Rob Brosnan, Senior Vice President of Strategy at StrongView, discusses the increasingly personal nature of user data and says that if brands and marketers can be more explicit about how they’re using it, everyone can benefit
As it becomes harder for marketers to attract consumers’ scattered attention, the onus is on brands to provide richer, more useful, relevant content. But to serve users with more effective content, brands need access to detailed consumer data and, says Rob Brosnan, former Forrester Research analyst and now Senior Vice President of Strategy at StrongView, this is an approach that needs to be grounded in utility – for both parties.
“The beauty of a direct communication like email, whether it’s delivered programmatically or not, is that it’s incredibly rich. It’s equivalent to delivering a web page to the consumer which can be customised and personalised. Email, potentially, is a blank canvas. And it’s a pretty big canvas that can scale from a phone all the way up to a desktop. Email is still a very important piece of your infrastructure. Texts and other push notifications are incredibly important but they’re not rich experiences. Email has that, and it’s also highly personal.”
The key to effective email, says Brosnan, lies in embedding it within a broader strategy. “Welcome programmes, cart abandonment emails, trigger-based communications – these are often seen as tactics rather than as part of a wider philosophy of what a brand can do to stimulate and engage consumers. We need to look at the bigger idea: what promise are we hoping to fulfil? What will help us do that? Look at programmatic pieces such as welcome emails. This is marketing based on context and it needs to demonstrate your brand’s utility. Service your users in a way that’s unique to the experience they’re having.”
Context marketing
A first step to achieving that is to build “a framework of messaging around specific contexts.” The next step is to target users through a dynamically personalised email, and to follow that with a programmatic campaign. “Look at all those little atoms of content that can be assembled into an email which is then wrapped round the user’s specific experience.”
In the travel industry, this might take the form of a pre-stay campaign alerting visitors to local amenities after they’ve booked a destination. “This is designed to meet a direct need,” says Brosnan. “A hotel that takes advantage of consumers’ needs in this way is going to drive loyalty. When we start to see all this data come in, the question is how we can tailor a number of different content atoms that can be quickly assembled. That can be very valuable to the customer experience.”
As Brosnan points out, this process requires an active programme for sourcing data. And that may involve an approach that extends beyond your trusty CRM system and takes into account the full range of digital communication. As an example he points to personal tracker manufacturer FitBit’s partnership with US drug store Walgreens.
“Walgreens will reward you for exercising but they need to connect your FitBit data to your Walgreens account. That provides a really detailed, intimate look at who your consumers are. It also allows Walgreens to make a promise that says, ‘Hey, we’re not just a drug store. We’ll help you in your life.’”
Access to this sort of personal data inevitably raises concerns about privacy. “Privacy isn’t just a legal issue,” says Brosnan. “There’s a sense of permission attached to it. Do I agree that I want Walgreens to have this kind of intimate relationship with me? Some people just want Walgreens to be a regular drug store, and that’s fine. But if you perceive this as more of a value exchange, it enables Walgreens to communicate in a timely fashion when it matters to consumers.”
Relationship mapping
So, though email may be the starting point, it’s not long before traditional distinctions between marketing channels start breaking down. Compare London’s Tube map with a map of the streets above, says Brosnan: these are two completely different representations of the same city, reflecting two different sets of needs. Similarly, mapping an organisation’s internal business structure onto your customers’ daily requirements can reveal two very different journeys.
“Think about it,” says Brosnan. “As a retailer, what are you good at? Finding new locations for stores. Handling merchandise and inventory. Stock management. But what does a consumer want? They’re just trying to take care of a sick child. Marketing’s next step will be to really deliver what consumers want. It’s not enough just to make that promise. You really need to fulfil it. There needs to be an additional layer where marketers say ‘Our job is to create a value exchange. Give us the data and we’ll solve this problem.’
“To take Walgreens as an example again, as a drug store they might have a lot of data about you which is highly intimate. Historically they’ve shied away from using it in a marketing context. But we’re engaged in trials now where, when Walgreens receive a prescription from a doctor they can tell what kind of prescription it is. So, if it’s for the antibiotic Amoxicillin in a cherry flavour, it’s probably not for you but for a child. As a consequence, Walgreens are trialling a service where they say ‘We have this prescription and we can deliver it to you, which means you don’t have to leave your child at home.’
“That’s an incredibly valuable service. Right now it’s an implicit exchange: the consumer agrees that it’s okay for Walgreens to use the data in that way because the consumer’s getting an additional service. But I think we need to make that more specific, more real. Instead of just thinking about privacy and data management as an implicit exchange – I’ll give you better prices if you give me this data – we actually need to collaborate at a brand level. If a brand says explicitly to a consumer that if you share this data we can give you these additional services – we can all be much clearer as an industry.”
Data share
In order for this to work, says Brosnan, brands may need to reconceive their roles in people’s lives.
“If brands saw themselves as digital data businesses who use that data to power the other things they do, they might then take a different attitude to what they say to customers. For me, as a consumer, I can then say, ‘It’s okay for you to have this very intimate data about me, if you essentially pay me for it.’ And payment in this case takes the form of you providing me with very useful services.
“It’s not a scary discussion, but we do need to get over this idea that there’s an evil boogieman in the closet waiting to attack you with your own data. Right now the industry isn’t helping itself because it keeps hiding this away, as if there’s something wrong with it.”
So, from a relationship that began with a humble email we move towards a position where data is a currency which can be traded between brands and consumers.
“If you’re very explicit and make it clear that every time you interact the experience gets better, just as Google’s search engine does, then it can become a strong relationship to have, especially if consumers feel they have control.”
This feature appears in Figaro Digital Issue 23 – January 2015.
Feature by Jon Fortgang