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MODERN MARKETING | Companies Need To Engage With Customers Rather Than Spy On Them

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 06:33:33 -0500

Article first published on Modern Marketing on 25 November 2021, written by Paula Sartini

Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, discusses how to gather customer data effectively to create great customer experiences.

Customer privacy is a term that we are all too familiar with, as regulations such as the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have come into effect to protect customer data. However, checking boxes to ensure that you are meeting the requirements of these acts is not going to win over your customers or help you to establish connections. It could also negatively affect the customer experience and damage trust.

While customers seek tailored and personalised experiences that delight, often these experiences feel generic and do not deliver the desired response from customers. This is partly because companies have got stuck in the data, using information such as birthdays to remind customers that ‘we know you and we are thinking about you’, but instead, this reminds them that you are watching them.

To create delightful customer experiences today, companies need digital transformation to gather customer information, create unique experiences, drive personalisation and build trust and need to move away from spying on customers to rather engaging with customers.

As customers continue to use online platforms for searching for information, shopping, engaging friends and family on social channels, and connecting to the brands they love, companies are inundated with an abundance of data on purchase history, search history, engagement history and more.

This information may be useful to determine what your customers like and possibly gives you enough information to provide targeted deals and information about the product ranges they have browsed online. But this does not delight your customer and it may even have the adverse effect and lead to negative responses. While some theories state that customers may respond differently depending on where they are in the customer journey, many customers believe that just because you have their information, it does not give you the right to use it.

Rather than adding to the customer experience, many of the interactions from companies remind customers that they are being watched and while they may have provided you with their details as a trade-off for something that they wanted from you, they do not necessarily want to be bombarded with information or spammed with offers.

According to new research, how companies use customer data is becoming more important to the customer experience. However, many companies are using a mix of customer data that has been collected either via on your own platforms known as first-party data, second-party data whereby companies use other company’s first-party data, and third-party data, which may have been purchased from another source unrelated to the company.

While collecting data from cookies or observing purchasing habits has been a quick and easy way for companies to collect customer data over the past few years, this company-centric approach has a rebound effect on the customer relationship and delivers a lower return on investment (source).

Based on this, companies need to find new ways to gather customer data that are privacy-friendly and gathered first hand. This move from tracking customer behaviour to engaging customers also allows for companies to establish deeper relationships with their customers and build trust.

After years of tracking customer behaviour, it could be a daunting process for companies to discover new ways to gather customer data but according to Forrester, there is a way to gather data straight from the customer. This approach, which they have coined Zero-Party Data, entails asking customers directly about their context or needs.

Based on this approach, customers intentionally and proactively share data with a brand, helping companies to gain insight into customer’s preferences, purchasing intentions, personal context and how they want brands to engage with them.

This aligns with Justice Theory which adopts three pillars. First, customers will give data to companies based on what they will get for the data and if they foresee a fair outcome, this is known as Distributive Justice. Next, is Procedural Justice, customers are concerned about how the process of data is handled and how well they were treated post-purchase. Finally, Interactional Justice is about the elements of the interaction from the tone of voice and use of language.

By gaining valuable insight and data about customers, companies can engage customers more meaningfully, improve customer expectations and build trust throughout the buyer’s journey. Zero-party data can also be used to tailor personalised experiences, creating experiences of one that are authentic and delight customers.

For companies wanting to embrace the customer-centric approach to gathering quality data without infringing on customer privacy, the zero-party data strategy enables companies to gain the information they want in a manner customers are willing to provide to improve customer experiences.

There are several mechanisms available to do this, though companies should not bombard customers with requests for information or overwhelm them with questions. Rather, gathering customer data should be a seamless part of engaging customers and gathering the information that you need to improve the customer experience.

To gather this data, companies would benefit from using tools that are easily available to each employee and gain feedback as part of the customer engagement. For example, incorporating email surveys into customer’s correspondence can help to gather valuable insight into what the customer’s expectations are of the brand and how they want brands to interact with them.

Although many companies are waiting for a magic bullet solution to customer experiences, when it comes down to experiences, it is about really listening to your customer and allowing them to tell you what they want.

MODERN MARKETING | How To Maintain Brand Health

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 04:34:38 -0500

Article first published on Modern Marketing on 15 August 2021, written by Paula Sartini

According to Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, as a starting point, companies need to assess their brand health and determine if they are still relevant in the market today. To achieve this they need to understand what is important to their customers today and evaluate if their brand purpose and brand promise are still relevant for today’s discerning consumers.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the world and consumer needs have evolved accordingly. Consumers are more discerning now than they were a year ago and what they wanted from brands before may no longer matter to them today. This is supported by McKinsey, which found that 40% of consumers switched brands or retailers during the past year as customer concerns shifted to safety and hygiene and their expectations of brands changed. As customers are revaluating their expectations, companies need to adapt to stay relevant.

