Brands that follow a `customer first’ strategy grow sustainably – ET BrandEquity

Shopping trends in 2023 indicate that 80.3% of Indians are inclined towards online shopping using their smartphones. Also, there is a 42% growth in daily active users of e-commerce platforms, with a 19% growth in new customers of grocery platforms. Statistics show that there is a 27% growth in customer stickiness of e-commerce platforms with a 21% growth in Monthly Active Users (MAU) of apparel, fashion, and jewelry e-commerce platforms. That’s a brief snapshot of the state of shopping in India today! These trends signal that brands now have to not only capture the changing preferences of a billion consumers, but also stand out in the deluge of promotions, offers and product news on their handheld devices.

To achieve this, new-age marketers have to employ strategies such as segmentation, personalization and omnichannel communication to reach out to ‘digitally smart’ customers. This multi-pronged approach also automatically lowers customer acquisition cost (CAC) yielding sustainable business growth.

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How to efficiently draw new customers through loyal customers

The CAC (customer acquisition cost) is significantly lower when loyal customers refer a brand/business than when other marketing channels promote them. But to implement this strategy resourcefully, brands have to first use RFM segmentation to identify loyal customers and ask them to give reviews of and pitch for higher value products. The digital age makes this easy as it opens up the opportunity for customers to guide others through their own purchase journeys. Thus, it is incumbent on businesses to tactically employ an insights-driven RFM segmentation and identify loyal customers and transform them into brand evangelists to help acquire new business through referral campaigns.

How personalized campaigns lead to more active adoption of products

When brands address customer needs through personalized campaigns, they are super-charging the customer engagement process leading to higher sales. Personalized campaigns are based on granular data stemming from individual experiences of customers like their online and in-store interactions with the brand, preferred categories, past purchases, and loyalty status.

Given the huge influx of data into the organization, it is important for businesses to use tools to continuously track trends, spot new ones and filter out relevant data to segment customers. Therefore, segmentation is a top-of-the-funnel exercise to create appropriate groups, increase their brand awareness and draw them in. By building segments based on behavioral or demographic data like high LTV shoppers, cart dropouts, location-based or discount customers, brands can send out hyper-personalized content to each individual customer.

This also empowers customers to firm up their options, which, in turn provides data for future personalization. These narrowed-down cohesive groups are more likely to convert into loyalists.

When brands collect and organize hygienic data, they get a 360-degree view of their customers and also segment them based on the data and personalize the campaigns. These data-driven personas allow marketers to craft and develop messaging to the whole, while the 360-degree view of a customer allows brands to relate each individual to the persona.

Advanced segmentation is a marketing strategy that involves splitting customers into groups based on shared characteristics like age, location, gender, products or product categories that interest them, and what needs or problems they want fulfilled.

It is all about psychographic segmentation (based on personalities, hobbies, values, discount-seeking,), contextual geographic segmentation (selling warm apparel to shoppers in cold countries during certain seasons), behavioural segmentation (based on spending habits, browsing habits like number of pages viewed and websites visited, average shopping cart values and source of referral)

How seamless omnichannel experience wins over the customer

Omnichannel marketing involves building a brand’s presence across multiple channels like online (apps, e-commerce websites, social media, email, SMS, WhatsApp) and offline (retail stores and events), and giving an unchanged and seamless experience throughout the customer journey. This helps brands reduce churn rates, create a positive shopping experience and realize higher customer retention rates.

Successful brands understand their customers, the platforms they use to shop online, the issues they face while shopping across channels and the way they interact with the brand across different touchpoints. Based on this understanding, they categorize their buyers, map and personalize their journeys and implement an omnichannel experience throughout the shopping process.

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