The benefits of embracing customer obsession

Before we dive into the practical steps, let’s talk about why customer obsession matters. Companies that truly embrace customer obsession enjoy a multitude of benefits, including:

• Accelerated revenue growth: Customer-obsessed companies grow their revenue 1.6 times faster than their counterparts.
• Improved customer retention: By putting the customer at the center of everything they do, these companies foster loyalty and keep customers coming back. Delta Airlines, for example, made operational changes like backing planes out at a 45-degree angle and stocking repair parts to improve on-time arrivals, ultimately boosting customer satisfaction and retention.
• Boosted employee engagement: When a company is customer-obsessed, employees feel more connected to the mission and are more motivated to deliver exceptional experiences.

On the other hand, companies that fail to prioritize customer obsession risk falling behind. They may lose market share to more customer-centric competitors and see their revenue decline over time. A billion-dollar retailer could lose up to $37 million over 12 years by not investing in customer obsession. That’s a mistake no enterprise can afford to make.

The four hallmarks of customer-obsessed companies

So, what does it mean to be customer-obsessed? Here are four key characteristics that set customer-obsessed companies apart:

1. They are customer-led, not just customer aware. They don’t just know who their customers are; they use a deep understanding of customer needs, wants, and motivations to guide every aspect of their strategy. Revolve, for example, uses social media data to determine sourcing, inventory, and product strategies based on customer trends.
2. They are insights-driven, not just data-rich. They don’t just collect data; they derive meaningful insights from it and use those insights to inform decision-making.
3. They are fast, not perfect. They prioritize speed and iteration over perfection, allowing them to respond quickly to changing customer needs.
4. They are connected, not siloed. They break down internal barriers and foster collaboration across departments to create seamless, cohesive customer experiences.

5 steps to start implementing your customer obsession strategy

Now that we understand the benefits and hallmarks of customer obsession, let’s talk about how to start putting it into practice. Here are five actionable steps you can take to begin your customer obsession journey:

1. Use email as a strategic tool: Email is more than just a promotional channel. With the help of an advanced email marketing platform, it can be a powerful tool for identifying customers across platforms, conducting market research, and building long-lasting relationships. Cordial client Adore Me uses a shopper’s email address to identify users across mobile push and SMS and deliver personalized product recommendations based on a unified customer view, resulting in a 4x increase in click rates.
2. Create interactive email experiences: Engage customers within the email itself by incorporating interactive elements. Cordial client Orveon, a leading beauty company, continued website quiz conversations via email to capture valuable first-party customer data and increase conversions by 3x. 
3. Empower your email team: Your email team is key to customer obsession. Equip them with the technology to nurture their creativity, foster collaboration, and leverage data-driven insights. By empowering your email team, you can create more meaningful, personalized experiences for your customers. For example, Cordial client L.L.Bean uses email to strengthen brand relationships by tailoring content to individual customer tastes, sending a mix of educational guides to some and editorial features to others based on their preferences.
4. Practice empathy: Empathy is at the heart of customer obsession. Listen, interpret, act, and monitor to practice empathy and create human connections with customers through email and other touchpoints. Continuously listen to feedback, interpret it for actionable insights, act on those insights, and monitor results.
5. Start small, but start now: Becoming customer-obsessed is a journey. Don’t wait for the perfect moment to start putting the customer at the center of your strategy. And don’t think of it as a trade-off with other priorities. Begin by establishing mechanisms to listen to, collect, and act on customer feedback. Take small steps each day to integrate customer insights into your decision-making, and watch your customer obsession grow.

By implementing these practical strategies and focusing on the customer at every turn, you can start your journey toward becoming truly customer-obsessed. The road ahead may be challenging, but the rewards – in terms of revenue growth, customer loyalty, and employee engagement – are well worth the effort. So take that first step today, and watch your organization transform as you put the customer at the heart of everything you do.

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2023 holiday season predictions

Sales and discounts

Many luxury brands are skipping big sales and instead offering free shipping, gift wrapping, and early access to products. We expect more retailers across categories to shift away from deep markdowns and launch sales earlier. Beginning promotions before Black Friday and Cyber Monday will decrease the intensity of focus on those two days.

Black Friday rebound

For retailers with both online and brick-and-mortar stores, we expect an increase in in-person Black Friday shopping compared to the COVID-impacted years. However, foot traffic likely won’t fully return to pre-2020 levels. Look for pre-BF promotions like free shipping on early bird purchases.

Younger generations take center stage

Younger demographics like Gen Z and Millennials will significantly impact marketing strategies this holiday season. Our research shows that exclusive offers are the number one motivator encouraging Gen Z shoppers to join loyalty programs. Appeal to these cohorts with exclusive offers, partnerships with niche microbrands, influencer collaborations, interactive metaverse experiences, or eco-friendly messaging.

Tighter budgets and embrace of AI

With many brands facing tighter ad budgets, we expect a focus on highly targeted media buys, increased user-generated content, and prioritizing high-ROI tactics. AI will assist with optimizing efforts like personalized copywriting at scale and more efficient campaign experimentation.

