There seems to be a huge disconnect between what marketeers and consumers think when it comes to using SMS and email for marketing. Consumers want relevancy and personalisation, but a majority of marketers fail to deliver it, finds a study by Epsilon, a global company connecting people and brands. While 74 per cent of marketeers use marketing technologies to reach consumers via SMS, only 2 per cent of consumers prefer to receive marketing updates through this channel.
Similarly, only 28 per cent of consumers say that brands send them email offers well-timed with their needs. Around 66 per cent consumers say they receive too many email offers and promotions, and only 9 per cent say they are likely to sign up for email from companies in the next 12 months. Marketers shou?ld use email smartly for retention and engagement, rather than new customer acquisition.
For consumers, personalisation is the top marketing priority, but marketers face challenges to achieve it and differentiate their brands. On order to achieve personalization, marketeeers have to collect, analyse, synthesize, and react in real time to a flood of customer information and do so across multiple touch points and often disconnected internal teams. However, many marketers are still immature in data and technology readiness, cross-channel expertise, and bridging organizational silos. Marketers need to realign their marketing strategies and priorities to better serve consumers.
AI, rather than mobile, will be the key differentiator and the next battleground for marketers. Based on a solid data foundation, AI will largely increase marketing efficiency and help marketers achieve personalization at scale. One early adopter used AI to consistently identify the right search keywords, and successfully increased the number of daily leads by up to 40 per cent and reduced the cost per lead by 9 per cent, found the study. Consumers require transparency and privacy protection, but only 15 per cent of marketeers in India consider preparing for General Data Protection Regulation as a priority. “This research is a barometer for marketeers to guide them in reorienting their strategies and priorities to serve their consumers better and more effectively. We need to help marketeers understand what they are misreading when it comes to customer engagement. The study helps understand consumers and their predilections to help marketeers evolve,” said Ashish Sinha, country head, Epsilon.
