Digital marketing has become an essential aspect of any business strategy, with the rapid advancement of technology and the increasing reliance on digital platforms for communication and engagement.
As we end the first quarter of 2024, it is crucial to stay updated on the latest trends in the digital marketing landscape to ensure the success and growth of your brand in reaching new customers.
In this blog, we will shine a spotlight on the top digital marketing trends that are expected to shape the industry in 2024. By understanding and implementing these trends and strategies, businesses can stay ahead of the competition and effectively engage with their target audience.
So, let's dive into the exciting world of digital marketing trends for 2024.
In recent years, there has been a significant shift towards using first-party data in digital marketing industry trends. This rise can be attributed to several factors.
Firstly, privacy concerns have led to increased regulations and restrictions on the use of third-party cookies and data sharing. As a result, businesses are relying more on their own data to create personalized experiences for their customers.
Secondly, the focus on customer experience has prompted businesses to prioritize the collection and analysis of first-party data to gain a deeper understanding of their customers' needs and preferences.
So, 2024 will see a combination of the cookieless world and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act. This will propel brands towards prioritizing first-party data and investing in customer data platforms (CDPs) to gather, analyze, and activate consumer insights ethically and effectively.
In such a case, enterprise-level marketing cloud platforms like Salesforce will benefit from this as they will be using their advanced capabilities to assist brands in navigating the complex terrain of data privacy regulations
By leveraging first-party data, businesses can create hyper-targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with their audience. This data allows for more accurate audience segmentation, enabling businesses to deliver relevant content and offers to the right people at the right time. Additionally, first-party data can help businesses optimize their marketing efforts and allocate resources effectively, resulting in a higher return on investment.
However, the use of first-party data also raises privacy concerns. Customers are becoming increasingly aware of the data being collected and are demanding more control over their personal information. Building trust with customers is crucial in this digital age, and businesses that prioritize privacy and data protection will have a competitive advantage.
Another latest update in digital marketing is the popularity of short-form video content has exploded, thanks to the rise of social media platforms and influencer marketing as an emerging trend in digital marketing.
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels have revolutionized the way we consume and create video content. These short, attention-grabbing videos have become a powerful tool in latest digital marketing trends to engage with their audience and showcase their brand to social media users.
Short-form video content offers several benefits for digital marketers. It is highly shareable, easily digestible, and has the potential to go viral, reaching a wide audience in a short amount of time. Additionally, short-form videos allow for creativity and authenticity, providing an opportunity for brands to connect with their audience on a more personal level through the use of video marketing. This current trend in digital marketing is expected to continue in the coming years, making it a crucial aspect of digital marketing strategies.
You can also read: 3 evergreen marketing trends of the last decade
In today's emerging digital marketing trends, authenticity and social responsibility have become key differentiators for brands. Customers are increasingly seeking out brands that align with their values and demonstrate a genuine commitment to social and environmental causes.
As an online marketing trend, authenticity is crucial for building trust and establishing a strong brand reputation. By being transparent, genuine, and consistent in their messaging and actions, brands can cultivate a loyal customer base who believes in their mission and values.
Gen Z is a crucial demographic for brands to connect with. This tech-savvy and socially conscious generation values authenticity and is quick to spot inauthentic digital marketing trends and tactics.
Authentic narratives help brands build trust, foster brand loyalty, and establish a long-term relationship with Gen Z consumers. They allow brands to tap into the power of storytelling and connect with this digitally native generation on a deeper level.
AR has emerged as a new online marketing trend for marketers, offering exciting opportunities to create immersive brand experiences. By overlaying digital content in the real world, AR allows brands to engage with their audience in a unique and interactive way.
AR is revolutionizing the way consumers interact with products and services. With Meta Rayban Smart glasses with inbuilt AI becoming mainstream, AR is going to be a reality for a larger set of audiences, including in India. This advancement will enable marketers to offer more immersive brand experiences, revolutionizing the way consumers interact with products and services.
Brands can use AR technology to showcase products in a virtual environment, allowing customers to visualize how they would look or function in real life. This helps bridge the gap between online shopping and the in-store experience.
AR is not limited to the retail sector. This latest digital marketing trend is also being used in industries like real estate, tourism, and entertainment to enhance customer experiences.
Brands can also harness the power of this current trend in digital marketing to create gamified experiences and interactive marketing campaigns. By incorporating elements of fun and excitement, brands can capture the attention of their audience and leave a lasting impression.
