New research from Wunderkind has found that consumers prefer less frequent but more meaningful customer engagement.
The data of over 2,000 UK shoppers found that 43% of consumers preferred more personalized and less frequent engagement regarding how retailers and brands communicate with them.
A further 40% said that tailored offers and promotions based on a one-to-one understanding of the shopper was the most preferred means of customer engagement.
Despite the call for greater levels of personalization, 51% of respondents claimed they receive ‘unpersonalized’ communications far too frequently from retailers, suggesting that the generic ‘batch and blast’ approach to brand-shopper interaction still persists.
Almost two-thirds (63%) of shoppers also think brands and retailers don’t make good use of first-party data when it comes to tailoring engagement.
“Retailers and brands have known for some time that the ‘spray and pray’ approach to customer engagement doesn’t pay off. It’s a short-term strategy that will only ever deliver mediocre results at best, leads to poor ROI, and creates deeply unsatisfying shopping experiences for customers,” Wunderkind general manager Wulfric Light-Wilkinson said.
“This risks lost conversions and decreased levels of loyalty. However, our research suggests that this ‘batch and blast’ practice still prevails and more clearly needs to be done to deliver the customer demand of one-to-one, insight-led interaction.”
According to the research, consumers now expect brand engagement to add value to their shopping journeys, with over 27% saying they want to receive more ‘useful’ communications from retailers, such as cart-abandonment reminders, and discount notifications on recently viewed products, or ‘back in stock’ prompts.
Almost a fifth (18%) also said they want to receive more varied interactions beyond simply offering product recommendations.
“Shoppers want to establish deeper relationships with the brands they shop with, and these relationships can only be developed if retailers are able to identify and understand customers at a one-to-one level,” Light-Wilkinson added.
“Optimising owned, first-party data sits front and center when it comes to driving that strategy to meet these new customer needs.”
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