Author: Syndicated

Personalization is a priority for marketers with the goal of providing better experience to consumers. An experience that is relevant and has timely offers evokes meaningful connections enabling actions which benefits both the consumer and the brand.

Are you a customer-obsessed brand and are looking to bet big on personalization at scale? Are you looking to unlock greater customer engagement, revenue growth and brand loyalty, marketing? Today CX leaders face urgent decisions on just where, when, and how to place those bets.

Advertisers across channels and verticals saw extreme Y/Y increases in CPC and CPM in Q2 and Q3 of 2021. Data from our Digital Marketing Reports showed double-digit growth in cost per metrics across Facebook, paid search, and more, as summarized below:

For decades, brands held the upper hand in their relationship with consumers. They told consumers what products were available and where to buy them. But with more options than ever, consumers now have the power to tell companies what’s important to them, and to switch brands when those companies don’t align their values.

With consumer behaviors and expectations changing on a seemingly daily basis, we went directly to the source to determine what consumers want from brands in 2022. Here’s what we found.

Key Findings

Offering content in exchange for customer data has long been an incentive for drawing in customers and building loyalty. Today, organizations are often challenged by how to solve for the distribution of content across channels at scale to enable personalization.

Marketers have always struggled with enabling business users to manage content for seamless CX – with or without support from their technical counterparts. Years ago, they realized that solving for content was turnkey in their marketing tactics and digital footprint. So here’s a bit of a history lesson:

The employer relationship with employees has changed forever. This employer-employee dynamic can be made more meaningful by a thoughtful approach to treating our people like our very best customers. Creating a distinct employer brand is a central way to ensure that talent audiences understand what an organization uniquely offers them as an employer, and why that matters.

Enter the pandemic.

On February 4, we presented a webinar to share how to elevate your approach to personalization. With Michael Klein from Adobe, we explored how industry leaders are achieving world-class personalization at scale. Watch the on-demand webinar here.  Below are some of the key takeaways:

Merkle’s Customer Engagement Report is back for Q1 2022. To fuel the insights in this issue, we surveyed over 2,000 consumers, instead of marketers, to unpack the amount and extent of data consumers are willing to share. We also look at how well their attitudes align (or don’t) with the kind of connected, personalized experiences they’ve come to demand from the brands they frequent and favor. 

PSFK Founder & President Piers Fawkes was joined by Val Vacante, Strategy and Product Innovation Director at Merkle, for a session during Retail Innovation Week 2022 in January to spotlight how Merkle approaches technology innovation for retailers. Below is their conversation about Merkle’s ShopNXTTM technology.

Q: What is Merkle’s philosophy when it creates technology for clients in retail?

As we continue into 2022, we’re going to see many B2B marketers contemplating whether, and how best, a customer data platform (CDP) might fit into their tech stack. As CDPs infiltrate the B2B world, they will likely create confusion regarding what capabilities they can take over from existing marketing automation platforms (MAPs) and account-based marketing (ABM) platforms. There lies the potential for significant disruption. So, what are the essential requirements for B2B CDPs if they want to achieve true sustainable disruption?

Thank you to the thought leaders who contributed to this article:

Evan Nicholson, Digital Experience Practice Director, Merkle
Jen Karlson, Commerce Strategist, Merkle

Michela Baxter, Sr. Director, Promotions & Loyalty Solutions Practice Development, Merkle
Mike Adamson, Sr. Manager Experience Strategy, Merkle
Timea Szell, Sr. Manager Digital Experience Strategy, Merkle