You can also read: Growth Marketing for Startups: Scale Your Way to the Top
User-generated content (UGC) has become a cornerstone of digital marketing industry trends and strategies, fostering trust and engagement. By leveraging content created by users, brands tap into authentic narratives that resonate with their audience. Encouraging customers to generate content not only boosts brand credibility but also enhances authenticity.
Successful UGC campaigns have the potential to go viral, amplifying brand awareness and loyalty. Through UGC, brands can establish a connection with their target audience, as user-created content is perceived as more genuine and relatable. This approach builds trust organically, leading to increased customer engagement and loyalty.
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing hyper-personalization in customer experience, shaping the future of marketing. By leveraging AI, brands can tailor product recommendations, create personalized campaigns, and enhance customer interactions. This level of customization resonates deeply with the target audience, leading to increased brand awareness and loyalty.
AI's ability to analyze behaviour patterns and preferences enables businesses to deliver tailored content and recommendations that cater to individual needs and preferences. The integration of AI in online marketing trends is paving the way for a great opportunity to create a more engaging and personalized customer journey in the digital landscape.
In the ever-evolving landscape, staying abreast of the latest digital marketing trends is crucial for brand success. From prioritizing first-party data to embracing short-form video content and leveraging augmented reality (AR), marketers have a myriad of tools at their disposal to engage consumers authentically and responsively.
By weaving together narratives that resonate with Gen Z, championing socially conscious campaigns, and harnessing user-generated content, brands can build trust and foster immersive experiences. The future of customer experience lies in hyper-personalization driven by AI, offering tailored product recommendations and personalized marketing campaigns that truly connect with audiences on a deeper level.
Personalization overall helps in loyalty and engagement. As per Salesforce reports, 84% individuals want to be treated as a person, compared to phone number or email address.
Despite the necessity of driving individualised experiences, the banking industry is struggling to keep up with retailers, media and tech companies in delivering these highly tailored interactions and product offerings to their customers. They need to take care of prospects, customers, partners and also bank suppliers. Managing Data for all of them is a real challenge for the banks. And considering that millennial will comprise a significant part of future bankers banking transactions, it is important that banks appeal to them with emotion, branding and lasting connections. Plus the millennial will easily move away if the experience is not good.
Issues faced by the banks are:
Some banks may provide personal customer experiences; the vast majority cannot meet the high expectations of their customers, partners and distributor network. The problem is that many banks position their customer journey and marketing efforts around common life moments or experiences.
For example, when a client transitions from high school to college to job, the bank will bombard that person with student-loan messaging. Later, when the consumer turns 21, the bank will send them marketing material related to purchasing their first house, a new car, insurance, or a holiday.
The following approach is definitely not personalisation. It’s just lifecycle and lifestyle marketing. Just because the consumer turned 25, it doesn’t mean they automatically want to have a home loan or get married. By making broad assumptions about someone based on their age, consumers – especially millennia’s – will start to feel distant from their bank. The more they get communication which is non-relevant they will start moving away from the bank. Reality is that banks are not doing the hard work of truly understanding their customers’ needs, and, as a result, their customer journeys feel too generic. Rather than marketing based on life moment segmentation, banks should instead work to target customers through contextualisation. Platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud along with Einstein AI capabilities will help understand the customer journey, customer transactions and help in personalizing the experience provided to the customer. Agencies like us we bring in strong experience in Banking space helping customer with the industry wide use-cases and experience ideas to be provided.
Financial companies should deploy a contextual journey, incorporating products seamlessly into the shopping experience. However, banks must analyse their data closely to support such a journey. Consumers want to buy at the right moment – not when the bank thinks they should buy, but when they’re ready to buy, which could potentially be anywhere in the larger customer journey. Banks must tailor financial offerings to the present needs of their customers, and predictive data can help them look forward rather than backward, allowing them to anticipate customer desires and goals more effectively.
A contextual approach recognises that the customer journey is never perfect and must be refined through data. This forward-thinking use of data allows banks to design the various touch-points of the customer journey timely and contextually, including conversations with customer service representatives or assistance applying for financial products. By providing these individualised interactions throughout the consumer journey, clients will be satisfied and engaged as they’ll feel that their bank truly cares for their unique needs.
