CEO of MBA Stephen Maher has shared his thoughts on how the pandemic will affect brands’ future marketing strategies.
The importance of existing customers
Research from Braze.com showed that, during lockdown, customers increased propensity to try new brands and a general increase in switching behaviour – 32% said they’d tried a new brand and of those, 97% said they intended to purchase again from that brand. This should be raising alarm bells for marketers.
It is much easier, and cheaper, to keep existing customers spending than it is to acquire new customers and to get them deeply involved in your brand – a Harvard Business Review article states that this is by a factor of between five and 25 times more expensive.
So, it comes as no surprise that marketers are concentrating more on retention and loyalty in 2021.
Keeping existing customers
Thinking through how the end-to-end customer journey has been impacted by the pandemic is critical.
As many services had to be put in place with great speed during the first lockdown, they may not be as smooth as they could have been, with lots of unintentional friction getting in the way of a good customer experience – call waiting times etc. Patience is now running thin for many people. It is still likely to be true that a brand that can solve a customer’s problem brilliantly can grow a greater brand affinity than if there had been no problem.
Mail – a powerful CRM tool
As part of a broader media mix, mail can play a key role in keeping your existing customers and growing their value to your business. It’s personal, engaging and when executed well, can makes customers feel valued.
Every home in the UK
Being able to reach your customers effectively is a key part of media selection. Most channels with first party data should enable appropriate contact. Mail gives a new dimension to reaching customers, as it does so when they’re at home – and at a time when their home is both physically and emotionally more important. Of course, it can also reach every single UK home, leaving no-one out due to ad blocking or perhaps even a lack of technology. This helps to reach vulnerable audiences who don’t use digital media.
Seventy per cent of people in the study The Value of Mail in Uncertain Times said that mail made them feel more valued, compared with 30% of email.
Customer focus
In these uncertain times, focusing on customers and retaining, or hopefully increasing, their spend is an imperative for all marketers.
Mail, as it is welcomed into people’s homes, has the ability to tell a story and with its proven track record for commercial outcomes should be on every marketer’s consideration list as they look at their multi-channel CRM plans.
Research suggests that 41% of businesses are planning to spend more on mail in 2021. I strongly recommend that you consider joining them.
For the full MarketReach coronavirus research go here
