Imagine this scenario- a smoothly functioning application or web page with an attractive interface but no customer traction. Unfortunately, this is a very typical situation; despite packaging their products/services in a ‘cool’ manner, organisations face limited interaction with those products. And that is because for so long, organisations have taken a market-oriented approach with narrow techniques to study the customer. 

Companies need to create a customer-centric strategy that puts the consumer at the forefront and creates value through the company’s offerings. This involves understanding the customer, their needs, and creating a meaningful experience for the consumer on their terms. 

Customer-Centric

Customer centricity is essentially putting the customer first and creating value for the customer. This goes beyond just providing the cool product/service at the point of purchase or offering gifts or coupons on a purchase. Instead, it is about an approach that looks at the total customer lifetime value and focuses on consumer retention. 

Brands need to collaborate behavioural science with insights led segmentation to understand the customer well enough to anticipate their desires and communicate these preferences to create meaningful experiences and build lasting relationships with them.

Buyer behaviour is changing; the new consumer expects brands to create meaningful and contextual conversations with them, leaning more towards genuine experiences that are catered towards them. 

More and more organisations understand this want, and the competition towards capturing customers’ attention is only increasing. This has led to the need to break through the clutter and create delightful customer experiences. 

So, what does it take to build such a strategy and execute it at scale? An insights-led approach that begins with a deeper analysis of customer insights that help brands go beyond the broad norms of segmentation and is essential.  

Insights-Led Segmentation

Until recently, marketers would plan a campaign by identify segments based on demographics and then executing it. This is a campaign-led approach where customers are nothing but User IDs within the segment. 

But forward-looking brands have shifted towards an insights-led strategy. Insights-led customer strategy is a business framework with data at the foundational base upon which customer engagement decisions are made. 

The insights-led strategy involves analysing and predicting user behaviour by leveraging analytics. Further, based on these insights, organisations can personalise their communication and content towards the consumer’s needs. This strategy allows them to create data-driven strategies to create engagement and retain the customers. 

Considering the brand campaign scenario, companies begin with customer insights, use these insights to identify the right customers to engage with, and then execute the campaign. Such an approach minimises errors and yields better ROI. Above all, brands can delight customers with relevant, in-the-moment messages every single time.

The Essential Steps To Implementing the Insights-Led Segmentation

To execute a strategy based on insights, one of the most important steps is for brands to tap into the existing data. This involves gathering and analysing data at scale and in real-time. This data can be leveraged for reactive insights and predictive capabilities to support marketers forecasting their customer preferences and being ready to engage at the right time. Secondly, in order to make the most of the available data, it is important to invest in the right technology. Invest in a comprehensive engagement stack that helps marketers build deeper analytics for quick segmentation without relying on other teams. 

It is important to consider that both the consumers and the technology for consumer engagement are evolving. Marketers need to stay on top of the trends and quickly shift to newer channels and touchpoints as their customers do. It is also important to stay agile by analysing customer behaviour across channels. Identifying consumers’ micro-moments across different channels can throw light on their wants and needs, and the organisation can predict and work upon those. 

Once brands have their work set out for them, they should harness the power of personalisation. This includes personalising emails, promotional materials, targeted ads or recommendations. This helps set brands apart from their competitors and become more customer-centric. 

Finally, having an omnichannel approach towards content creation, push notifications and social media campaigns play a huge role in approaching the customers across the various channels they may move onto and generate maximum engagement. Along with this, loyalty programs should also be channel agnostic to retain most customers. 

The utilisation of this approach by brands is still at the developing stage. We have just touched the tip of the iceberg of how insights-led segmentation has to offer to us. Brands that have implemented this approach have witnessed a faster growth in their customer engagement. The buyer behaviour is constantly evolving, making it integral for brands to innovate faster and keep up with the trends to retain their customer engagement.

This article is written by a member of the AIM Leaders Council. AIM Leaders Council is an invitation-only forum of senior executives in the Data Science and Analytics industry. To check if you are eligible for a membership, please fill the form here.