TSW’s Senior Planner, Sarah Burns, shares her highlights
After two days experiencing futuristic digital tech, the science of marketing and the secrets of top brands’ marketing strategies, my passion for marketing was supercharged. And that was all before I witnessed a hotly anticipated battle of marketing minds, Mark Ritson and Byron Sharp, debate whether marketing is a science, or an art…although the jury is still out!
Throughout the two days of seminars, it was impossible to avoid the importance of using personalisation for successful marketing. The emerging trend seems to be that ‘big data’ is just ‘data’. It’s not the amount of data you have that matters, it’s what you do with the data that counts. And by ‘counts’, I mean, makes for responsive marketing through relevant targeting. personalisation to drive performance is something that speaks right to my DR heart!
Shop Direct discussed techniques which drive continued loyalty from their customers during their session on ‘Making Your Tech Talk’. They acknowledged that no matter what we know of the brand, the customer may not know the brand at all; you must earn and gain their trust. Secondly, we can’t know what the customer wants straight away; we must learn this over time through test-and-learn strategies and to communicate with meaning and purpose. In a fast-paced industry, this was a great reminder of how slowing down to implement these strategies can deliver that brand trust and loyalty.
- Keep your data clean so that you are talking to the right people, and most importantly, people who actually want to be spoken to!
- Know your data. Which really means knowing your customers and their trigger points; be that knowing their birthday, their favourite products, when they buy your products or how they interact with your brand instore vs online.
- Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. What would you want? Personalise your communications with them and make them feel special.