Banks are interested in attracting the next generation, and although they differ from their parents, they still have many similar requirements. However, one key difference is they desire a bank that can connect with them individually and solve their problems. Also they want the services to be provided online unlike visiting the bank thrice weekly as their parents used to do. Beyond leveraging a contextual journey to reach these younger demographics, banks must take the time to define their desires, challenges and hang-ups with older methods and approaches.
Next Generation occupy a wide range of life stages, meaning they can’t be so easily thrown together into one giant pot. And whichever life stage they’re at, they want banks to support their current needs. These consumers are likewise open and willing to pay for personalised financial advice. As mentioned above, according to MoneyWise, 60% of next generation customers would consider changing banks for better digital capabilities, such as mobile apps, digital experience and transaction friendly technical support.
Similarly, this block of consumers wants to use the services of organisations that share their values. In other words, they want a sense of community. Traditionally, community and geography were tied together, but the contemporary idea is shifting toward other connections like belief systems, hobbies and passions. To target the specific needs of niche audiences within the next generation, banks should look to Fintechs. By empowering these small but exciting start-ups, big banks can service an even larger number of constituents without being too bland. Regional and local banks are also great partners, allowing one to tap into established markets.
Banks can deliver personalisation through a more contextual customer journey and by addressing the unique needs/challenges of the younger generations. However, banks must also manage their data scientists and portfolios efficiently. Research from McKinsey shows only 16% of data-science teams follow a standard protocol when developing AI tools, limiting the creation of individualised initiatives. Additionally, only 8% of banks can utilise predictive insights from machine learning models, which is pivotal to contextual marketing. To overcome these challenges, banks should consider leveraging a third-party digital product designer and consultant to provide value and unify disjointed teams. Products like Salesforce and Einstein Intelligence are products already built ready to use and partners like Social Beat can help Banks meet up their use-cases increasing their engagement in return leading to happy and loyal customers.
In order to create great digital experiences, you need to first have a great team in place. If you're reading this, you've probably already come to the conclusion that you need a Martech team, whether it's to build a brand new Martech solution or to maintain an existing strategy.
Marketing automation can be proved very useful for companies if used correctly and if the correct decisions are being made. You can achieve outstanding results such as consistent higher ROI and conversions. Marketing automation can help dramatically increase productivity, which in turn will help you to optimize cost.
If you are thinking of implementing marketing automation in your company, there are some factors that you need to consider in order to make it work for you, but you will need qualified candidates. The main point here is that even if everything will be automated, there are some things for which your opinion and a team of well-trained employees will be necessary.
At this time, comes the need to hire the right people to do a specific job. This will be a big investment for you and your company. Therefore, your human resource manager needs to create a clear job description and interviewing process to hire the right team members.
Based on the experience we have outlined steps to build a Martech team with key roles and challenges that will come your way in building the team. Certain steps you need to follow:
It’s a very important step where you need to define the skill and roles you need to build for implementing an amazing Marketing Automation solution. Some of the skillset we have identified are:
Not only the roles can change but the frequency of the skills required would depend on the size of the project, engagement value as well as complexity involved.
So this leads to the question: Should you build your team in-house? Or outsource?
If your organization is large enough, there's a good chance you have the resources to hire an entire team.
First, map out the talent you already have available to you internally, and identify the gaps in skills that need to be filled. Then, before jumping immediately into recruiting for the specific roles outlined above, consider if you might be able to hire someone that is more of a generalist. For the skills that won't be needed often enough to keep someone busy full-time, can you find one person to wear several different hats? If so, can that person be effective enough at those different skills for your Martech solution to be successful?
After exploring your options, it's time to move into the recruiting and hiring process. Good Salesforce talent can be hard to find, but it's out there! A good place to start is on LinkedIn, searching for people with Salesforce capabilities that may be in or connected to your network. Networking in the community can be very helpful if you're looking for local talent: consider meetups, or local events if the timing is right. Getting reference also will be a good source to find talent. Posting knowledge articles and promotions post on LinkedIn are a good way to connect various sources and sourcing resume for profiles.
If your organization is smaller and you don't have the resources to hire an entire team for building and maintaining your Martech, your best bet may be to work with a partner.
If you do not have resources, it might make more sense to align your Martech project with a provider like Airum or Custom Centre rather than building an entire team to implement, monitor and maintain the solution. Even if you do have a knowledgeable IT staff, it may not make sense to use them for this if they are not used to working with the technologies needed to assist with Martech.
