About 70% Asians find mktg content irrelevant: Study
About 74 per cent of Asian consumers receive personalised mail, according to a study by Experian Marketing Services Asia Pacific. However, nearly three out of four consumers (70 per cent) find the content irrelevant, in spite of marketers being aware of the need for personalised data; driving home the point that personalisation does not necessarily equate to relevant content.
The study takes a closer look into the digital consumer landscape in Asia and highlights the pressing and immediate need for businesses and marketers to relook at their approach to engaging with consumers. In order to improve the business bottom-line by increasing the effectiveness of their marketing spend, business need to improve their understanding of consumers’ preferences and behaviour when it comes to channels, devices and content.
The study also highlights that smartphone usage dominates across Asia with 88 per cent using their smartphone most or all of the time. Consumers often or very often use their smartphones for social chat apps (83 per cent) and surfing the internet (77 per cent).
Across Asia, email was identified as the best performing channel for driving a purchase (64 per cent) followed by social media (53 per cent).
The majority of consumers received personalised content via email (74 per cent), social media (69 per cent) and SMS (69 per cent) but find the content on email (70 per cent), social media (57 per cent) and SMS (56 per cent) irrelevant, the study found.
The accuracy and messaging on integrated content can be improved across channels with 29 – 44 per cent of respondents reported receiving conflicting messages depending on the channels such as email, SMS and apps.
According to the study, Asian consumers are happy or very happy to receive offers based on their purchase history (59 per cent).
Commenting on the findings of the study, Patrick Sim, General Manager of Experian Marketing Services for South East Asia said, “We are at an interesting turning point for marketing as consumers are increasingly empowered by social media and mobile technology. The new generation of digital consumers today access information on their own terms, expecting it to be current, relevant as well as device and platform compatible. This has forced marketers to rethink their engagement strategies when it comes to achieving a single customer view.”
He added, “As seen in the Digital Consumer View (Asia) 2015, businesses need to move away from a one-size fits all approach. They need to focus on content relevancy and accurate targeting efforts or risk seeing constant missed opportunities, ultimately impacting a company’s business growth.”
With nearly all respondents (98 per cent) in Asia owning a smartphone and 88 per cent choosing to use the device most or all of the time – smartphone is the device of choice in Asia, making it a channel that cannot be ignored by businesses seeking to reach consumers in Asia. Consumers in China are the most prolific users; 94 per cent use their smartphone all the time.
Consumers are also buying more on the move, with 91 per cent of them having shopped at least once on their smartphones. This means that a robust mobile strategy would have a direct impact on business revenues.
Email on mobile is the best way to reach out to the digital consumer. Across Asia, mobile is the most popular platform for opening emails (68 per cent). At the same time, the best performing channel for driving a purchase is also email – nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of respondents have purchased something as a result of promotional content they received via email. This is followed by social media at 53 per cent especially in Thailand (65 per cent), Indonesia (63 per cent) and Malaysia (62 per cent). Content from SMS and social chat apps like LINE and WeChat are also largely successful in driving purchases (both 39 per cent).
The study also highlighted that despite being highly connected, consumers in Singapore were found to be the least responsive to marketing content across channels such as social chat (19 per cent) and mobile applications (27 per cent), while email remains as a key driver for purchase (60 per cent).
With only 10 per cent of respondents indicating that they do not wish to receive any promotion content, there is still a huge opportunity for marketers to reach out to consumers. The need for mobile responsive mails, content marketing and placement is greater than ever against today’s increasingly crowded digital space.
Key to this would be the refinement of personalisation strategies across devices and channel with more than half of the respondents showing positive sentiments towards receiving content based on their purchase history (59 per cent), delivery options (57 per cent), and recently viewed history (55 per cent).
“While most companies recognise the benefits of a multi-channel and multi-touch point approach, the challenge is to provide content that is sufficiently interesting and relevant to the audience. Businesses and marketers need to relook at their marketing strategies to ensure sufficient engagement occurs across key channels without sacrificing consistency and cohesion in their messages,” Mr Sim emphasised.
The post About 70% Asians find mktg content irrelevant: Study appeared first on Digital Market Asia.
