Customer loyalty is strengthened when big and small data insights drive personalized marketing experiences.
Despite the numerous channels to help buyers get the best deal, most purchases come down to a feeling. You can capture that feeling by analyzing what your customers want to feel—and how your brand can make that happen for them. Today’s brands are turning their focus on hyper-personalized experiences aimed at growing customer loyalty.
“Much of the way marketers think about the customer journey is predicted on the shortcomings of some technologies that exist today,” Judd Marcelo, EVP of global marketing at Cheetah Digital, told Forbes last year. “Is it possible that thousands or millions of customers will perfectly fit into those specific journeys? No, and it’s impossible for marketers to create a meaningful experience by taking this approach.”
In this article, we’ll examine the range of emotions driving customer loyalty and help you discern small and large data points you can use to update your marketing strategy. Strategizing insights from small and big data to valuable emotions will help brands convert one sale, into a lifetime of them.
Emotional Value
A Deloitte Digital study shows that 60% of long-term customers use emotional language to describe a connection to favored brands. While big data amasses opportunities for brands to interact with us more efficiently for habitual and convenience reasons, it’s the emotional part of the transaction that creates the most lasting impression.
The things we own, the people we love, the home we create for ourselves and our family, all contribute to our higher sense of self. It’s why Nike’s “Dream Crazy” ad with Colin Kaepernick increased the company’s profits by 31% the week it debuted. And Airbnb’s #WeAccept social campaign earned an 85% increase in visibility and interaction across networks like Twitter and Facebook.
The opportunity lies in bolstering your products and services through unique, humanizing campaigns focused less on how consumers do things and more on why. Brands connecting with people on this level form a relationship that reflects the value we see in ourselves.
Insights Start With Data
“Identify the pieces of customer data already hanging around you in order to understand, and attract the right target customers.” – Neil Patel, expert marketer, New York Times bestselling author, Forbes Top 10 Marketer
When gathering small data, Neil Patel advises that before you even start, you clearly define and write out the marketing objectives. You want to really pinpoint the useful data around your customer base. What do they want and need? Once you have a baseline established you can strategize how to address those desires.
Transactional and habitual experiences have a place in the consumer market. Not every gum purchase has to have an emotional element. Consequently, people don’t invest as much in those types of buying decisions. But with statistics that show around 75% of consumers want brands to make contributions to their well-being and quality of life; it’s hard to imagine that people don’t want more. So, how can brands capture and measure customer loyalty to improve the marketing strategy?
Customer Data Touchpoints
You need data to appease stakeholders. So let’s help you work up touchpoints to monitor. We can break down what we mean when we say big data and small data. Complex data – culled from social media interactions, customer logs, device data, pictures, and video, messages, and search histories – make up big data. This type of ordered or disordered information needs to be interpreted by an expert to gain insights.
Big Data Sources include:
- Transactions
- Clicks
- RFID
- Sensors
- IoT Connected Devices
Small data includes quick, easily obtainable insights that come from talking and empathizing with your consumers. Some of the ways you can collect small data are through:
- Interviews
- Online Surveys
- Focus Groups
- Intelligent Forms
- Participant Observation
- User Journals/Testimonials
- Content Analysis
Both types of insights are useful, in different ways. When you include small data, you gain a competitive edge by finetuning your message so well it endures with consumers.
Mapping Emotion
The National Institute of Health has shown that types of emotion relate differently to types or levels of consciousness. Martech created a process to help you understand the varying range of emotions people experience. Understanding the range of emotions your consumer experiences and how that relates to the calls-to-action helps you see where you need to refine your approach.
You can distinguish emotion in three ways:
- Pleasant vs. unpleasant
- Inward vs. outward
- Active vs. passive
An emotion can present as one of two categories: pleasant and unpleasant. Each one can also be determined as an inward or outward emotion. The difference between the two lies in whether the emotion reflects something originating from your mind or from outside influence. The guilt you feel from blowing off a friend for lunch represents an inward emotion. The disappointment you feel at realizing your favorite restaurant closed reflects the experience of an outward emotion. Both types of emotion can be discovered in an active or passive way.
Big data helps you source consumer insights into where and when customers find your product or service. Small data helps you understand psychology or why. Once you know all the relevant emotional experiences of your customer, you can figure out what’s working and what’s not. The customer experiences an authentic and relatable experience and they want to come back.
Elevate The Experience
“If you are a company that lives and breathes your purpose, your clients will feel that. They will want to be a bigger part of your overall offering or way forward.” – Judd Marcello
Emotional loyalty continues to be an interesting and relevant concept to brands and marketers. Appealing to a consumer’s higher sense of self makes the difference between creating encounters and creating experiences. The nuance in emotional loyalty necessitates the understanding that emotions can be expressed in many ways to a significant impact on the consumer experience and your bottom line.
At Isadora Agency, we dedicate ourselves to changing the way brands connect with audiences in a digital world. Contact Isadora Agency directly to learn how we can apply this expertise to your brand’s websites, mobile apps, and marketing solutions.