Email marketers are not the most popular people in America.
Among consumers, 79% wish email offers were more relevant, and 71% that they were more
timely, according to Revisiting the Gaps In Customer Experience, a two-part study from Redpoint conducted by the Harris Poll.
But it may be even harder to
stay relevant in email or any other channel if third-party cookies disappear.
Of the businesses surveyed, 44% say the loss of cookies will have a major impact on their marketing, and
27% say it will have a moderate one.
But only 18% feel there will be a major effect on new customer acquisition, and 47% say this will be
moderate.
Whatever the impact, brands are taking these measures to deal with the probable loss of third-party cookies:
- Incentives for consumers to opt in to tracking — 57%
- Investing more in first-party data — 53%
- Pursuing alternative IDs
that can be followed and monitored — 51%
- Shifting ad spend to more effective targeting — 47%
- Partnering with other companies to fill the gaps
— 45%
For their part, consumers feel this way about cookies. They are willing to:
- Let brands they explicitly approve use
tracking cookies to improve their experience — 67%
- Give some brands more information about them if they use it to create a more valuable customer experience —
66%
- Let all brands use tracking cookies to improve their experience — 39%
In the past year, companies have invested
in these areas:
- Data quality — 63%
- Artificial intelligence — 49%
- Personalization — 44%
- Real-time engagement — 42%
- Omnichannel presence — 41%
- Martech —
40%
But is it worth it? Ask consumers what they think about the data companies have on them, and they list these problems:
- Outdated
— 25%
- Inaccurate — 25%
- Inconsistent — 23%
Marketers list a different set of issues:
- Inaccurate — 39%
- Difficult to act on — 38%
- Fragmented — 33%
At the same time, few consumers
give an excellent rating to companies for their customer experience in general.
For instance, 23% say firms are great at customer understanding, while 47% of
marketers think they are acing this. And that’s only one sign of the disconnect.
In addition, 23% of consumers rate the personalization they receive as
excellent. Again, 44% of companies think they are doing fine at it.
On the positive side, 28% of consumers think brands are delivering an excellent experience.
That’s up from 22% in 2019.
Which industries are best at delivering an exceptional customer experience? Overall, the leaders
are:
- Retail — 27%
- Financial services — 23%
- Healthcare insurance — 13%
- Travel/tourism — 12%
- Consumer Packaged Goods — 9%
- Healthcare providers — 4%
Still, brands
don’t give the highest possible scores to their customer engagement systems. They say they enable them to do the following very well:
- Personalize the
customer experience — 49%
- Provide and access data in real time — 45%
- Drive revenue growth — 41%
- Understand the
customer’s context in terms of previous journey stages — 39%
- Aggregate customer data — 37%
- Provide a complete picture of the customer
across all data sources — 34%
- Provide a consistent experience across all interaction touchpoints — 34%
- Provide actionable insights —
33%
- Provide an up-to-date view of the customer — 33%
- Drive cost reductions — 33%
- Resolve customer identities across
devices and/or data sources — 32%
Not that impressive. And, marketers have other general general frustrations. They say:
- The
number of systems they have make it harder to provide a seamless customer experience — 77%
- That it has become increasingly difficult to manage the number of customer
touchpoints they have — 70%
- Technology has made it harder for them to effectively engage with customers — 67%
What are the top drivers
of advancement in the respondents’ CX strategies? They cite:
- Personalizing experiences to provide deep relevance and context that is meaningful and valued
by the individual customer — 41%
- Creating flexible delivery systems for services (e.g. curbside delivery, telehealth, online banking, SMS campaigns, etc.) that help meet
the customer where and when they want services — 36%
- Always on, omni-present, omnichannel experiences, support and service — 33%
- Moving beyond
a basic understanding of customer preference and anticipating customer needs — 32%
Firms are upbeat — 57% say they are making advancements in data quality, 46%
in artificial intelligence/machine learning and 45% in personalization.
What’s more, 90% are now using personalization for their websites, up from 82% in
2019. And 88% are leveraging AI/ML recommendations, versus 78% two years ago. Another 81% are deploying A/B multi-variate testing, compared to 78% in 2019.
The Harris Poll surveyed 1,500 consumers and 150 marketers in the July 7-16 time frame.