The effects of Covid-19 on the travel and leisure industry have been substantial, to the say the least, since stay-at-home regulations go against everything it stands for. The World Tourism Oganization reported a 72% year-on-year fall in international travel from January to October 2020, with a loss of $935 billion tourism dollars.

As a top British daily news brand, our customer reaches 1 in 5 UK adults every day and 70% of the population each month. In 2019 it launched a tablet and smartphone app that allows users to enjoy content from the UK or Scottish editions of its daily periodicals, along with exclusive daily radio broadcasts, podcasts and videos from leading journalists. This draws 34,000 weekly users, with an impressive dwell time of 47 minutes per day.

As an enterprise organization, do you know what your customers want? What they really want? Ask a corner shop owner and they can likely tell you everything about each individual customer’s behavior, needs and desires. They will be able to make recommendations based on that customer’s buying habits and family, and confidently cater to their needs or wants. Of course, smaller businesses benefit from an emotional, invested customer relationship, but how can you create this corner shop customer experience at scale for millions or tens of millions of individual customers?

Throw away your old metrics! Start thinking about intention, progression and aversion

Social media, mobile devices and more accessible broadband have changed consumers’ buying habits and flipped the customer journey completely on its head. Twenty-five years ago a marketer could send a campaign and measure responses and conversions in a chronological pattern, but now customers have a plethora of platforms to choose between and can meander any which way they choose, so it’s very hard to shepherd them along a defined path.

However, marketers are still clinging to old, linear campaign metrics (sends, opens, clicks and transactions), which do not accurately measure the journey of the modern, platform-roaming consumer. The truth is that this linear mind-set is highly ineffective when it comes to measuring the success or failure of a non-linear customer journey.

Nobody buys a new car in a hurry. After all, a car is the second most expensive purchase that people routinely make (after a home), and those purely interested in utility or seeking an emergency replacement tend to shop second hand. A new car is a status symbol. It represents who you are, how you live, and what you like to do in your spare time – and that’s without thinking about keeping your family safe, the likely weather and road conditions, and your mileage and environmental preferences. Automotive clients know what they’re looking for and are willing to hold off until they find it. So, the buying journey can take years and approaching the right customer in the right way is absolutely critical.

Poor quality data is the result of numerous errors that can progressively ruin the success of your marketing campaigns. In fact, according to IDG, poor data quality is one of the modern marketer’s biggest concerns, with 66% of those polled declaring data quality and accuracy as a “top priority”. 

Inaccurate names, addresses and contact details, along with duplicate records and decayed information, will distort your view of a customer, resulting in poor campaign results and inaccurate insights. Worse still, it creates a bad experience for your customers whereby they either miss out on a specific offer, are targeted wrongly or receive the same message multiple times.

Customers are now more in tune than ever before with knowing what they want from a brand experience, and how they want to be engaged with. According to Accenture, 81% of consumers want brands to understand them better and know when, and when not, to approach them.

It’s clear that marketers understand this too because 77% believe real-time personalization through customer data is crucial. However, despite knowing this, only 33% of marketers admit to actually being able to truly personalize the customer experience in real-time.