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Technologies That Drive Brand Loyalty and Sales

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Technologies That Drive Brand Loyalty and Sales

As the retail industry gets more competitive, it is getting harder for brands and retailers to maintain customer loyalty, but adoption of certain technological trends may hold the key to retaining customers, improving brand loyalty and increasing sales.

If a store does not match a customer’s expectations for pricing, product, or experience, the consumer will rapidly move on to a rival, which is bad for merchants who depend on client retention.

In the current context, marketing technologists are becoming more and more significant. They employ technology to address problems that their marketing teams are having. Good marketers who use technology perform the following:

  • Employ data to assist teams in creating more effective advertising and creative
  • Examine software capabilities in relation to organizational requirements.
  • Serve as a fusion of marketing and IT
  • Disrupt dated organizational structures when necessary

As the consumer landscape changes, investments in martech will become more crucial. With this in mind, marketing teams must make sure their martech stacks are being built up with solutions that provide ROI to the business while eliminating deployment or onboarding bottlenecks that may prolong time to value.

What is MarTech?

The term “marketing technology,” or “MarTech,” refers to a variety of programs and devices that help marketers accomplish their goals and drive brand loyalty and sales. The marketing technology stack is the collection of marketing technologies used by a marketing team. MarTech has established itself as a mainstay in digital marketing campaigns, but it can also be utilized to improve marketing initiatives in any marketing channel.

Difference Between Martech and Adtech 

Sometimes, Martech is mistaken for Adtech. These two programs’ differences are comparable to those between marketing and advertising. Adtech is only used to change consumer behavior by promoting offerings, whereas martech refers to technology that helps generate, promote, and deliver offerings. CRM software, for instance, falls under the category of martech, but social ad networks fall under the category of adtech.

Top Trends in Martech

Here are five significant technology trends that can boost brand loyalty and boost sales along with.

Blockchain

By connecting shops with users of various programs, blockchain technology is helping many businesses address problems including poor redemption rates, high expenses, low customer incentives, and security concerns. It enables users to obtain and use interchangeable loyalty tokens from several programs. Some benefits of employing blockchain technology include open systems, less clutter, more flexibility, fewer costs, transparency, and security.

Artificial Intelligence

In order to forecast output based on data input, many merchants, particularly the e-commerce companies, have been integrating deep learning technology into their systems to help drive sales and brand loyalty. Retailers can use AI to classify customers based on their demographics and purchasing patterns, allowing them to personalize the shopping experience and increase customer loyalty. Retailers also use data collected through AI to personalize incentives for customers and forecast their future spending patterns.

Digital Wallets

Retailers can benefit from the rising popularity of mobile wallets by using them to increase client loyalty. In an effort to increase customer loyalty, retailers are collaborating with various digital wallets to provide shoppers store coupons, discounts, incentive programs, and loyalty cards.

Customer Relationship and Brand Loyalty

Numerous merchants utilize CRM as a tool to track and manage a customer’s whole buying experience from a single location. Retailers may improve their interaction with customers by better knowing their needs and expectations thanks to this technology. Acquiring and analyzing sales data, retailers can use the technology to gather important information on trends, consumer behavior, and buying patterns. This helps drive brand loyalty and sales.

Retailers can then pool customer data to create better plans, make critical choices, and create initiatives to increase customer loyalty. Among the merchants who employ CRM technology in their operations are Zara and Amazon.

Customer Experience Management

CEM is a group of procedures used by merchants to monitor and control all interactions with customers throughout the customer life cycle. For the purpose of enhancing the customer experience, CEM gathers experiential data from customers and analyzes their feedback. Survey forms, A/B testing, customisable options, and customer assistance are common CEM features.

Some apparel companies are also integrating sustainability initiatives into their loyalty programs. One such company is MySize, which is launching a new virtual coin feature that will enable online retailers to offer consumers incentives to use their MySizeID to make purchases, thereby reducing the number of pricey returns and the carbon footprint.

Future Predictions for Marketing Technology

Marketing technology will advance and become more important in contemporary marketing strategies over time. Martech must, however, adjust to a changing marketing environment. Before making a martech investment, marketers should be aware of the following technological trends that help drive brand loyalty and increase sales:

  • Contracting Marketing Expenditures: According to Gartner’s latest forecast, marketing department budgets are leveling off. Due to this, businesses will have to defend their marketing investments and returns.
  • Put an emphasis on customer retention. Keeping an existing customer costs five times less than finding new ones. Marketers will start to change their emphasis from acquiring new clients to cultivating client relationships.
  • Importance of Understanding Marketing Spend – In 2016, only 18% of marketers recognized what multitouch attribution (MTA) was, according to Gartner’s Marketing Technology Survey 2018. In 2018, this percentage rose to 52%, with respondents stating that they used MTA to gauge the success of their advertising. MTA can only demonstrate online value, though. Marketers must embrace unified marketing measurement because they are always required to demonstrate ROI across all channels.
  • More Innovation – The disparity between established enterprise software businesses investing in cloud-based solutions and burgeoning start-ups is an intriguing one. More marketing innovation will result from this increase in competitiveness. In addition, as IoT and AI marketing continue to advance, marketing technology businesses will be able to offer clients more comprehensive solutions to support marketers in speaking directly with their audiences and determining ROI.

Final Thoughts

Marketing is one of those industries that are almost always the first to adopt and the last to skip out on a good opportunity and technologies that boost sales and drive brand loyalty by any means necessary. Living in a choice abundant attention economy means that marketers need to use any facet in their disposal to get an edge on their competitors, retain customers, and garner new leads.

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