By working with the right partner, you can rest assured that your Martech solution is in the hand of experts. When evaluating partners to work with, you’ll want to first make a list of the things that matter most to you. You probably want more than just a great end result; more than likely, you also want to become smarter from the experience and retain knowledge, as well as have confidence that you’ll be able to develop the next solution.
Identifying what you want to get out of the experience besides the one off project will help guide you in choosing the type of company you want to work with. Some companies will focus solely on turning the martech platform around quickly. Others, like Mightas, focus on improving digital capabilities and maturity—while also delivering an excellent experience to your customers. If that entices you, look for partners that provide and create value for customers.
We also encourage you to choose a partner that contributes to Ohana. This will have a great impact on the Salesforce community and, ultimately, improve the overall ecosystem.
Building a Martech team can seem like a daunting and challenging process, but the good news is that you're never alone. When we started building the team at Social Beat we took time to consider the phases that occur after Martech license is sold, a new solution will need to do more than just automate martech—what integrations are required, what will come next in terms of digital transformation? Thinking about value, maintenance and growing your digital maturity may influence your hiring/staffing goals.
Quick Links
Rise of Business Messaging/Chatbots | Marketing Automation- Ally to Brands | AI-Tailored Creative Personalisation | The Metaverse and Marketing | CEOs to Become the Face of Brands | Rise of CDPs
“Change” an inevitable part of life that ensures that we evolve and are ready to adapt to newer things is also applicable to the digital marketing world. With the gradual dip in the financial curve in 2022 and the imminent recession that has begun to take its toll on global markets, it is essential that every digital-first brand learns about the latest digital marketing trends and adapts to them as quickly as possible.
Here are some of the most recent trends in digital marketing that every brand looking for a virtual presence must account for.
Marketing chatbots are an AI-tailored technology that ensures spontaneous responses to customer queries and increases customer engagement. With this round-the-clock customer support tool, businesses can drive audiences from the awareness to the consideration funnel by educating them about the product and also build brand image by communicating and resolving consumer queries.
Here’s an example of how an AI-tailored chatbot would work:
Source: Social Beat
Having said that, the digital marketing trends in 2023 might demand that we take it up a notch. While great for resolving minor/easy consumer queries, we need to focus on adding a human touch to our responses (both audio and textual). This will not just help you in driving conversions, but will also help in improving your customer retention rate through personalised engagements.
Tip: Customer personas can contribute to personalising your responses by helping you understand which tonality is best consumed by your customers.
Having talked about marketing chatbots, and automated responses, another crucial digital marketing trend is the improved efficiency of marketing automation platforms.
As popularly said by Sam Walton- “There is only one boss- The Customer.”
Customer experience has been a crucial digital marketing trend in every form of marketing and that aspect is not going to change anytime soon. However, with the precarious recession times that gradually plague the year 2022, CX will now be a cutthroat competition amongst brands.
While customer experience and personalisation have been in the talks for almost a decade now, only a handful of companies seem to have cracked this code. You might recollect making purchases on Amazon based on suggestions that popped up on your screen. And why won’t you? The offers that they targeted you with were personalized and exactly what you were looking for.
But at the same time, you often tend to ignore or spam-list offers sent by banks or insurance companies.
This difference is majorly brought by the efficient use of customer data by relying on Martech platforms to automate lead nurturing and targeting the right set of audiences with relevant campaigns.
Did you know that nurtured leads can increase sales opportunities by over 20% compared to non-nurtured leads?
Source: Salesforce
If you have difficulty managing customer data or lack the manpower to do so, you can now easily rely on AI to do the grunt work. Marketing automation platforms like Salesforce can help you automate lead generation, cultivation and also tailor campaigns accordingly.
Salesforce incorporates Einstein AI that can tailor product recommendations based on customer data interpretation and personalise services for individual customers. It can optimise your marketing performance by driving ROI and increasing spends with synergised AI-driven analytics.
Moreover, Salesforce Genie, a customer real-time CRM can harmonise all customer data into individual customer graphs and empower industry departments by sharing relevant customer profiles to adapt to the customer’s activities in real time.
Here’s how we leveraged Salesforce to improve Mosiac’s audience engagement by 4.3%:
Hop on to this efficient digital marketing trend with us, we can help you automate your marketing ventures seamlessly!
While an engaging customer journey is a crux, ensuring that your campaigns hit the mark visually is equally important. Different audiences have varied preferences for consuming content and catering to these versatile preferences is a must for brands to execute successful campaigns.
