How programmatic can breed loyalty
Asia-Pacific is the world’s largest digital retail market and the fastest-growing e-commerce region globally in 2015. The year ahead will be no exception, with a projected year-on-year e-commerce growth rate of 35.2 per cent.
The swift growth of e-commerce in APAC over the past few years has turned the region into a highly competitive market. To put this into perspective, let us consider one of the region’s most dynamic, fast-growing markets, India, which has come a long way from the second half of the previous decade.
In 2009, India’s e-commerce market was valued at USD 3.8 billion, which grew to USD 17 billion in 2014 and to USD 23 billion in 2015. One industry body, the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India, predicts this number will touch a whopping USD 38 billion by the end of the year.
With fierce competition rising from all corners, it is imperative for e-commerce players to market strategically to stay in the game. To continue to gain market share, these companies need not only to win new customers, but also to retain loyalty of customers already won.
To bring customers back time and again, marketers must craft meaningful and relevant experiences for each individual. Personalised content—such as user-specific product recommendations or offers served on-site, through email or through dynamic display advertising—can help marketers to reactivate existing customers and grow customer lifetime value.
Programmatic advertising technologies such as real-time bidding and dynamic creative personalisation make it possible for marketers to deliver personalised media at scale, by using a combination of both historical and real-time data. Using programmatic display, personalisation strategies that have been developed for e.g. on-site or email personalisation can now be extended to reaching customers not only on owned media, but across the entire web—wherever customers are browsing online or on mobile.
This year, I anticipate that many more advertisers will start unlocking the real value in their own CRM and other first-party data assets, and realise the enormous opportunity these data present—not only to provide insights, but also to power more intelligent, more personalised advertising.
To deliver personalised content to the right people, you need data. But not just any data will do! Today, marketers have many unique data assets—first-party data—such as CRM databases, website traffic activity, loyalty programme data, email marketing data, customer purchase records, revenue and yield management data, and more. First-party data can help to paint a colourful picture of customers’ buying behaviours and journeys to purchase. With the right technological piping, they can also be used to power personalised marketing.
The beauty of first-party data is that it is proprietary—your customer data is your competitive advantage! When used in conjunction with real-time, on-site behavioural data, marketers can deliver on-point recommendations that speak to each customer’s needs at a moment in time, in the channels or on the devices that customer prefers to browse on.
While personalised, relevant content is a critical element of any digital marketing strategy, an equally vital component is the ability to reach customers with these messages at the right time, wherever they are. Whether they’re reading Digital Market Asia on a desktop at work or catching up on the latest gossip on the ScoopWhoop mobile app, the right programmatic partner should enable marketers to reach users across all connected touch-points, and to determine the best possible placements across those touch-points for each personalised impression to land. Programmatic buying makes this possible.
With nearly half the smartphone-using population in Asia-Pacific now shopping on their mobile devices, cross-device programmatic strategies are going to be critical for this region in 2016.
In summary, in the year ahead, it will be imperative for APAC marketers to invest not only in acquisition but also in customer loyalty strategies, and marketing personalisation is one place where they can spend smarter while building customer relationships. Programmatic technologies will enable brands to win loyalty through personalisation, and to do so with greater budget efficiency, at scale. Your first-part data assets are your marketing strength, so find the programmatic partners who can help you leverage the full power of that strength to win customer loyalty and grow your business sustainably.
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