Are You Leveraging The Power Of Surprise And Delight?

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CMO.com

I recently had a surprise show up in my inbox--a $20 appreciation gift certificate. It was also the spark that reignited my loyalty to this particular company--a shirt maker--which went the extra mile to appreciate my business.

“By showing sincere appreciation with unexpected rewards, brands can build a greater connection to customers on an emotional level,” said Scott Matthews, CEO of CrowdTwist, a social loyalty rewards platform. “If implemented successfully, brands can realize increased customer engagement, reduced churn, and greater ROI.”

When embarking on a surprise-and-delight campaign, it is critical that marketers make the experience authentic and meaningful. This message from Charles Tyrwhitt, the company that sent the $20 gift certificate, caught my eye: "When you are a small company, it is only with the support of your customers that you can succeed, and that's you. So thank you. This voucher is yours to spend, it doesn't matter how large or small your purchase is."

Surprise-and-delight marketing is more than a “nicety.” It is powerful marketing! Here are some stats to keep in mind:

• More than half of shoppers say they would pay a higher price for the customer experiences they value most, and 77% of shoppers would be more loyal to stores that provide their personal top ... customer experiences.
• 68% of companies report they are allocating less than 20% of their marketing budgets to loyalty, yet 58% of companies say that more than 20% of total sales or revenue is attributed to the program.

Let’s take a look at two companies that know how to surprise and delight their customers.

MasterCard Brings Consumers Priceless Surprises
MasterCard began its “Priceless Surprises” campaign last year, but has taken it to the next level by introducing a mobile aspect to the already successful initiative that lets partners geotarget consumers with spontaneous treats. For example, if a customer is in an airport, an airline will have the option to send them a “Priceless Surprise,” which could be anything from a complimentary drink to a free upgrade, or they could receive a ticket upgrade at a sporting event.

“Mobile is something which people carry with them all the time and provides the best opportunity to reward the consumer with Priceless Surprises, more than any other media ... surprising cardholders across areas like sports, music, and fashion,” said MasterCard global chief marketing officer Raja Rajamannar in an interview with The Drum. “The activity has gone on to become one of the most successful marketing drives to date–delivering an engagement rate three times higher when compared against other brand programmes.”

Lego Surprises, Delights–And Wins
Surprise and delight can be in the form of an unexpected bonus, but it can also be in the form of an unexpected occurrence or event.

During the recent Oscar broadcast, dancers fanned out through the audience to hand yellow Lego Oscar statuettes to a celebrated audience of stars whose look of surprise and delight reached 35 million viewers. According to Amobee Brand Intelligence, Lego dominated the night with close to 47,000 social mentions on Twitter, 44% of the real-time discussion, and approximately $7.5 million of free advertising.

Three Takeaways For Your Brand
What can you learn from these examples?

1. 61% of consumers will tell friends and family about their experiences, so it only makes sense for marketers to use surprise “thank you” or rewards to enhance customers’ experiences.

2. According to Synchrony Financial’s customer experience study: “Certain experiences matter more than others to different shopper segments.” So going the extra mile to develop experiences targeted to specific segments will cultivate the value-based mindset that builds brand loyalty.

3. Know your customers and what they want; a surprise is only a delight if it is presented in a personalized manner that demonstrates your brand has taken the time to be relevant and sincere.

Marketers need to step outside of traditional strategies to give customers the types of unanticipated thanks, perks, and bonuses that give new reasons to be brand-positive and brand-loyal.

IBM Chief Strategist for Watson Trend App Answers 4 Questions for Marketing Innovators

Justin Norwood is chief strategist for the IBM Watson Trend app, and is an executive in IBM's Commerce business.

He has 14+ years of experience in initiatives that help clients use data for competitive advantage. Justin's eCommerce background blends expertise in cognitive computing and predictive analytics with experience in consumer products, retail, manufacturing and wholesale distribution industries.

Justin recently participated in our "4 Questions for Marketing Innovators" series.

1. What is one marketing topic that is most important to you as an innovator?
Personalization at scale. While 1-to-1 marketing has long been the aspirational goal, in practice most retailers are falling far short of delivering on the goal at scale. I believe that cognitive computing – of which IBM Watson is the leading example – is the missing link to making mass personalization a reality.

Many people know Watson from Jeopardy! but it's come a long way since then. Today Watson represents a new era in computing where systems understand the world in the way that humans do. Watson continuously learns, gaining knowledge over time, and it engages with people in a way that helps them quickly discover new things that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

2. Why is this so important?
Customers have been over-marketed to -- receiving scores of irrelevant, untimely messages and offers every day. This has numbed the collective senses of consumers and distanced people emotionally from the retailers and brands that they buy from. Shoppers long for serendipitous moments -- when a retailer seems to know them as an individual, sends the right message or offer at the right time, and delivers an exceptional experience. Shoppers want to be known by the companies they buy from - not as a segment or cohort, but as an individual.

