Using digital breadcrumbs to increase engagement

Over the last few years more marketers are increasingly showing an interest in learning about the benefits and opportunities of 'owned data ' - data that a company can naturally obtain by nature of doing business as opposed to data collected or purchased through partnerships or data vendors. The chart below shows a notable increase in Google searches for "first-party data" since 2020. In fact, it's an interest born out of necessity. The trigger for this surge in desire to learn more is the increased spotlight on customer privacy and the gradual deprecation of third-party cookies.

First-party data by definition is the data you collect from customer active or passive interactions with your digital properties, platforms and communication channels, such as your website, mobile applications, beacon technology, EPOS system, emails etc. Each interaction results in a digital signal which can be tracked - often referred to as digital breadcrumbs.

This article will look at some practical use cases and examples of data signals that can be tracked and how they can be applied spanning the full customer lifecycle to help drive engagement and successful business outcomes ranging from conversion to retention.

Campaign Type Preference

Some people love promotions, others like longer form educational content. Maybe someone is a seasonal shopper who only visit your site during the holidays or another time of year to buy that special gift for a loved one. Do they search or buy products for a gender that doesn't match their own? Use signals from past campaign engagement, site visit frequency, browsing and purchase patterns to support segmentation and targeting of campaigns.

Welcome Campaigns

Welcome journeys offer a valuable opportunity to form a strong first impression about your brand and what the customer can expect from you. It might just be the most important part of the customer lifecycle to drive CLV. Since the customer is new and you likely have very limited data on them, you have to use the breadcrumbs wisely to help you make data-driven assumptions about who they are, what else you can do right now to delight them, and what else they might need from you in the future. Some examples include:

• What was the source acquisition marketing channel? If it was a paid social ad why not encourage them to engage and follow your social properties and upload a product unpacking video in return for a special promo code, boosting owned and earned media opportunities and deepening engagement. In short, use channels which you know customers hang-out in.
• What can you learn from their buyer journey itself? Did they view a single product and purchase it or did they browse multiple products or product categories before making the purchase? Be sure to include those other viewed products in your welcome program using dynamic content, and if you include a special welcome discount promo you'll boost chances of an immediate follow-up purchase. I've tested this and saw amazing results including a 900% lift in follow-up purchases within 30 days!

Tracking and learning from Welcome program engagement signals

Track penetration and depth of engagement with your Welcome email program. What I mean here is if your program has a series of 6 emails, if somebody engages with ANY email that's a 100% penetration, which is a good start, but if they engage with only one of the 6 then it's a 16.6% overall program engagement which is a bit on the low side. This might indicate a few things:

• Email isn't their preferred channel
• You don't need as many touches (maybe you're being overzealous about how much you really have to say or think your customer wants to hear)
• You have some work to do to make the other touches in the program stronger.

Conversely, if somebody engages with more than 50% of your emails then you know straight away that they are very responsive to this channel and it should form a core part of that persons customer development program. Knowing a person's preferred channel is just as important as the message itself and you need to have the capabilities to track, capture and execute across a multitude.

Post Purchase Campaigns

Use the signals from the welcome journey and other browsing and purchase data to inform your Post Purchase strategy to make it personal. Present complimentary content or products based on past purchases and content engagement.

• If somebody purchased lawn fertilizer then how about an ongoing educational program throughout the year with lawn care tips, helpfully timed when action is required based on the time of year. Stay relevant with products and content you know they like, but also present things you think they might like. If you get a bite on that, then you've learned something new.
• How soon or frequently somebody visits your site after making a purchase can also be a telling signal. If they revisit before a purchased product it has been delivered, perhaps they're looking for shipping time info? You could use this signal to take pre-emptive action and offer help via support chat -think about how powerful it would it be to show a message saying "Are you looking for an update on your order made on Dec 12th?"
• If you get a lot of people checking your FAQ's looking for shipping info, maybe it's a signal that you need a more robust post-purchase communication program about shipping status, improving customer experience by reducing post purchase effort/pain.

Browse and Cart Abandonment Campaigns

We all know what these are, and how powerful retargeting campaigns are but the breadcrumbs can do so much more than just send a follow-up campaign featuring the product they last viewed. Other signals can provide insights for abandonment to help you better understand they 'Why', and what your next best action could be.

• Are you seeing much higher abandonment on mobile than desktop overall, or maybe just for specific products? Do you need to adjust specific product pages or the entire mobile experience?
• Form abandonment happens when the form is too long, difficult or is simply perceived to be a poor value exchange on the customers part - Why am I being asked for this info? What am I getting in return? Didn't I already provide this before?
• When it comes to product retargeting, don't bucket everyone together. Use signals to understand intent. A cart abandon shows much higher intent than browse abandon. Somebody who searches very specifically for a product using the search tool or filters such as "Nike Air Max 270" know exactly what they want. Somebody who clicked 'Clearance Items' from the nav pane and then hopped around different product categories might not be as clear in what they really want. On the other hand, this tells you that they're a deal hunter and like bargains - see section 1 (Campaign type preference).

Inventory Planning, Alerts and Product Descriptions

Do you get a spike in specific product searches at certain times of year, or with particular weather patters? This can help you to better plan stock levels and prevent having to display those disappointing 'Out of Stock' messages on products which can result in lost revenue and customer frustration. On those occasions when somebody does abandon due to a product being out of stock, that signal can be used to retarget them via ad networks or owned channels when that product is back in stock, even if they didn't ask for it.

If people searching for products that you don't sell, use those signals to help drive your new product launch strategy, even down to using the specific language they use to search for those products which is gold for your campaign messaging and keyword strategy to support your marketing and product description efforts.

Retention Campaigns

• If somebody is visiting your site searching for ways to cancel or opt-down a subscription, the intent is quite clear.
• Non-activity, such as a drastic reduction in usage, log-in, engagement such as reviews, less frequent visits to a physical location are all non-activity or change activity signals which might also suggest trend shifts, demographic changes, competitor activity or boredom with with your brand.
• If this happens on a large scale then you know that a competitor is doing something better than you right now such as running a marketing campaign targeting your customers, or there has been a shift in behavior trends.
• Use these signals to trigger an outreach to retain your customers and try to stymie the loss in business quickly.

I hope these examples help you understand how data signals that represent customer actions or even lack of action can tell us many things about their intent, pain-points, and what we as marketers can do to meet their needs.