eMarketer report tackles how to track consumers’ multiplatform behaviour
With consumers in the UK increasingly using multiple devices, often simultaneously, advertisers need to find new ways to keep track of their audiences.
A new report from eMarketer, “UK Key Trends for 2015: Consumer-Focused Technologies Shift Up a Gear”, looks at the initiatives for following and responding to consumers which include general gathering and analysis of customer data, customer relationship management (CRM), mobile apps, loyalty schemes and location-based marketing. It says: “In many cases, these efforts are not integrated; in 2015, advertisers will make significant progress in tying them together”.
Data is seen as a prerequisite for more profitable relationships with actual and potential consumers. According to a poll by Research Now for Adobe in the second quarter of 2014, 70% of UK marketers polled said capturing and applying data to inform and drive marketing activities was “the new reality,” and 66% said marketers needed to embrace hyperpersonalisation. And 65% said data from websites, ad campaigns and other efforts helped to inform their marketing creative too.
The report continues: “As marketers hone their efforts, UK residents are more exposed to targeting and personalisation than ever before.” In September 2014, polling by Redshift Research for BloomReach, provider of a personalised discovery platform, revealed that among UK digital shoppers who had some experience of personalised communications from online retailers, 69% had been shown product recommendations, and 63% had seen a named greeting. A further 44% had been shown product collections based on their previous site behaviour. And 27% of communications had also taken the consumer’s location into account.
Another approach is to link payment technology more closely with systems that can deliver personalised offers.