The way to engage with Australian consumers is through real-time, hyper-personalised experiences, a new eConsultancy report in partnership with Cheetah Digital reveals.
The report 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Index: Consumer Attitudes and Trends in Personalisation, Privacy, Messaging, Advertising and Brand Loyalty shows consumers across Australia interact with a brand on multiple channels, often unpredictably.
Email marketing reigns supreme
Email continues to sit comfortably as Australian consumers’ preferred channel for receiving offers, content, incentives, and rewards from brands, the report shows. In fact, when it comes to driving sales, email beats paid social and display advertising by up to 228 per cent in Australia. This is 120 per cent higher than consumers globally.
Price isn’t the only loyalty driver
The cheapest price point is only one factor of loyalty. Today, Australian consumers are loyal to brands that create emotive bonds by fostering community, recognising their customers as individuals, and delivering bespoke offers and product recommendations that reflect this. Even more, 63 per cent of Australian consumers are willing to pay more to purchase from a favoured brand.
“When done correctly, loyalty programs govern the value exchange between brands and consumers, and not just for a single interaction but for direct engagement over the customer lifetime. With contextually differentiated, personalised experiences, they can be the conduit for the one-to-one relationships that build customer lifetime value,” says Cheetah Digital’s VP for APAC Billy Loizou.
Greater personalisation yields ROI and long-term consumer excitement
In the value exchange economy, Australian consumers are rewarding brands that make personalisation a priority with more than half saying they will trade personal and preference data to feel part of a brand’s community. At the same time, there’s been nearly a 50-per-cent increase in Australian consumers who feel frustrated with a brand whose personalisation initiatives don’t recognise their unique desires and needs.
“Marketers need to first create a strategy that involves getting closer to their customer. Customers are saying, ‘We’re happy to provide our data and sign up to your marketing program in exchange for offers sent directly to me that are relevant,” says Loizou.
Trust in advertising is on the decline
As Google and other browsers cement their plans to comprehensively curtail third-party cookie tracking and consumers get even more proactive about protecting their online privacy, marketers must shift to a first- and zero-party data strategy to power their advertising and marketing initiatives. More than half of Australian consumers (63 per cent) don’t trust social media platforms with their data. And 69 per cent share they believe cookie tracking is “creepy”.
“People just don’t know what these social media platforms are doing with their data,” Loizou points out. “When Cambridge Analytica happened, I think a lot of people started losing trust in social platforms, so consumers are starting to want more control over their data and knowing how their data is being used.”
Access the Australian data findings here.
Access the global report here.
About Cheetah Digital
Cheetah Digital is a cross-channel customer engagement solution provider for the modern marketer. The Cheetah Digital Customer Engagement Suite enables marketers to create personalised experiences, cross-channel messaging, and loyalty strategies, underpinned by an engagement data platform that can scale to meet the changing demands of today’s consumers.
Many of Australia’s leading brands trust Cheetah Digital to help them drive revenue, build lasting customer relationships through leading loyalty solutions and deliver a unique value exchange throughout the entire customer lifecycle
These include local brands such as Bakers Delight, Humm Group, ING and global retail brands Williams Sonoma, Vans and Ralph Lauren who have successfully made their digital transformation and reached unprecedented milestones. To learn more, visit www.cheetahdigital.com or hear directly from our clients where they share their success stories by visiting our Signals On-demand hub at www.cheetahdigital.com/signals
