By Erwin Busselot, Business Innovation & Solutions Director, Commercial and Industrial Printing Group, Ricoh Europe
When you receive marketing communications is your interest gained? Is the content relevant? Are you drawn to learning more? Do you make a purchase?
New research suggests that too often the answer to these questions is no. The Experience Disconnect: 2021 B2B Marketing Report from Uberflip, American cloud-based content experience platform, showed a major disconnect between the personalisation buyers want and what marketers are actually delivering. This wastes marketing resources and frustrates buyers.
The survey of 500 North American B2B buyers and marketers on their expectations for the buyer journey found that many highly rated their companies’ ability to personalise content (52% scoring themselves at least a 4 out of 5). However, they are missing a key opportunity to deliver what buyers find most important. In fact:
1 in 5 marketers rated boring or unengaging content as a top pain point when researching a purchasing decision. Only 5% of buyers agreed.
1 in 3 buyers stated irrelevant content as one of the most frustrating parts of researching a purchasing decision, compared to less than a quarter of marketers.
Relevant content was buyers’ top driver (61%) for taking action, however relevant content didn’t even make it into marketers’ top three.
Over half (54%) of the marketers surveyed said personalised calls to action were their top method for getting buyers to take action or engage, while less than a third of buyers identified that as a driver for taking action.
Global marketing communications agency Wunderman Thompson posed a similar question to1,000 consumers and 500 marketers and customer experience decision makers in Great Britain. It discovered that if not handled properly, efforts to personalise can alienate customers with 33% of consumers stating targeted ads were among their biggest frustrations. However, when relevant and contextualised, 42% said targeted ads were a valuable use of their personal data and 37% said they were more likely to buy a product if they had seen a relevant ad. 48% said they want to feel valued as a customer but only 16% believed personal connections with brands were important. And although 76% of decision makers aimed to personalise experiences, just 14% were prioritising this content.
So how do marketers bridge the gap between consumer expectations and a brand’s proposition?
Uberflip’s report suggested three takeaways, particularly for cultivating long lasting customer relationships:
Personalise based on buyers’ problems, not just basic data i.e. name and company. At Ricoh we have plenty of experience of offering a solution to solve a specific problem that creates a solid pipeline of leads and gives much scope to create strong CTA (calls to action).
Prioritise quickly digestible short form, visual content and engaging experiences.
Deliver highly relevant content that aims to educate more than sell.
Wunderman Thompson said marketers should know:
Why they want to create a personalised experience and what value it will deliver to the customer and the business.
What data should be collected and to set the operating model up for data curation.
To make customers feel valued with relevance and context – the right content, in the right place, at the right time.
Content can be tailored many different ways to generate engagement, including bespoke offers, vouchers and catalogues. When done correctly, it opens doors.
Figures from the Britain’s Royal Mail show that 94% of addressed mail is opened, read or set aside for later, personalised mail is 35% more likely to drive an actual purchase than unaddressed mail and customised mail is re-read 4.5 times on average. It indeed does have a ‘shelf life’.
So, in your own marketing or where advising and serving clients’ marketing, remember that all not all personalisation is of equal value. Consider what will resonate most with recipients. And maybe reread the Book of the Year 1997: The One to One Future, by Don Peppers & Martha Rogers.
www.ricoh-europe.com