Companies have spent a lot of time and money building their brands over the years. However, over the past year brand expectations have changed and consumers now expect more of the brands they support. They are looking for brands to live their values and demonstrate a greater commitment to their employees and the communities they operate in. They are looking for brands to be purpose-driven and accountable, taking action to help people in this unprecedented time.

This is supported by Brand Finance, which states that brand expectations have changed and they are now expected to provide collaboration, protection and security. This means that companies need to shift their focus from brand campaigns and consider how their brand actions can improve the lives of their customers and prioritise employee safety if they are to build their brand reputation.

The Checkers Sixty60 app is a great example of how a company adapted its business model to meet its customer’s needs. The pandemic led to a radical shift in online shopping and the app provided a seamless experience at a time when people did not feel safe leaving their homes, demonstrating the company’s commitment to customer wellbeing and customer experience.

Many companies have changed how they work, putting employee safety at the fore and enabling them to work from home during the pandemic. While this was necessary and important, it has impacted customer experiences. With employees fragmented and working from disparate environments, the quality of experiences is likely to be inconsistent.

To help employees provide the best customer experience, they need access to the right information at the right time. Systems need to be put in place to empower employees to provide quality support to customers wherever they may be working from. This is supported by SmarterCX, which states that service teams should be empowered to work from home with the right tools and knowledge base to assist customers with consistent information.

With people spending time in isolation, the human experience is more important than ever. Brands enable customers to connect with humans, get assistance, receive emotional support and solve a problem. This human touch is critical to customer experience and to building trust. According to McKinsey, a primary barometer of customer experience will be how businesses deliver experiences and services to meet customer needs with empathy, care and concern.

This is supported by findings from the latest Global Marketing Trends Report from Deloitte, which found that customers are seeking authentic human connection from brands with more than a quarter of consumers stating that they will walk away from companies they perceive to be acting self-interestedly.

As the pandemic has created great uncertainty for many people around the world, customers want consistency from the brands that they support as they seek stability and reassurance at this time. As such customer expectations verse the experience they receive is critical at this time and is a key measure for brand health. According to PwC, consistency is more essential in 2021 than ever as customers expect seamless experiences and this, in turn, builds trust, loyalty and customer retention.

According to Deloitte, brand health is a measure of how well a company or brand delivers on certain attributes of a product or service that it promises its customers, especially how those attributes are perceived by customers in terms of quality and delight. Given that customer expectations of brands have changed over the past year, companies need to assess their brand promise and customer expectations to determine if they can align.

Forrester suggests that brand experiences and customer experiences be tightly interwoven by implementing four key components. First, companies should evaluate the brand strategy, second, they need to ensure it flows through to the customer experience. Third, they need to enable the brand promise to become a reality and then implement structures to ensure the delivery of the customer experience. Finally, companies need to measure the brand experience against the customer experience.

As customer needs change, brands need to adapt to remain healthy and competitive. This means understanding what customers want, engaging employees, and implementing technologies to help empower employees to deliver consistent brand experiences and delight customers regardless of where they are working from.

To maintain brand health, companies need to continually track and measure their brand and customer engagement as follows:

Assess the brand and determine if the values make a difference in the lives of employees and customers.
Measure the customer experience by gathering customer feedback. This can be achieved with a Net Promoter Score or similar mechanism.
Give employees technology solutions that free them up to engage with customers directly and provide the personal touch that makes each customer feel important.
Put measures in place to deliver consistent brand experiences in every customer interaction.
Consistently measure your brand health by evaluating your brand strategy and ensure that it flows into the customer experience.

It is important to measure brand health regularly and adapt the brand strategy to meet customers’ evolving needs.

MODERN MARKETING | Brand Consistency Is A Key Driver Of Business Success

Sun, 30 May 2021 01:44:47 -0500

Article first published on modernmarketing.co.za on 26 May 2021, written by Paula Sartini

Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, says many companies do not have content governance systems in place to manage brand templates, documents, presentations or content. This results in duplication of work, employee inefficiencies, inconsistent branding and increased workloads, particularly for the IT and branding departments.

Document creation and management have a big impact on the day-to-day life of a knowledge worker and subsequently on a company. Generating documents is a time-staking process with the average employee spending approximately 50% of their time creating and preparing documents. Despite this time investment, approximately 83% of employees recreate documents that they cannot find on the company network. All of this time spent creating and recreating brand documents is estimated to cost a company over R300,000 ($20,000) per annum.

The value of having the correct brand assets easily available when they are needed extends beyond improving employee inefficiencies, it also improves customer and employee experiences, driving customer and employee retention and positively impacts the company’s bottom line.

Whether employees are developing documents, presentations or emails, content should be easily accessible and companies need to gain control of this process to overcome employee inefficiency, drive down costs, improve brand consistency and enhance customer experiences.

SAVED TIME MEANS MONEY SAVED

According to Tech Crunchies, document issues account for over 21% of daily productivity loss. The average salary in South Africa is R22,500 per month, which means that companies spend on average R4,725 per employee per month on document issues. That amounts to R56,700 per employee, per annum in lost productivity.

