Ben Davis says, “At Syzygy’s Digital Innovation Day, Paul Marsden discussed customer experience and the ‘Peak End Rule’, the idea that ‘finishing strong’ leaves a lasting impression. To demonstrate this he used the example of a colonoscopy, and a study by Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow. Consider the graphs below. Patient A has a 10 minute colonoscopy, with a pain peak in the middle and at the end, but otherwise endurable. Patient B has a much longer colonoscopy (25 minutes) and has a higher average level of pain throughout. He/she also experiences a large... [...]

James McQuivey says, “It’s the age of the customer and only the leaders who know how to lead their organizations to increased customer obsession will be able to keep up with hyperadoptive consumers. Those consumers already expect to get what they want, when, where, and how they want it. The only question will be who will give it to them? Will it be you? It’s a question I asked today on stage at Forrester’s Marketing Europe leadership forum in London. I shared with them an overview of my recent report, “Leadership in the Age of the Customer,” a months-long project... [...]

Jeff Rajeck says, “Customer experience (CX) is talked about a lot these days, but how are companies in the real world facing the challenge of launching a CX programme? To find out, Econsultancy invited dozens of client-side marketers in the tropical metropolis of Singapore to discuss CX at roundtables in April of this year. The roundtables covered topics related to CX and were moderated by volunteer client-side marketers and subject matter experts from Econsultancy and our event sponsor IBM. Delegates brought experiences from many different companies and industries and they openly discussed... [...]

Ellen Bartolino says, “We’re willing to assume that customer growth is important to your business, but creating an effortless customer experience that inspires retention is kind of complicated. Most companies spend the majority of their money trying to bring in new customers, but did you know that increasing customer retention rates by 5% can help you increase profits by anywhere between 25% to 95%? It sounds like customer retention is worth putting some time and effort behind, huh? Retaining customers all comes down to the experience you’re providing for them. And you’ll... [...]

Maddie Timms says, “The latest social network to announce a move away from a reverse chronological timeline is Instagram, impacting its 14m UK users. Many of these snap happy bloggers are in uproar – one petition has already attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters. But what about advertisers? Is this a further nail in the sequential social storytelling coffin? Is this bad news for all but brands with the largest followings? How can the impact of future changes on mainstream social networks be minimised for customer engagement programmes? Instagram is not the first social platform... [...]

Mark Harrington says, “By definition, the word “loyalty” means allegiance, faithfulness, or devotion. So it seems ironic — an oxymoron, even — that many retailers today say customer loyalty is fickle. The rationale is flawed. If you’re incentivizing loyalty with transaction-based discounts (as far too many retailers are), you’re attracting customers devoted to bargains, not brands. They’re loyal, just not to you. To build genuine loyalty — a customer base with intrinsic preference for your brand — retailers need to break with old-school tactics, realizing... [...]

Ben Davis says, “The single customer view (SCV) is one of marketing’s hot potatoes. Is it really feasible? Well, according to our latest Quarterly Intelligence Briefing: The Pursuit of Data-Driven Maturity (in association with Adobe), 20% of marketers have in fact achieved an actionable SCV. The survey has thrown up plenty of fascinating data – let’s take a look at a little bit of it. How is marketing data being used? As the survey report eloquently puts it, ‘the pursuit of digital maturity is increasingly synonymous with the pursuit of data maturity.’ With businesses... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “The results are in. Last month, we asked you, the readers of the MarketingExperiments blog, to write the most effective copy for a Consumer Reports email in a way that could also test which value factors were most appealing to Consumer Reports donors. To expand the amount of test ideas, we also asked the readers of the Convince & Convert blog. We’ll get to the results, and the big winner of the MarketingSherpa Summit package, in just a moment. But first, a little more background and a few lessons. A little background Every year, prior to MarketingSherpa Summit,... [...]

Ken Bowen says, “On February 22, we brought you a live blog post from MarketingSherpa Summit 2016, the signature event of our sister site. In the post, we looked at a presentation from Summit’s Digital & Data track by Mike Loveridge, Head of Digital Test and Learn, Humana. In his presentation, Mike discussed how he and the Humana team harnessed strategic, incremental testing to drive healthcare enrollment. While at Summit, Mike took the time to sit down with Courtney Eckerle, Managing Editor, MarketingSherpa, to discuss this iterative approach that the Humana team leveraged, including... [...]

Peter O’Neill says, “There has been quite a response to my comment in the last blog on planning a technology-focused track at our October B2B Marketing Forum. Thanks for your inputs. I am glad you are looking forward to it. I have the luxury of being able to invite many different experts to the Forum, not just the B2B Marketing analysts; so that track in Miami will focus on how to deal with the current marketing-technology offerings as an enterprise: how to architect, compare and procure, and manage the business case –through the full life cycle. I’ve recently enjoyed Ajay Agarwal’s... [...]