can bring for the future of a company’s strategy.
As more companies become digitally-focused along with their customers, the first steps along this journey can lead to an even more effective digital strategy in the future.
The act of combining the various digital channels and technologies to find the sweet spot for each organization is what will truly create a solid customer experience.
As customer engagement can serve as a key indicator of success, whether it’s about the actual metrics or the positive sentiment that consumers have towards a brand, digital transformation can be a big step towards those goals.
It’s all about understanding what makes a successful digital strategy, how this can form part of a company’s wider business goals, and what all these mean for its future direction.
Overview
At its core, customer engagement in a digitally-focused world is about brands trying to go where their customers are. This may be different for each company, but it’s about understanding how new technologies can offer massive opportunities, provided that a company interprets the trends and the available data in the most relevant way.
Good customer experience is all about building a good relationship with customers and this can be achieved by authentic and relevant messages.
What’s interesting about digital transformation and the way it evolves is that it can:
- Serve as the first step towards understanding customers
- Improve customer engagement through relevance and personalization when using new digital tools
- Be the starting point for a solid digital strategy that will bring even more successful results in the future.