Having correctly branded and up-to-date templates, document, presentations and email content easily accessible to employees as and when they need them, helps to improve employee efficiencies as it saves time spent searching for documents that have been misfiled or accidentally deleted. This also prevents the need for employees to spend time reproducing branded content that already exists and gives them peace of mind that they are sending the correct and most recent and brand compliant documents and templates to customers.

ON-BRAND DOCUMENT COMPLIANCE ACROSS THE BUSINESS

Brand consistency is a key driver of business success. When you take your brand seriously, customers believe you pay attention to every detail and this reinforces your values and builds brand trust. As part of this, templates are an important component of business communication and need to carry the correct content, logo and brand elements – including the font used.

Within organisations, many employees can access, edit and save company templates and documents, resulting in brand inconsistencies across documents. In some instances, outdated templates are used carrying incorrect company details from the director’s details to contact numbers, which raises questions about the legitimacy of the document. Further, brand inconsistencies across documents dilute the brand, influence brand perceptions and impact customer trust in the organisation.

To overcome this, companies should be able to share the latest documents and templates across the organisation with immediate, permission-based access. However, employees should be restricted from being able to override content on these legal and binding documents, which can result in incorrect information being sent to customers. This is supported by findings from Kroll Ontrack, which attribute 26% of data loss incidents to human error.

IMPROVED SECURITY

Implementing user permission access to branded assets such as letterheads, templates and documents based on specific departments or individuals adds a layer of security to this content. It also allows for companies to monitor who accesses the documents and the changes they make to them.

While managing document accessibility within the organisation is important, it is equally important to safeguard access to company assets and templates by third parties. In some instances, companies save all their brand assets and templates on an extranet for employees and partners to easily access, but it is just as easy for third parties to access. Companies should save these documents within secure, access-controlled environments, such as a cloud-based platform, to allow for content to be updated, shared and managed while protecting against third party access, which could have dire consequences for the brand, including potential fraudulent activities and reputational damage.

BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Empowering employees to access the information they need at the right time enables them to work effectively and improves employee satisfaction levels. This has a direct impact on customer experiences as inspired employees put in more effort. With the brand compliant content easily available when it is needed, employees can focus on meeting customer expectations with improved response times and on-brand content every time.

The real value of brand-compliant templates and brand governance lies in the ability to remove the content clutter from the workplace, empowering employees to meet customer expectations and deliver customer experiences that drive satisfaction levels and retention. It also reduces the need for IT and branding departments to fix mistakes after the incorrect content has been sent out and aids companies to meet governance and compliance requirements. In addition, with a secure, cloud-based solution, the company can minimise potential reputational damage to its brand by preventing third-party access to branded templates and content.

MODERN MARKETING | THE BALANCE BETWEEN CUSTOMER PRIVACY AND PERSONALISED TARGETING

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 13:44:48 -0500

Article first published on modernmarketing.co.za, 19 January 2021, written by Paula Sartini | see article h ere

Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, discusses the need for striking the balance between customer privacy and intimacy/personalised advertising. While the role of the marketing department appears to have evolved significantly over the past few years, fundamentally it is still about building relationships.

With the rise of social media and other digital platforms, this has increasingly meant that relationships are based less on human contact and more on personalised digital communication.

Consumers are aware of the inevitable trade-off between privacy and personalisation, aptly termed the privacy paradox. Earlier research into the paradox of what consumers say and do was attributed to consumers simply not knowing enough about the pitfalls of sharing personal information too readily.

More recent research in the US shows that many consumers have resigned themselves to the fact that their information has been traded as a commodity, yet privacy concerns remain a key consideration when disclosing online. This is supported by the Digital Marketing Institute which states that privacy is a top concern for online consumers, with 86% taking steps to improve their online safety. With this in mind, companies need to prioritise customer privacy and control by implementing security and privacy standards as well as customer control over their personal information and communication preferences.

As marketers have traditionally been responsible for establishing relationships with customers and implementing initiatives to build trust, they also need to take responsibility for customer data. This includes customer data protection as well as providing customers with means to control their own data – regardless of where in the lifecycle of the relationship they may be. While Information Technology teams can and should be held accountable for ensuring that customer information is not compromised by data breaches or intrusions into the company environment, it is marketing’s responsibility to ensure that customer information does not ‘get out’ and is treated with the utmost respect.

Marketers have a responsibility to take good care of consumer data and cannot take this for granted. There is a difference between security and privacy and more often than not, these terms are used interchangeably.

SECURING CUSTOMER DATA

IT has the responsibility of keeping data secure and ensuring that it cannot be accessed by potential hackers. A key responsibility is to prepare for possible security breaches and ensure that there are security measures in place to protect customer data. According to the Institute of Digital Marketing, IT departments need to focus on where data is stored as well as implement security measures along every step of the process of data acquisition through to use and storage.