3. How will the customer experience be improved by this?
A good example is our new iOS app, IBM Watson Trend, which can be downloaded for free. Shoppers can use the app to understand why people are buying certain products or brands this holiday season, and it also can tell what products will be hot next, before they sell out. The app does this by distilling sentiment of tens of millions of online conversations found in 10,000 sources across social media sites, blogs, forums, comments, ratings and reviews - something no human being could do.

The app has already improved my personal gift giving experience. I am a father of two girls, and my eldest daughter, who is 10, recently expressed her interest in building robots. We have looked for robot kits online and even visited a local hobby store, but we never found quite what we were looking for. Then last weekend I found the Meccanoid personal robot trend on the Watson Trend app. Meccanoid robots are targeted at 8 to 12 year olds (perfect for my daughter!) and come ready to assemble and program. I want to encourage my daughter's interest in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), so buying the Meccanoid is a no-brainer, but I doubt I would have found it without the insights of the app.

4. How will this improve the effectiveness of marketing?
In today's world of mass marketing and segmentation, there is so much inefficiency in the system. As marketers, our expectation of conversion rates is dismally low. But we aspire to something higher -- we want to create unbreakable bonds between our brands and customers. We want to know our customers and exceed their expectations, and when we do, customer satisfaction and conversion rates will grow exponentially.

There's a philosophy at my company that a customer's last, best interaction with a brand becomes their minimal expectation for every future interaction with any brand. At present, the expectation for serendipitous moments (such as finding the Meccanoid robot) is rarely being met, so customers are disappointed on a consistent basis. But with the right insights, retailers and brands can design mass personalization at scale for every shopper who decides to opt in. And for those shoppers, I think the serendipity uncovered by cognitive computing will become a normal course of daily life.

Bonus: Favorite activity outside of work?
Family and friends are very important to me – so spending time with the ones I love is a big priority. I am also very motivated to see an end to hunger and malnutrition in Africa in my lifetime, so I recently partnered with an organization called Seeds of Action to work towards that.

For additional Marketing Innovator stories, click here.

Alibaba's Success; 3 TakeAways to Help Your Marketing

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CMO.com

How did online retailer Alibaba leverage Singles Day into an event that will trump Cyber Monday in sales volume?

Singles Day, which originated at China’s Nanjing University in 1993 as an occasion for singles to party with fellow single friends, grew from a collegiate Internet sensation into a full-blown phenomenon when Alibaba transformed the Nov. 11 occasion into a day of sales.

Analysts expected this year’s Singles Day sales to surge to a new record. Six million products from approximately 40,000 merchants and 30,000 brands went on sale (as opposed to 1 million in 2014, according to Comscore). Chinese consumers were predicted to spend 1,761 yuan ($277) per person, which is a rise of 22% year over year (YoY).

Well, preliminary, unaudited numbers indicate that Alibaba broke records with sales of $14.3 billion, a 60% increase YoY.

As you plan for 2016, consider how Alibaba brilliantly listened to the needs of its target demographic and hit three key triggers to drive sales:

1. Singles Day is both a social/online event and a demographically targeted event: According to “The Millennial Consumer” study, events such as Single’s Day touch on many key points for this important segment: Millennials don’t associate with traditional media sources or advertising. To reach this group, brands need to use social media, events, and peer-to-peer connections; 33% said blogs are their top media source, fewer than 3% rank traditional media sources as purchase influencers, and only 1% said an advertisement would make them trust a brand.

Alibaba’s use of social media to unite this group around a common event was key because 62% of Millennials said they are more likely to become a loyal customer if a brand socially engages with them.

• Takeaway Tip: Listening to the voice of your ideal customer is more essential than ever. If your content and user experience are not relevant, relatable, and readily accessible to your audience, the impact will be diminished because you are not connecting with your audience.

2. Singles Day is a technology empowered event--specifically from mobile: According to the Millennial study, 87% of Millennials use between two and three tech devices at least once a day. This is critical when you consider that 43% of Alibaba’s transactions on Singles Day last year occurred on mobile.

According to Pew Research, “Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now smartphone owners, and for many these devices are a key entry point to the online world.” Additionally, one in five Americans stated that they “do not have broadband access at home, and also have relatively few options for getting online other than their cell phone.”

• Takeaway Tip: Developing specifically mobile strategies is no longer an option. It is essential.

3. Singles Day consumers favored U.S. brands, and that’s what they were provided: Chinese consumers like U.S. brands, and Alibaba said U.S. products were the top sellers on Singles Day. In all, 130 U.S. brands and retailers were a part of the Singles Day party in 2015.

What’s more, this year U.S. consumers got in on the buying at Singles Day discounts on several U.S. sites, such as Newegg Inc. and Nasty Gal Inc.

• Takeaway Tip: A sale for the sake of short-term revenue will not set you up for ongoing success. The event has to have meaning to the audience and comprise merchandise that conveys value, sparks excitement, and communicates time-driven urgency.

What you can learn from the success of Singles Day comes down to this: You must think holistically about your marketing and be a creative risk taker. Identify your priority segments and design the experience, merchandise, and meia mix to be special, differentiating, and an event consumers want to be a part of again and again.

In other words, create meaningful customer experiences that are more than just transactions.