For instance, we personalised campaigns for Boat by incorporating creatives that resonate with their versatile range of audience bases on Instagram, Facebook and Google.
These personalised campaigns catered to wide audience bases be it fitness enthusiasts, Gamers, Marvel lovers, etc. and helped us garner up to a 2X ROAS (Return on Ad Spends) amongst the gaming audience and up to a 42% increase in CTR (Click-Through Rates) amongst the sports enthusiasts.
Source: Social Beat
However, catering to such versatile audience bases and working on bulk creatives for tight campaign deadlines requires a great deal of manual work and this is where creative personalisation platforms can play a vital role.
Rocketium, a creative automation platform can help personalise campaign creatives by adapting to different publishing channels, editing bulk creatives and generating highly relevant campaigns. Not just that, you can also create visuals from scratch or auto-generate Copywriter content and ensure omnichannel integration.
Similarly, Dall-E an automated deep learning module can help in generating digital images by combining concept notes seamlessly. It incorporates “Prompts” where you can type in commands and the AI-tailored application will render images accordingly.
BENEFITS:
With such automated creative platforms on the rise, creative personalisation of campaigns becomes a lot easier and hence this is another digital marketing trend that brands should definitely consider aligning with.
Talking about new trends in digital marketing, here is the most anticipated one for the Gen Zs- The Metaverse marketing! But what is the metaverse digital marketing experience?
It is a simulated digital ecosystem structured by components like Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Blockchain along with an in-depth integration with social media that virtually replicates the physical world. This opens up a whole new world for brands to launch products and even newer methods for marketers to promote these products.
According to Gartner, by the year 2026, about 25% of the population will spend at least an hour every day in the metaverse.
And truly so, major companies like Shopify, Nike, Coca-Cola and Samsung have already set foot into the metaverse with their marketing campaigns.
While it opens up opportunities to enhance the digital customer experience by exponential values, Metaverse will still require time to catch up with marketers. Why?
However, note that these challenges do not suggest that the Metaverse is not a good digital marketing trend to delve into. Rather, it is just a bit too soon for it to catch up with marketers. Thus, it is crucial that brands hop on to this new digital marketing trend and use this time to learn how the Metaverse works. Brands can understand how the Metaverse improves the digital marketing experience by and executing test campaigns in it. This will give them an edge over their competitors when the Metaverse starts functioning seamlessly.
While influencers and celebrity ambassadors with their herculean follower count have been the face of most brands for a long time now, we are approaching a gradual concentration of platforms.
This opens up gates for founders and CEOs to propagate and represent their brands themselves, thereby giving businesses a personalised face value.
Digital marketing trends show an increase in the number of founders coming out and lending their personas to brands. Major C-suite leaders like Elon Musk, Jamshedji Tata, Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs have come forward and represented their brands. Moreover, customer-centric actions like tweet responses to general customers, and the daily life of such CEOs can have a pivotal impact on how audiences perceive their brands.
For example, Elon Musk’s customer redressal and immediate support helped not just humanise the brand but also speak loads about its credibility.
Source: BigSpeak
Similarly, news about Jamshedji Tata visiting his aged employee and looking after the wellness of his other employees speaks loads about his integrity and adds value to his brand.
Having said that, giving a human face to your brand might also seem precarious as a negative backlash over a hasty tweet or one misconduct by the founder can end up hurting the entire brand as in the case of Ashneer Grover, the Founder of BharatPe.
Thus, while it is advised to adapt to the new trends in digital marketing, be careful and analyse exactly what your brand requires before acting on those lines.
While customer data is the key to personalising campaigns, it also poses another challenge for brands- the increase in data silos throughout the consumer journey and the efficient interpretation of this data.
For example, you might reach out to your customer in the form of an advertisement or a newsletter that the user accesses from a different device and a different IP address (either at work or at home) and then visits your website from a completely different device or network. This leads to multiple data entries for the same customer across platform-specific data silos. And this scattered data is what entangles brands and can result in breaches in the updated privacy norms.
With increasing emphasis on the customer’s data privacy and multiple privacy norms in place, it is essential now more than ever that brands get aligned with Customer Data Platforms (CDP). Wondering why?
Thus, with such herculean loads of duplicate customer data stacked up somewhere in between platform-level data silos, it is very likely that brands will unintentionally breach privacy norms. And with severe actions set in place against such breaches, it is paramount that brands invest in a well-integrated customer data platform to safeguard their marketing ventures. What’s more encouraging is the exponential reduction in efforts to scale up campaign results that these Customer Data Platforms have to offer!!