This is an important first step to keeping customer data secure and meeting customer expectations. This is a big responsibility as according to an Accenture study, 75% of consumers consider personal data as their second-biggest concern after increasing costs. However, according to PwC, 75% of consumers do not believe that companies handle their data responsibly. So while consumers expect companies to keep their information safe, they don’t often believe that companies do. This gap is a trust gap.

CUSTOMER PRIVACY

Over the years, marketers have collected massive amounts of customer data to provide positive and personalised experiences. While customers have come to appreciate the personalisation, they are concerned about their data falling into the wrong hands.

For this reason, marketing departments need to take responsibility for customer data and how it is handled. This is supported by The Federal Trade Commission, which states that marketers are legally obligated to treat customers’ private data respectfully and fairly. Based on this customers require transparency in how their data is being used for marketing activities. A key concern is that many marketing departments outsource various initiatives to third-party agencies, which require that private customer data is shared with companies outside of the business.

According to Financial Post, if companies transfer private customer information to third parties, the onus remains on the company to keep the data safe. With this in mind, customers are reliant on the relationship they have with selected companies to keep their data secure regardless of whether they use third party companies or not.

While marketers may trust their partners and suppliers, it is important to verify them and confirm how they use the data you provide them with as well as understand how their data policies align with regulatory requirements. After all, if your customers trust your organisation and their data lands in the wrong hands, you will ultimately be left with holding the bag.

CUSTOMER TRUST

Attitudes towards data may be evolving, but trust remains the constant and key factor when it comes to understanding what people feel is most important about data. Adding to this, brands that fail to take responsibility for their customer data ultimately lose customers, goodwill and shareholder value.

Based on this, trust is the most valuable component in the customer relationship. Before a customer will give you their data, they have to trust you and believe that you have their best interests at heart. Once they have given you their data, you have to prove that you are trustworthy and will use their data as agreed.

This can be achieved by putting measures in place such as permission-based access to customer data, which limits the number of employees that can access the customer data. However, beyond internal measures, companies would benefit from empowering customers with verification tools to protect themselves from potential threats such as email verification tools that can help prevent customers from falling for spoofing or phishing emails.

Trust is earned. It takes time. It is only through repeated interactions that trust is built. It is also fragile and easily lost. Just because a customer shares information does not mean that they trust the organisation or that it is an open invitation to receive unsolicited communication. It is merely the first step in a journey. Customers should always feel that they are in control.

If organisations want to build trust, they need to visibly show the evidence of the measures that have been put in place to ensure that customers remain in charge of their information. This includes, but is not limited to, privacy policies, customer control over the personal information they have provided, how it is stored and its deletion. This should also extend to behavioural data.

In all your interactions with your customers, your brand tells a story – it says whether or not you are consistent and trustworthy or flighty and unreliable. By focusing on brand consistency across all documents, presentations, emails and more, customers establish trust and believe that if you are willing to focus that much attention on the smaller details, you are credible and will pay attention to the bigger issues such as customer data security and privacy.

While secure IT infrastructure is a key component to keeping customer data secure, customers expect more than adherence to regulations and the latest technologies to help protect their data from falling into the wrong hands, they are relying on the brands they trust to live up to their expectations and put measures in place to ensure that their data will be used responsibly and safely. Without customer trust, brands will not survive.

BUILDING BRAND TRUST THROUGH CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND PRIVACY

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 22:59:25 -0500

Article first published on www.modernmarketing.co.za, 7 October 2020 | see article here

Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum International, states that privacy management is critical, not only as a compliance tool for legal and compliance practitioners but also as a tool for building trust with customers.

As such, marketers have to be involved in privacy programmes to establish trust and deliver the best user experience to meet customer expectations, which include treating customers in a manner in which they feel respected and valued.

Customer privacy is under the spotlight as South Africa follows in the footsteps of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other privacy regulations that have come into effect across the globe.

The newly implemented Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI Act) aims to govern how organisations collect, store and use personal information and while compliance and governance have traditionally fallen under the legal department’s domain, this is changing. Marketing departments can no longer ignore their role in adhering to the requirements of the POPI Act.

While customers are willing to disclose personal information and have this information used by an organisation, they want to know that the company has procedures in place to protect their individual privacy. According to Deloitte, data privacy is about more than keeping hackers at bay, it is also about assuring consumers that the trust they place in a brand is warranted.

WHAT IS PRIVACY WORTH?

Customer privacy and its importance for business and profitability is gaining attention as consumers are increasingly aware that companies are collecting their data and do not know what it is being used for.

Consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy, with the PWC Consumer Intelligence Series: Protect. Me citing that as many as 85% of consumers will not do business with a company if they have concerns about its security practices. Further, if companies have privacy scandals associated with them, it eliminates the potential brand from being considered during the selection process of the buyer’s journey, thereby decreasing the chances of being chosen for purchase.

However, as many customers are not experts on data privacy, they expect the brands that they trust to put their privacy at the centre of all decisions they make. In other words, the trust that consumers place in brands trickles down to the privacy measures they believe the brand has in place to keep their data secure.

