INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY

Your customer’s true stories around brand engagement are increasingly more impactful to your brand value than any direct marketing. More significant, when that story is driven by authentic and empathic attachment, there is nothing more sustainable in customer loyalty. Even more, the transactional approach to loyalty has been supplemented by an emotional experience that is meant to be shared. 

Yesterday, brands were the sole author of the message, voice and company narrative. No more. The information highway is a two way street, and the speed and importance of dialogue and rapid response is palpable. Since the pace of marketing is now determined by immediate and ready access to the digital world, customers can instantaneously become an extension of your company’s story—for good or bad.

It starts by inspiring your customer to tell their story about their experience with your company in an authentic way.  By building empathy and creating an emotional connection that reverberates through the ether, customers become the amplifier of your message and value in their own words and pictures.  When you put your customers authentically at the heart of your brand, make some difference in their lives by deeply understanding and synthesizing their desires into providing unforgettable customer experiences, you turn your customers into building blocks of the brand’s ethos.  

A new report from Capgemini’s Digital Transformation Institute titled, “Loyalty Deciphered?How Emotions Drive Genuine Engagement,” reveals that emotions have the strongest impact in driving customer loyalty.  

What’s more, the report says that retailers that can foster customer loyalty through higher emotional engagement with consumers can increase annual revenue by five percent. Specifically, the report says, honesty and trust have the greatest influence on customer loyalty.  Building meaningful, deep-rooted loyalty means thinking less about points and rewards and more about driving emotional engagement. Consider the following statistics from the report:

 82 percent of consumers with high emotional engagement would always buy the brand they are loyal to when making purchasing decisions (compared to 38 percent of consumers with low emotional engagement).

81 percent of emotionally connected consumers will not only promote the brand among their family and friends, but they will also spend more too.

70 percent of consumers with a high emotional engagement spend up to twice as much with those brands.

Emotionally engaged consumers are loyal to the brands they love and willingly act as ambassadors to family and friends. They want brands to be engaged and reciprocate their loyalty in two-way interactions (86 percent), but they also enjoy giving back to a brand (81 percent). Consumers also want differentiated shopping experiences both online (75 percent) and in store (73 percent).

Brands need to change the way they build relationships with consumers so they are focused on building engagement and mutual trust, rather than being transaction-focused, the report notes.

There are four key components to drive the attachment that brands should follow to create strong positive emotions, and therefore deeper engagement and loyalty with their consumers:

Respect: Fulfill your commitment by promoting honesty, trust, and integrity.

Reciprocate: Build a two-way relationship with consumers.

Recognize: Make the effort to truly know your consumers and understand what they care about to create meaningful experiences.

Reward: Provide timely, meaningful rewards that promote long-term relationships in exchange for loyalty.

To these ends, brands that serve customers in smarter ways by using technology to personalize unforgettable experiences and create deep emotional interactions will seize the opportunity to instill long term loyalty. When we create connection by building relationships that go beyond a transaction and create a meaninglful and relatable experience, we can create breakthroughs in the lifestyles of your customers.

“Consumers are immune to transaction-based loyalty programs of the past, so a retailer’s engagement with consumers needs to shift from being transactional to more emotional and meaningful,” said Kees Jacobs, Consumer Goods & Retail Lead, Insights & Data Global Practice at Capgemini. “Decoding human emotions will ensure that brands have a better understanding of their consumers leading to building deep-seated engagement and long-term loyalty with them. With a potential revenue boost of five percent up for grabs, and weak emotional connections ready to be exploited by the competition, no retailer can afford to ignore this reality.”

Moving from a single dimensional, rational approach to the emotional experience of customers who share their stories requires us to break conventions and to inform a new customer journey.  The payoff is real and the opportunity to engage and retain customers in a meaningful experience can be transformational.  What’s your story?