While the world was still licking its wounds dealt by the COVID pandemic, we had another global event, the Russia-Ukraine incident. With major blows to the global economic framework, a recession was never out of the question. With such shifts in the global economy and in the wake of worldwide layoffs customer behaviour changes and so do digital marketing trends. Right from the rise of automated marketing chatbots, to the personalization of brands through marketing automation platforms, we have discussed in detail all the digital marketing updates that brands need to be equipped with to brace 2023.
While a customer-centric approach has been and will always be the crux of every successful marketing strategy, it is essential that we also keep an eye on futuristic happenings. While you currently cater to the millennials and Gen Zs, the little ones (Gen alpha) who will soon become the spending force in the near future must not be left out of your marketing strategies. Thus, brands must also prepare for the futuristic eutopia of the metaverse that will soon become a major marketing platform (probably not in 2023, but definitely in the very near future).
Having aligned with the digital marketing updates for 2023, you might also be interested in:
While acquiring new customers is important, retaining earlier customers is also equally vital for any business. In fact, it’s a more cost-efficient way to scale. Hence, most brands of today are focusing to improve their customer retention rate.
Such customers know the service they receive from your business better than the newer customers. Moreover, their trust and experience with you make them potential advocates of your business. Therefore, your chances of gaining new loyal customers accelerate!
But before moving forward further, let’s define customer retention and how you can improve it. You can also visit our D2C centre of excellence, D2Scale for more info.
Customer retention rate helps a business understand the percentage of existing customers that a brand was able to retain over a given period of time. A good retention rate is one of the initial aspects that help a business maintain long-term growth!
While there are multiple factors that affect the customer retention rate of a company, Research Gate highlights some of the prime ones: Service quality, satisfaction, trust, and commitment. These are the major aspects to check from the customer’s perspective. Once aced, the chances of improving the retention rate increase by a massive difference!
Analysis of the rate at which a company retains its customers is not just limited to determining its ability to consistently provide value to them. In fact, it helps boost the company’s Return on Investment (ROI), improves trust and loyalty and thereby fetches new customers. It mainly prepares the company for long-term growth by maintaining healthy relationships with its buyers.
Let’s have a deeper look at why customer retention rate is so important for a business.
The cost of retention is extremely lower than acquiring new buyers. Experts say that finding a new customer is at least 6 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. Generally, the existing customers are deep into the funnel and are already familiar with the brand’s products/services. Hence, you don’t have to reach them through awareness campaigns and the like. So, brands can look into ways to enhance the four factors that affect their customer retention rate.
Generally, return customers tend to transact more with a brand they know over time. And as they buy more, that company’s operating costs to maintain or serve those customers decrease. Hence, as Bain’s Research tells us, a 5% improvement in retention rate generates around a 25% boost in profit!
Return customers generally pay more or upgrade their payment plans over time rather than choose your competitor who they aren’t acquainted with. Once they understand the value of your products/services and your deep commitment to them, they would find it comfortable. This will lead them to come back again to transact even more.
If customers are satisfied, they become advocates of your brand naturally. They would refer your services to a friend or family as they highlight to them the major resolutions they found while doing business with you! The new potential customers collect feedback about the services from people they trust to seriously consider. So, with a low cost of retention, you welcome new customers for absolutely free!
Before jumping straight into any retention strategy, let’s first understand where your current customer retention rate stands. First, take a time period, let’s say quarterly or yearly. And then consider the fundamental customer retention rate formula:
[(No. of Customers at the End of Period - No. of Customers Acquired During the Period)/ No. of Customers at the Start of the Period] x 100.
So, let’s consider a scenario. At the start of the time period, you had 40 customers, acquired 5 new customers within that time and the 2 customers drop off from doing business with you. Using the customer retention rate formula, the retention rate would stand as:
[(43 - 5) / 40] x 100 = 95% retention
Now that you understand where your customer retention rate stands, you can assess the reasons for the attrition rate. This would help you understand the potential scope of improvement and thereby reduce the attrition rate further.
Also read our guide on : Customer Lifecycle Value vs Cost of Acquisition in Ecommerce
Using a few strategic customer engagements, you can retain more customers within a given time frame. Here are some ways to improve customer retention for any company. You can try and test out any of the following to see the results.