Trust and customer privacy go hand-in-hand and companies need to live by their brand promise and protect their customer’s data if they are to meet customer expectations and establish a relationship of trust.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE BUILDS BRANDS TRUST

Although marketers have traditionally used customer data, gained either directly or via third party sources, to develop targeted campaigns, consumers needs have changed. While customers want personalised experiences and targeted campaigns, this needs to be balanced with compliance and privacy requirements.

Transparency is critical to this process. Customers are more likely to give companies their data if they know that they are collecting it and what they will be using it for. This is supported by Deloitte’s 2019 US Retail Privacy Survey. Investing in building trust through consumer privacy can deliver a measurable return with 73% of consumers stating they are more likely to share data with companies that have privacy policies in place and advise how their data will be used.

In essence, customer experiences develop trust and the data companies collect should add value to the consumer. Consumers want customer-centric user experiences that deliver on the brand promise while adhering to privacy policies. To achieve this, the customer has to be central to the business strategy, which includes the marketing and technology strategies that need to drive brand security.

IMPLEMENT PRIVACY BY DESIGN

Legal, marketing and IT departments need to work closely together to ensure that the proper privacy standards are adhered to, brand experiences delivered according to the brand promise and customer data is secure all times. As such, marketing departments are becoming more reliant on IT departments to gather customer data and implement technology solutions to deliver on-brand experiences that adhere to brand security standards and maintain relationships of trust with customers.

Companies stand to benefit from using technologies that have been independently tested and align with European security standards to give customers and employees peace of mind that data is gathered and stored securely. Further solutions that have been designed with security upfront to include segmentation of risk ensure that content is safeguarded and secure throughout the data storage and usage processes.

CONSISTENCY GIVES PEACE OF MIND

The increased focus on customer privacy means that marketing departments need to keep customers informed that they are collecting their data and how they are using it. They also need to ensure that they are engaging customers on their terms according to the data they have collected.

It is equally important that marketing departments pay close attention to brand consistency across all company platforms such as websites and emails as this reassures customers that the company takes their privacy seriously. When companies pay attention to the smallest details in their branding, it gives customers peace of mind that they take their brand seriously and will have put thought into the brand security, privacy policy and strategy.

TRUST IS MARKETING'S RESPONSIBILITY

Customer privacy can no longer fall solely in the domain of the legal department. Customer privacy has to move beyond checking compliance boxes to ensure that the company adheres to privacy regulations that have been stipulated by the government. Rather it is about focusing on the customer and prioritising trust.

To enhance customer experiences and build relationships of trust, marketing departments need to play an active role in establishing privacy or trust policies, implementing brand security measures and putting the customer at the centre of these strategies. Customers seek transparency and confirmation that companies will protect their data while balancing this with personalised customer experiences.

Overall marketing departments need to invest in privacy and take it seriously. From the newsletters companies send to pop-ups on websites and the technology solutions they implement to help deliver customer-centric experiences, customer privacy and brand security needs to be at the core.

BRANDQUANTUM MULTILANGUAGE OFFERING MEETS NEEDS OF GROWING GLOBAL USER BASE

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 04:09:32 -0500

MANTAINING CONSUMER TRUST THROUGH BRAND PURPOSE

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 07:16:54 -0500

According to Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, many marketing departments are questioning whether they should continue with the planned advertising campaigns and risk being seen as insensitive to the current situation, or go dark when customers are looking for familiarity and stability.

History shows us that companies typically opt to go dark during times of crisis to avoid positioning the brand negatively. However, this approach does more damage than good. Rather those companies that continue with their marketing campaigns are viewed more positively and survive a crisis better than those that don’t.

People have a personal connection with the brands they use regularly. During uncertain times they rely on these brands to continue with their marketing campaigns and keep communication channels open to maintain a relationship of trust. This is supported by a WARC study, which found that during the Covid-19 pandemic, only 8% of consumers expected brands to stop advertising.

The relationship that customers have with brands is about more than a transaction and during a crisis or pandemic, customers are looking for an indication that the brands they support will continue to exist beyond the current challenges. Engagement with customers at this time should go back to three fundamentals: brand, strategy and customer.

YOUR BRAND PURPOSE MATTERS

Branding at its core is about connecting with people and this remains true during a time of crisis or pandemic. At this time, it is most important for companies to live their brand purpose and for their customers to see this. The brand purpose reinforces the brand’s reason for being and is the reason why customers connect with the brand on an emotional level.

It is also important that companies remain true to their brand values and use this time to add value to their customer’s lives. According to research findings from Opinium, during the coronavirus pandemic, people are looking for brands to keep communicating about topics other than the pandemic and provide escapism through topics that are relevant to the brand. For example, Opinium found that customers want business updates, advice on dealing with the crisis and products and services that may be useful. However, beyond this, customers want to know that the brands that they trust are making a difference to the lives of the broader community, including their employees.