5 marketing strategies for the 2023 holiday season

Since you’re busy with holiday planning—we’ll keep this short and sweet. Here are five quick tips to crush your marketing initiatives this holiday season and beyond.

1. Optimize for mobile

With the majority of holiday purchases happening on mobile, be sure to optimize messaging, creative, and campaigns for the small screen. 

• Conduct speed tests to ensure fast load times on mobile networks. 
• Confirm seamless checkout and forms on mobile apps and mobile web. 
• Prominently promote mobile-exclusive deals and savings throughout the shopping journey.

2. Personalization power

Leverage personalization in your messaging and offers with segmentation and customer data.

• Use 1:1 relevance in emails, social ads, and site experiences to provide value and boost engagement this busy season. 
• Personalized subject lines, dynamic content, and personalized product recommendations make each touchpoint more relevant.

3. Retargeting is crucial

Retargeting is crucial for re-engaging site visitors who left without purchasing and recovering abandoned carts. 

• Use tighter timing on browse and cart abandonment campaigns, personalized to each user. 
• Continue retargeting past the holiday season to maximize lifetime value. 
• Give special incentives for customers to come back and complete their purchases.

4. Strategic segmentation

Divide your audience into specific behavioral and attribute segments. 

• Key groups include gift givers, self-gifters, budget shoppers, repeat customers, and more. 
• Then, go beyond basic segmentation to truly customize messaging for each group based on insights into their needs.

5. Plan for post-holiday

Have a plan ready for January and February 2024. 

• Set up re-welcome campaigns, loyalty reminders, and re-engagement flows to build relationships with new holiday customers. 
• Offer incentives for them to make a repeat purchase or engage with your brand post-holidays. 
• For further reading, here are 11 tips for post-holiday customer activation.

The holiday season is an exciting and busy time for marketers. With thoughtful preparation and data-driven marketing strategies, you can connect with customers in meaningful ways that drive results. Meeting customers where they are this season will lead to holiday success.

Most importantly, don’t lose sight of your long-term goals. The holidays are a stepping stone to building customer loyalty and lifetime value. Keep engaging and delighting customers after the seasonal rush to continue nurturing those relationships into the new year.

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For more details, you can scan our comprehensive list of 100+ Customer Loyalty and Rewards Program Stats.

Starting with the basics: discounts win

Before diving into the best customer loyalty programs, let’s start with the basics: What do consumers want most in a loyalty program? By a landslide, discounts are the most preferred reward for a loyalty program member, regardless of age or household income level.

What could make any customer loyalty program better?

About four in five consumers admit they would switch to another brand if it had a better loyalty program. So what should marketers remember if they want to make their loyalty program better? Listen to your customers.

When we look at the top-line results from our full survey, here are six key takeaways from consumers that B2C marketers should consider:

1. Most preferred reward: discounts
2. Most preferred contact method: email
3. Most preferred contact frequency: weekly
4. Top incentive for joining a loyalty and rewards program: saving money on everyday purchases
5. Top frustration with rewards programs: rewards points that expire
6. Top reason for quitting a loyalty and rewards program: not using it enough

Which industries have the best customer loyalty programs?

When consumers were asked about which industry has the best customer loyalty programs overall, grocery stores (35%) clearly came out on top, followed by retail (19%), hotels (14%), airlines (13%), dining (10%), banking (7%), and home services (3%).

Although the everyday use and high purchase frequency with grocery store loyalty programs was not surprising, we found the affinity for them directly correlated with income level. More than half (54%) of consumers making less $15,000; 41% of those making $15,000-$50,000; 36% of those making $50,000-$99,999; and about a quarter (26%) of those making six figures or more in household income consider grocery store loyalty programs to be the best of any industry.

As for other areas where there was a clear difference in affinity toward loyalty programs, we found consumers in the Northeast (U.S.) say hotel loyalty programs are the best at twice the rate as consumer in the West (U.S.). Plus, married consumers are twice as likely as single consumers to consider airline loyalty programs the best loyalty programs overall.

About the survey methodology

Sample sourced by Dynata on behalf of Cordial during March 2023. We surveyed 500 B2C marketers and 1,000 adult consumers, age 18 and older, who live in the United States. The sample was balanced by age, gender, region, ethnicity, Hispanic origin, income, and children in household according to the U.S. Census. Age ranges for the generational groups cited in the study are: Gen Z (18-24), Millennials (25-42), Gen X (43-57), Boomers (58-75). For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact marketing@cordial.com.

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Experiments take the guesswork out of answering those questions by providing a low-risk opportunity to assess the effectiveness of a strategy. And regardless of whether your test proves your hypothesis or not, your results will always yield helpful insights about your customers’ preferences and better direct your next approach to campaign optimization.

Four ways you can benefit from incorporating experiments into your strategy development:

• Build upon learnings from past experiments.
• Optimize existing methods or strategies to boost performance and inform future marketing decisions.
• Validate new ideas you want to explore.
• Prove the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

How Adore Me tested their way into a record-breaking holiday season

1. Message frequency: Build upon learnings from past experiments.

Last holiday season, Adore Me, a leading intimate apparel retailer,  tested the impact of increasing message frequency as it relates to revenue and opt-outs. In their experiment, they increased the number of emails a customer could receive each day, with the maximum number of emails being three. They tested this increased frequency for five days during the week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Their experiment resulted in a significant increase in revenue while their unsubscribe rate remained steady.