You can look into adjusting the charges in a way that’s not hurting your profit but also shows your appreciation towards your customers. For eg, if you have an e-commerce business, you can make adjustments like allowing free delivery or other coupon options. Or, you can provide a cost-effective and smart subscription that helps them cut down costs as they buy more from you.
It’s a thoughtful practice to show the customers where their relationship with the company is heading. If it’s just the regular transactions and nothing more to it, it will appear as nothing special. This makes customers fall off as they start considering other better options.
Hence, a clear next step in the relationship can provide them with a sense of being a priority or valuable customer. A regular revisiting of the roadmap helps develop new initiatives that serve the goals of both parties mutually. Thus, you can boost your customer retention rate with this future roadmap strategy.
Asking for feedback doesn’t stop things just there. The answers from both leaving customers and existing customers provide clear scopes of improvement! If you don’t understand the reasons why customers leave, you will never act upon the problems. Once you receive feedback, your team can look into the issues that customers highlight and take proactive measures to bring the problem under control.
If customers see visible differences regarding those issues in a short span of time, they are more likely to continue with you.
Design a program that rewards your existing customers because of their loyalty. This strategic customer engagement would work as a consistent incentive program for them to come back to your brand for more. You can consider adding points to their profile as and when they refer your business to their family or friends. Or, you can try sending out an appreciation email with 8-10% off on their next purchase!
Moreover, it’s important to keep things simple in conveying the incentive message and actions. It’s imperative that the customer understands the program’s value easily and at once!
Now that you can define customer retention and have a fundamental understanding of it, you can run an audit and tweak the areas to fine-tune your business and the brand! Better yet, you can Download Our Retention Marketing Playbook for D2C Brands or visit D2Scale to gain a thorough understanding!
A good email marketing strategy can help retain customers and engage with them in a productive way. However, a prerequisite to building an email marketing strategy is building a credible reputation for the IP address that will be used to send the emails out. Have you noticed that a huge chunk of emails that are delivered to you end up in your junk or spam folder while some make it to your inbox? The reason why those emails land up in your spam folder is because of a bad IP reputation.
In today’s day and age when data privacy is so important, brands across the world are taking measures to ensure that they don’t spam their customers and if you are a brand that is new to email marketing, you need to ensure the same. IP warming is a very important activity that every brand new to email marketing must undertake to increase their email deliverability and customer engagement. Sending large volumes of emails to your subscribers without establishing a good reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will hamper your chances of reaching your customers.
Do you need it?
Whether you need to warm your IP address depends on two key factors-
The volume of Emails - If you are sending less than 10,000 emails a month, then you may not require an IP warming exercise. ISPs usually target brands that send large volumes of emails every month to their customers. However, it is a good practice to warm up your IP address even if the volumes are low as it helps build credibility for your business.
Dedicated IP Address - IP warming is required only if a brand is using a dedicated IP address. There are tools in the market that send emails via shared IP addresses and in those cases, brands don’t need to warm the IP address up. It is advisable for brands who send large email volumes to get their own IP address as the reputation depends solely on them. Using shared IPs can prove to be detrimental depending on the previous campaigns and reputation of the IP.
What is IP Warmup?
IP Warmup or IP Warming is the process of establishing credibility for a new IP Address or an IP that hasn’t been used in a while. The process includes sending emails from the new IP Address linked to the email account in small volumes and gradually increasing the number of emails each day or week depending on the schedule. The idea is to build credibility amongst ISPs ( Internet Service Providers) and ensure that the email is getting delivered to the subscribers’ inboxes.
Data shows that most connections from new IP addresses are attempts to deliver unsolicited spam or unwanted email. It’s important to build history when sending from a new IP Address to avoid landing in the SPAM folders of your subscribers. It’s highly recommended to gradually increase your volume of desirable mail to your subscribers to build a good reputation for your IP. Once a solid reputation has been built for your brand, you can start sending large volumes of emails to your subscribers.
How can IP Warmup help brands using email marketing?
Let’s look at how the IP Warmup exercise can help brands indulge in email marketing to engage with their customers.
IP warmup - Best Practices
Email Template Design for IP Warmup - Best practices
Here are some best practices to follow while designing an email template for an IP warming exercise -
If you are a brand that is looking to build an email marketing strategy to engage with your subscribers and need support in IP warming, reach out to us. Our team of experts have over 15 years of experience in creating robust email marketing strategies and have handled IP warm-ups for over 300 brands.