SHARE YOUR STRATEGY

Your strategy is important to your company and your customers. This is particularly true when they are surrounded by uncertainty. At this time, customers are worried about job security, illness and poverty and are looking at brands to share insight into how they are dealing with the pandemic and what they are doing to get through the crisis.

People are looking for good news stories amid the worry and want to know that companies have plans in place to protect the organisation, its employees and its brands. Customers want stories about new innovations, are looking for inspiring ideas from your brand and want to know how companies are making a difference in their communities and within the organisation.

According to Opinium, during at this time, customers want to hear from the CEO (30%) and frontline staff (37%) as they seek information about company strategy and want to know that the employees are being taken care of. This is supported by Fabrik Brands stating that customers want to see that you care about their needs as well as your employees and they are looking for evidence that leaders of companies are putting the needs of their employees first too.

CUSTOMERS WANT TO CONNECT

Branding is about connecting with people and building a relationship of trust. While the way we currently do business has changed how we connect with people, the connection still remains key for customers. With budgets being cut and customers being inundated with information about Covid-19, companies need to find cost-effective ways to connect with their customers through the clutter.

Customers are looking for sincere, authentic brand communications from the brands they trust. While budgets might be tight at this time, connecting with customers doesn’t need to be expensive. Simplicity and consistency in communications are sufficient to keep connected with customers, providing certainty and making customers feel secure during these uncertain times.

With many customers moving to email and online platforms to engage with companies, it is important that branding and messaging are delivered consistently at every customer touchpoint, from the email signatures and banners to the attachments included in email communications.

While marketing departments strive to keep brands connected with their audiences, automation technologies can ease the process and deliver consistent, on-brand communications in every customer interaction to help build a relationship of trust with customers that are looking to maintain a connection with their go-to brands.

ENSURING YOUR COMPANY'S DATA IS SECURE DURING LOCKDOWN

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 03:41:03 -0500

Article first published on modernmarketing.co.za, written by BrandQuantum, 21 April 2020 | see article here

According to Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, many companies have shut their doors during the lockdown time, while others have implemented work from home strategies to maintain their operations and meet their customer’s needs. Whether employees are working from home or the office, customers expect them to keep their data secure at all times.

To equip employees to work from home, many companies have put fundamentals in place, arranging laptops, providing connectivity for employees and access to virtual private networks (VPN) to continue with business-as-usual.

These are the basic tools that employees need to conduct their daily tasks and meet the business needs, but employees will need additional tools and resources if they are to succeed in working remotely at this time.

Many businesses have developed business continuity plans (BCP) to mitigate risks and reduce the impact of a crisis. Further, they would have conducted a business impact analysis (BIA) to determine which functions are critical for the company to remain in business. However, the COVID-19 lockdown is the first time that many companies will be implementing a work-from-home contingency plan and putting their BCP and BIA to the test.

INCREASED DATA THREATS

With many employees sent to work from home during the COVID-19 lockdown, this is a prime time for hackers to target businesses. Employees have been given tools and access to secure company data without the stringent security in place or necessary training to prevent data breaches. This is supported by various reports stating that hacking attempts surrounding the Coronavirus are on the rise.

According to Wired, coronavirus phishing scams already started circulating in January, preying on people’s fears about the virus. This is supported by Cnet, which reported that the coronavirus is one of the fastest-growing tactics used for hacking attempts with phishing attacks and malware campaigns being the main categories of attack.

While companies strive for business as usual, they need to have measures in place to protect their employee and customer data. Customers have taken precautions to safeguard their personal information and verify the companies they provide personal information to, trusting that these companies have measures in place to keep their data secure. Whether employees are working from home or the office, customers expect them to keep their data secure at all times.

SECURING DATA

There is no single solution to keeping data secure, particularly with a remote workforce as often homes have fewer security defences than that of an office. Hackers are aware of this. Further, they prey on the vulnerability of employees and customers that would be distracted by the circumstances surrounding them and more likely to fall for a scam.

To help prevent employees and customers from falling victim to these scams, companies should incorporate layered security measures to boost security and add extra peace of mind. Many companies have VPN access as a security mechanism for employees to access company information. For companies that do not have a VPN or those looking for added security for their VPN, a cloud network should be used to keep company documents and data secure.

SECURING ACCESS TO RESOURCES

To perform their jobs effectively, employees will need quick and easy access to the most up-to-date company resources. They will also need relevant content that is consistently branded and compliant that can be shared with customers timeously.

This content should be housed securely on a cloud platform to allow easy access to relevant documents via the internet. Access should be restricted to those departments and individuals that need access to perform their job function. In addition, access should be tracked to monitor which employees access what documents and when.

All company documents should also be saved and managed centrally to allow for changes to be made and shared rapidly and easily with employees, ensuring that all employees use the most up-to-date and relevant documentation. To prevent non-compliant documents from being sent to customers and prevent possible fraud, no employees should be able to save documents to their desktops for future use as these can easily be tampered with or shared with employees that do not need access to them.

