Can We Truly Humanize the Digital Experience of Our Consumers? 3 Tactics

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If you’re a marketer, it's time to prioritize the role of digital initiatives and experiential marketing in your customer journey. Because the pandemic has caused sweeping changes in consumer behavior that is likely to last into the future.

For too many brands this was not their focus until now; they approached online interactions with customers as if they were only looking for faster or simpler ways around shopping—which is important but doesn't fully engage people on human levels like those revolutionary companies do who take an intentionally focused approach towards making all things seamless (and enjoyable).

Virtual and digital experiences are more engaging than in-person ones. They provide the chance to give customers what they could only dream of getting at retail outlets these days while building a stronger relationship with them through fantasy branding services that feel like white-glove concierge offerings from brands such as Disney World, Rebecca Minkoff, or Nike.

We all know that when we decide between two brands, it's not a rational decision. Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman found out 95% of consumer decisions happen on the subconscious level- so to acquire new online customers and hold onto existing ones you need digital experiences built for growth in their minds!

To make a consumer feel positive about their interaction with your brand, you should provide them memorable and relatable assets that build connections. The digital experience has the ability to introduce these types of cues — from founding stories and logos all the way down to voice-of— into our minds because it's different from any other medium out there for marketing purposes!

The sustainable footwear company Allbirds positions itself at the center of three waves: minimalism, environmentalism, and transparency. And they do a great job immersing the consumer in nature. Check out one of their ads here:

As our minds are networks of accumulated memories and associations with brands, they dictate which one we prefer at an instinctual level. Michael Platt from Wharton Business School calls this network "the Brand Connectome." The brands who have leadership in their category most positively influence consumers' unconscious brains (the part where likes live).

The new technology of today is able to bring people together in a way that was never before possible. Brands can overcome the digital divide by using experiential marketing, which helps them connect with customers on more personal levels than ever before!

The digital world is becoming more and more competitive. To stay relevant, brands need to understand their customers at an individual level rather than simply following trends or focusing on large groups of people in order for them not only to feel like they are being valued but also have faith that this company has what it takes when there’s such high demand from other companies claiming similar premises as yours.

The best way to know if your digital experience is working? Don't just rely on customer satisfaction surveys! These can be skewed by reputation inflation, giving marketers an overly positive assessment that doesn’t really tell you anything. Look at more than one dimension. Did the experience feel customized to people’s needs? Do customers believe the digital brand’s world came to life through a distinctive look and feel? Do they now associate certain language and images and a particular tone with the brand?

With the rise of digital commerce, brands have a new era to grow their businesses in. These times are perfect because consumers want more direct contact and interaction with companies online; they're not afraid or resistant towards trying something different when it comes down to how you shop. The winners of this new era will be the brands that manage not only to maximize their virtual presence but also become more human at the same time.

3 Tactics to Humanize Digital Experiences

1.??????Capture a more in-depth view of the consumer’s life by bringing broader insight data sources.

• Be transparent
• Offer meaningful experiences and benefits to the consumer
• Allow consumers to customize or opt-out of data collection, to build trust and enhance engagement.
• Invest in best-in-class cybersecurity to protect customer data.

2.??????Build a fine-tuned shopper’s journey.

Identify key engagement moments while locating friction points. Combine digital, virtual, and physical (aka phygital) touchpoints to build and offer an ideal shopping experience.

• The consumer doesn’t experience our brands in silos or channels, it’s an all-in-one experience for them.
• Creating the blueprint for phygital experiences requires the understanding of how consumers want to shop our category, rather than exploiting trends.
• Fine-tuning the shopper’s journey might mean changing the operational framework and the team structure.

3.??????Phygital sales orchestration is essential.

The digital sales orchestration will enhance the virtual stores, chatbots and deploy avatars to respond to consumers’ queries. AI-powered customer engagement tools will connect troves of consumer data and personalization insights with the customer-facing employees. And the contemporary physical stores will reflect consumer needs to be supported by new sales processes and business models.

• Provide access to information for customer-facing teams via digital tools
• AI-based customer support or chatbots should help staff rather than replace them
• Explore connecting teams between online and offline stores with employee engagement

Aware of how today's consumers are utilizing both the digital and physical worlds; Nike sought to create a new 'digital' retail experience. An experience that combines retail store, eCommerce, and mobile customer journeys – seamlessly. Check out Nike’s digital retail experiences that they launched in Berlin in 2015 (!) and New York City (2018) here:

If you thought 2020 was tough on budgets, 2021 turned out to be the hardest year for marketing budgets since the Great Recession. CMOs lost resources as budgets shift to fund enterprisewide digital investments. In those times effective marketing and personalization tactics that drive higher ROI become more and more important.

Source: Source: 2021 Gartner CMO Spend Survey

by MIT Sloan School of Management

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About Mert Damlapinar

Mert Damlapinar has been in director roles for eCommerce, digital marketing, and sales, he's currently Global eCommerce Lead, Sr.Mgr. for Mondelez International. He holds a master's degree in Applied Business Analytics from Boston University, executive management certificates in Integrated Digital Marketing from Cornell University, and Applied Data Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He's currently working on his 2nd book.