It used to be a given that marketers focused on
customer acquisition when the economy was doing well.
But different forces are at play this year, judging by the State of Cross-Channel Marketing 2024, a study by Moengage.
The
top three objectives for B2C brands this year are:
- Finding new customers — 57%
- Increasing customer engagement or loyalty —
44.9%
- Retaining current customers — 40.8%
But the reason is not the economy — rather, it is that “most marketers aren’t able to
retain their existing customers properly due to ineffective personalization caused by issues such as data silos, lack of real-time analytics, and improper tooling and methods,” the study
says.
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Specifically, B2C brands face these challenges:
- Budget/resource constraints — 45.4%
- Delivering personalized experiences — 39.5%
- Clarity around channel effectiveness — 36.5%
- Executing cross-channel
communication — 33.4%
- Data silos — 30.9%
- Real-time analytics — 27.2%
- Mapping to the customer
journey — 26.6%
- Unactionable data — 23.6%
Meanwhile, the most widely used B2C channels
are:
- Email — 89.6%
- Social media — 80.3%
- Desktop website —
67.1%
- Mobile website — 65%
- Mobile app — 49%
- SMS — 44.6%
- Direct mail
— 34.8%
- Mobile push — 33.4%
- Desktop App — 24.9%
- WhatsApp
— 13.5%
- Desktop push — 13.4%
The numbers are slightly different when it comes to effectiveness:
- Email — 75.6%
- Social media — 56.7%
- Website — 41.1%
- Mobile
push — 25.4%
- SMS — 23.3%
- In-app messaging — 18.7%
- Offline —
12.8%
- WhatsApp — 9.1%
How are B2C marketers using personalization?
- Using age,
gender, location, etc., for personalization — 42.7%
- Customizing communications for different customer journey states — 40.2%
- Personalizing based on previous purchases — 37.8%
- Tailoring messages based on customer real-time actions —35.4%
- Utilizing AI for product/content suggestions — 24.4%
- Not currently personalizing — 10.1%
AI is also taking hold
as B2C firms use it for cross-channel marketing:
- Generating and selecting content — 33.2%
- Subject lines and targeting — 32.3%
- Chatbots for customer interaction — 28.4%
- Message customization — 24.4%
- Predicting consumer behaviors —
23.2%
- Not using AI — 22.8%
- Pinpointing the optimal message — 19.2%
Moengage surveyed 730 B2C marketers in December 2023.