How to create effective customer engagement and personalisation at scale

Historically, most brand relationships with consumers have been reactive and one-way conversations. However, through effective customer engagement strategies and enhanced data insights, brands are flipping the switch and pursuing proactive relationships instead. But what does this mean? Essentially it involves leveraging a deep understanding of customer behaviours and preferences to accurately anticipate customer needs and deliver personalisation at scale.

Since the arrival of our current era of digital transformation and the dawn of what we’ve come to know as cross-channel customer journeys, customer engagement powered by personalised experiences has long been key to driving critical outcomes, including long-term retention, customer lifetime value, and more. And with lockdown restrictions driving users online and accelerating digital adoption, creating physical distance between individuals and the people (and experiences) they know and love, and altogether blurring the lines between channels, customer engagement and delivering personalisation at scale became all the more important.

As restrictions lift, and customers and companies alike start to navigate this ‘next normal’, effective customer engagement strategies will continue to be an essential part of demonstrating the value brands provide to their customers. That’s why we created the Braze Connection Hub to be a go-to resource for customer engagement, including timely sessions and fireside chats with industry experts from Skyscanner, The Guardian, AppsFlyer, Action Rocket, Wunderman Thompson, and CACI. This resource has been designed from the bottom up to help brands embrace – and thrive in – this next chapter in customer engagement.

Looking to set your brand up for success as the world emerges from the pandemic? Here are top takeaways from our Braze Connection Hub sessions, which you can watch online:

1. First-party data is even more important in a post-iOS 14 world. The effects of Apple’s iOS 14.5 mobile operating system on app tracker transparency and mobile user acquisition cannot be underestimated. In our ‘AppsFlyer: Facts and Figures on the Initial iOS 14.5 Roll Out’ session, we dig into what these changes in platform policies mean for organisations moving forward, the growing power of first-party data, and why having the right tools to optimise your retention and engagement efforts is more important than ever.

2. The future of email is accessible and interactive. Email marketing is always advancing. To get ahead of the curve, it’s time for marketers to embrace new preferences, capabilities and features, such as dark mode, accessibility, accelerated mobile pages (AMP) and more. Check out our ‘Action Rocket: The Future of Email’ session for all of the details.

3. Data quality is the secret to successfully launching new campaigns and products. Small improvements to your data quality can lead to major results – that’s the key lesson from our ‘mParticle: Get Your Flywheel In Motion With Data Master’ session. By allowing insights to amplify, you’ll not only be able to better know your customers, you’ll also gain a stronger understanding of their engagement and how your campaigns and product launches are performing, allowing you to iterate and keep raising the bar.

4. Effective customer engagement starts with putting customer needs front and centre to humanise the relationship between brands and consumers. There are four key principles modern marketers need to embrace to humanise their brands, deliver hyper-personalisation and scale rapidly. Check out our ‘Wunderman Thompson: Personalisation at Scale’ session to find out what these foundational elements are and our ‘Road To Recovery: How Skyscanner’s Customer Engagement Puts Customer Needs Front And Centre’ session for a real-world case study in adapting customer relationships to meet the moment during times of change.

Plus, with many CMOs being forced to abandon personalisation efforts that fail to deliver, our ‘CACI: Accelerating Value Delivery with Braze’ session walks through the exact steps your organisation can take to successfully deliver personalisation at scale. And don’t miss our ‘The Guardian: How Ace Brands Achieve Ace Results’ discussion, where we explain what sets superior customer engagement efforts of exceptional brands apart from the rest, and how these ‘Ace’ brands achieve their desired results. 

5. If you want to achieve higher customer lifetime value (LTV) and lower customer acquisition costs (CAC), you need the right martech stack. The links between customer engagement efforts and key business outcomes, such as lower CAC and higher LTV, are well known. As consumers move between experiences and channels, brands need to invest in the right marketing technology ecosystem – integrating best-in-class solutions – in support of a responsive, relevant, and cohesive customer experience. In our ‘Power Personalised Experiences at Scale With a Built-for-Purpose Tech Stack’ session, we explore how to build out the right suite of tools to meet your customers’ needs.

6. It’s time to recognise the untapped value of anonymous users. Most companies lack a clear picture of what value their anonymous users are delivering. Another challenge? Most do not have a strategy for how to engage, retain or monetise these individuals, leaving an untapped business opportunity unexplored. Be sure to watch our ‘Anonymous Users and Their Untapped Value’ session for ideas about how your business can optimise these anonymous users.

Next steps for accelerating personalisation and customer engagement at scale

When it comes to customer engagement, it’s not enough to know what you need to do – you need actionable guidance on how to make your vision a reality. To make that happen, check out our on-demand Braze Connection Hub sessions to dive into these key lessons and takeaways for acing your customer engagement strategy.