Marketing Excellence Conference
Bisnode Interact was the main sponsor of the 360° view conference. This conference, took place in May in Amsterdam, has gathered about 70 persons around the importance of achieving a true consumer centricity.
From theory to practice, all the presentations helped the audience to realize how crucial it was to have an in-depth knowledge on consumers. Even if our consumers haven’t that much changed, times are changing.
The conversation revolution
The consumer doesn’t trust advertisement anymore. He trusts his peers. When he wants to get information before buying, he prefers consulting on-line media (26%) and peers such as friends and familly (20%) to other information channels (shop employees (13%), articles in newspaper/magazine (12%), company website (11%), TV or radio show (9%), advertisement (9%). Thus, marketers can’t talk anymore of advertisement since advertisement impact is completely decreasing. We should move from information to conversation, from advertisement to content, from communication to engagement. We are now in a Conversation revolution. This revolution requires change. According to Steven Van Bellegem “Now it’s time to listen and talk with the consumers, to develop an on-going dialogue, to create leverage by engaging consumers”. To be able to converse with the consumer, companies needs to know their consumer and be able to adapt tone and speech depending on individuals. Therefore, having a 360° view on the consumer has become crucial.
This revolution implies a mindset shift. Are we ready to change? How can we fit this new world? How to become conversation driven?
Customization is the future
Targeting, Consumer interaction, collecting data, creating a dialogue... The P&G case presented by Wouter Coox, senior Direct-to-Consumer and Interactive Marketing Western Europe at P&G and Kathleen Peters, Bisnode Interact Marketing and communication Director, was a good illustration of this revolution. To engage their consumers, P&G decided to create a dialogue by customizing off and online communication. Bisnode Interact helped them with tracking the surfing behavior and combining the collected data to the existing database. For Wouter Coox “Since we don’t have any transactional data, being able to capture our online consumer behavior is a real treasure.”
Kathleen Peeters explains “By helping P&G to achieve a true consumer centricity, we enable them to segment, target and implement off and online customized communication. And customization is the future considering the conversation implies knowing the person you are dialoging with”.
The personalization benefits have also been demonstrated by Bob McNinch, Head of e-commerce at Vodafone. He explains “The personalization is the right content delivered to the right person at the right time through the right channels”. So the benefits are clear: from creating customer loyality to developping more effective campaigns, from enhancing lifetime consumer value to gaining greater consumer insight. Moreover “You can reduce operating expenses and thus maximize your ROI!”
So yes, customization, is the future!
New trends in Direct Marketing
The marketing reality is shifting: from information to conversation, from communication to engagement, from interruption to interaction, from annoyance to entertainment, from advertising to content, from databases to platforms.
Considering this change, some marketers consider DM as a risky business. But no, Direct Marketing is not dead, it just needs to evolve.
Hakim Zemni, research director at InSites Consulting , says “Is the fear of spamming taking over from the joy of interacting? Companies have to rediscover the joy of interaction.”
According to him, “with today’s shifting marketing reality, direct marketing can be future proof by looking at the data as the new oil”