SECURE EMAIL COMMUNICATIONS

Emails solutions used by the remote force should be designed with segmentation of risk in mind. This means the solution uses independent silos to safeguard the content of the email as the content is not associated with the context of the email. This is key to preventing security breaches and keeping employee and customer data secure.

To give the recipient’s peace of mind that the emails are authentic, emails should have built-in verification that allows users to verify the emails sent from one user to another with a pass/fail verification report. In addition, users can check if the content of the email has been tampered with when receiving replies to emails. To prevent false reports, emails should have email signatures and banners applied during the drafting of the email to prevent the need for system intervention as this could impact on emails reaching recipients and being flagged as spam.

By putting your customers and employees’ security needs at the fore, companies demonstrate their commitment to their customers’ safety, building brand trust and establishing the foundation for a long-standing partnership.

MODERN MARKETING | ENSURING BRAND CONSISTENCY IN A REMOTE WORKFORCE

Sat, 28 Mar 2020 16:44:25 -0500

Article first published on modernmarketing.co.za, written by Paula Sartini, 24 March 2020 | see article here

According to Paula Sartini, founder and CEO at BrandQuantum, technologies have been gearing us up for the remote workforce for years, providing solutions that can equip employees to work from anywhere in the world.

However, according to Owl Labs 2019 State of Remote Work report, until now only 44% of global companies have embraced the remote workforce. The notion of work from home has never been practised to the extent that the current situation calls for it to be.

With the nationwide lockdown due to Coronavirus (COVID-19), employees have to work from home. Many employees today already have laptops, high-speed internet connectivity and access to networks via the cloud to perform their daily tasks remotely. However, are they equipped to deliver consistent brand experiences that customers have come to expect when dealing with the organisation?

Having invested significantly into their brands for years, companies need to put the best interests of their employees and customers at heart but not at the detriment of their brands. As such employees should be equipped with tools that will help them to meet customer’s needs seamlessly and deliver consistent brand experiences in every email and document sent to clients wherever they are working from.

There are several measures that companies should put in place to secure their brand and deliver a consistent experience in all customer and employee engagements whether working remotely or not.

ALWAYS ON-BRAND WHEREVER YOU ARE

To help employees deliver consistent experiences in every email, they must have a professional and consistent email signature that is used across the company so that all correspondence that employees send out is consistently branded.

Further, the body of the emails should be on-brand using the same font and colour across the company. It is also recommended to have pre-developed and pre-approved content available and easily accessible for employees to insert into emails while working remotely. This requires minimal input and keeps the brand integrity in every communication.

Employees should have access to the latest company letterheads, templates, documents and presentations that are required for client communication. If documents are updated while the employees are working remotely, the latest versions should be easy to access without the need for a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and employees should feel comfortable that they are sending their customers the most up-to-date information at all times.

UP-TO-DATE EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATIONS

Working remotely can impact on employee communication with CoSo Cloud finding that more than half of remote employees feel disconnected from those employees working in offices.

When employees are separate from the company it is critical they are kept up to date on all important company news and information throughout the day to prevent them from becoming disconnected and uncoordinated. An employee communication tool should be used to broadcast information to employees throughout the day and keep them informed about company news.

It would also be valuable to share updates on topical issues such as the latest coronavirus stats regularly via the broadcast tool to minimise the amount of time employees would otherwise spend looking for the information themselves.

KEEPING SECURITY INTACT

Having a remote workforce means that companies need to put stringent security measures in place that can protect their data at all times. Yet according to GetApp, employees working from remote locations often receive confidential business data but less than half of these employees have received proper internet security training.

To avoid financial and brand damage, companies need to incorporate layered security to help prevent customers and employees from falling victim to email scams, particularly while working with a remote workforce. Centrally managed, tamper-proof email signatures are also a first step in helping to prevent fraudulent emails from being sent on behalf of a company. Built-in email verification would also benefit the company and email recipients and give them added peace of mind that emails are authentic.

However, more than this, companies need to have a segmentation of risk built into their email branding solution to safeguard customer and company information at all times, particularly when employees are working remotely. This is key to preventing security breaches.

CONSISTENT EXPERIENCES ARE CRUCIAL

Companies already have many of the basics in place to enable a remote workforce but they need to have measures in place to protect their employees and customers’ data and their brand. The remote workforce opens up huge opportunities for inconsistencies and uncertainty that need to be limited during a pandemic when consistency provides the familiarity customers are seeking.

As such, the customer experience has to be nurtured at this time and employees need to be empowered to continue to deliver on-brand experiences wherever they may be working from.

MODERN MARKETING | WILL THE DIVISION BETWEEN MARKETING AND IT CONTINUE IN 2020?

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 08:58:37 -0500

Article first published on modernmarketing.co.za, written by BrandQuantum, 9 January 2019 | see article here

To meet customer expectations, IT needs to be included in the marketing department’s plans and aid in delivering the customer experience at every touchpoint along the customer journey. However, while there is much hype around the benefits of technology and marketing working together, there continues to be a great divide between these departments. And yet when marketing and technology come together to achieve a common goal, they can achieve great things and drive business success, states Paula Sartini, founder and CEO of BrandQuantum.

Business confidence across the country declined throughout 2019 on the back of the tough economic climate which is expected to continue in 2020. The need to win customers and gain their trust against increasing competition is a key challenge for most companies. As such, customer experience is growing in importance as a key differentiator for companies to attract and retain customers, particularly within a tough economy.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MELDS MARKETING AND TECHNOLOGY

Customer experience has previously been the marketing department’s responsibility, however, new technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence can transform the delivery of customer experience. This creates the opportunity for the IT department and marketing department to work together to achieve a unified goal of delivering customer experiences that meet and exceed tech-savvy customer’s expectations.

Both departments offer a diverse range of strengths to organisations. Marketing departments bring a creative and customer focused approach, whilst IT provide both a technical and problem-solving perspective. At the same time, marketing is often seen to want to adopt the latest technologies while IT is focused on governance, security and enterprise architecture. Both of these are critical to the success of a company. As customers are starting to hold companies accountable for keeping their data secure, the role of IT and marketing need to align to meet customer expectations in terms of customer experience as well as in keeping their personal information secure from potential data breaches.

SURVIVING A RECESSION WITH THE HELP OF TECHNOLOGY

The role of technology continues to grow in importance across organisations of all sizes. However, while companies recognise the benefits that technology can bring to various departments, the organisation and the customer experience, in many instances, adoption of these technologies has been slow.

Yet, technology is a critical component to helping companies overcome several business challenges, including helping companies to overcome the impact of a recession. According to research findings published in Harvard Business Review, recessions can create performance gaps between companies, but investing in digital technology before a recession provides analytics and agile business practices to help companies better understand the threat they face and respond more quickly to market changes. Based on the findings, companies that invested in technology outperformed those that did not during a recession.

There are several factors attributed to the role technology plays in helping companies overcome the impact of a recession. Firstly, technology provides access to data that gives companies the ability to make decisions to meet their customer’s needs. The technology solutions also provide companies with the flexibility they need to adapt to the environment and respond to their customers with tailored solutions. Technology also aids in cost-cutting, which helps the company to save money when it matters the most.

Many of these benefits can spill over into marketing departments, for example, giving marketers access to the right data enables them to make decisions to meet their customer’s needs. They would also benefit from the flexibility that technology allows in adapting to the environment, helping them to develop or change campaigns according to the market.

However, in many instances, marketers have collected customer data for several years, but have not had access to the tools needed to extract and interpret this data. This is where marketing and IT should be working together more closely to improve marketing insights and close the loop on the customer experience.

DELIVERING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The customer experience is a key focus for the marketing department. However, marketers are unable to deliver customer experiences in isolation. With tech-savvy customers, marketing departments are becoming more reliant on IT departments to develop technology solutions for customers to interact with the company at a time and on a platform that is convenient to them. This experience needs to align with the overall brand experience and requires insights from the marketing department to achieve this.

More broadly, marketers require the support of the entire organisation to meet customer expectations at every touchpoint across the customer journey. This means that the marketing department needs to implement technology solutions that help employees to deliver experiences aligned to the brand in every customer engagement.

According to a report from Forrester, businesses often deploy technologies that aren’t aligned to their business strategies and do not understand how these technologies affect customer journeys. Ultimately, the consumer experience strategy should be central to technology purchasing decisions. The marketing department needs to implement solutions that will help employees across the organisation to deliver consistent brand experiences in every customer interaction.

This will remove pressure on the marketing department to play the role of brand police, give marketers peace of mind that the correct information is being sent to customers and empower employees to meet customer expectations in every interaction. However, marketers also stand to benefit from implementing automation technologies to streamline their functions and help improve efficiencies.

AUTOMATING MARKETING FUNCTIONS

Marketers have a strategic role to play within organisations but are often chasing the next deadline or working on name tags and invitations for an upcoming event. These repetitive tasks can keep marketing departments bogged down in the finer detail and detract them focusing on the broader strategy of the department and the organisation.

In some instances, marketing departments have started implementing automation software that enables them to automate time-consuming repetitive tasks. By implementing these software marketing departments, which are usually made up of a small team of marketers, are freed up to focus on strategic elements of the business while delivering on the brand and marketing elements beautifully without investing a significant amount of time and effort on the delivery.

Marketers are already starting to recognise the value that automation software can bring to their department with the Digital Marketing Institute finding that 44% of marketing leaders believe that automation software will become more important in 2020.

While some strides have been made in terms of bridging the divide between the marketing and technology teams to meet customer’s expectations and deliver consistent customer experiences, in most cases locally marketing and IT continue to work in silos. However, globally technology and marketing departments are working together more closely and reaping the benefits of this relationship that has a direct impact of improving customer experiences and increasing company profits, helping them to adapt to a customer-centric environment and weather the storms of the tough economic climate.