As the outcome was a happy surprise, they decided to apply this experiment to a larger audience the following year. Adore Me worked with Cordial’s Deliverability team to develop a custom deliverability plan that allowed them to safely triple their daily volume this past holiday season to break through the noise. This strategy paid off for them yet again. They were able to increase orders 13% in a test group that received three emails per day — without increasing unsubscribes — versus a group that only received two emails per day.

2. Landing pages: Optimize methods to boost performance and inform future marketing decisions.

Adore Me ran an experiment on Thanksgiving to determine which website page drove more conversions when linked within an email. They tested two different landing pages: One linked customers to their bra category page, while the other linked customers to a “buy one get one free” (BOGO) sale page.

Adore Me was confident the BOGO landing page would drive more purchases; however, their results showed that the bra category page drove +30% more conversions than the BOGO page. Thanks to Cordial’s nimble platform, the Adore Me team was able to quickly update all of their Black Friday emails the next morning, directing customers to start their shopping on the highest performing page.

3. SMS vs MMS: Validate new ideas you’d like to explore.

With SMS being one of Adore Me’s top performing channels, contributing to 30% of their total CRM revenue, their team is always looking for new ways to engage their customers through this channel. The majority of their mobile messages are SMS, meaning they do not include media such as pictures or videos.

During the holiday, Adore Me’s CRM team had an idea to test MMS vs. SMS performance. They have very strong branding, which includes a lot of editorial imagery, and they wanted to measure how using this imagery in their mobile messaging would impact engagement.

At first glance, their test was a success, with the MMS message generating 4% more revenue than the SMS version. However, they noticed that their opt-out rate was significantly higher for the MMS version than the SMS. They decided that this strategy would need further testing for them to fully crack the case and determine the right formula for their customers.

4. Offers and promotions: Prove the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

This past holiday season Adore Me decided to use a dedicated, aggressive offer that was applicable to all products on their site when trying to reactivate lapsed customers. Adore Me had never created a discount specifically for this audience segment, and had instead offered their lapsed customers the same deals as a new subscriber or other active audience segments. Their discounts, across all audience segments, would typically exclude certain products that might have a tighter margin as well.

However, this year they wanted to pay their lapsed customers more attention and minimize the barrier for these customers to re-engage. Their hypothesis was that a brand new discount that their customers had never seen offered before, combined with the ability to apply that offer to every product on their site, would make more products accessible and therefore drive more conversions. And they were right! Adore Me had a 15% increase in customer reactivation and a 4% increase in revenue attributed to this lapsed audience segment compared to past years. 

By applying a “test first” methodology to their holiday season, Adore Me was able to learn what their customers responded to best and optimize their larger strategies to support those learnings. This strategy paid off big for them. Adore Me had their highest revenue-generating day ever on Black Friday. They also saw a huge increase in engagement and revenue throughout the holiday season, generating 15% more revenue YoY and 45% more revenue than the 2020 holiday season.

Their team attributes  part of their success to the sophistication and flexibility of the Cordial platform. Their team’s ability to quickly and confidently navigate the platform to test and optimize new content has afforded them significant time savings that they can use to  build  more strategic opportunities and experiments.

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But 71% of consumers today expect personalization and 76% are frustrated when their loyalty is not rewarded. Riding the wave up with this rise of D2C now means you need one thing — hyper-personalized campaigns.

With 1:1 personalization, you can customize messages that let you build trust with your consumers and ensure consistency even when times stay unpredictable. Let’s learn how to achieve that with D2C marketing, starting with the fundamentals.

What is direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing?

D2C marketing is a solution for brands to market to their consumers directly, without any middlemen or distribution platforms. You have direct access to all your consumers through communication channels like SMS, email, social media, and push notifications.

In 2022, D2C sales by established brands in the U.S. exceeded $117 billion, with predictions to reach $161 billion by 2024. This means, by surpassing the need for a retailer and dealing directly with consumers, you not only regain control over your brand image and can curate the entire brand experience, but are also able to bring in significantly more income year-on-year.

You can also better establish a personal relationship with the people buying your products or services and better manage the time, frequency, and clarity of all your messages. More and more brands are looking to invest in this strategy today and for good reason.

5 notable benefits of D2C marketing:

1. Optimize your supply chain management.

Understand the demand for your products and services year-round and optimize your supply chain and manufacturing processes significantly.

2. Adapt quickly to market needs.

Remain flexible and adapt to dynamic market conditions, and outperform the competitors by keeping up with your consumers’ preferences.

3. Measure your success strategically.

Prioritize the metrics that signify growth for your brand and prioritize the KPIs that quantify success for you in the short term and long term.

4. Lower costs while increasing profits.

Improve profit margins by selling directly to your consumers and cutting additional costs like retailers and distributors entirely.

5. Personalized marketing campaigns.

D2C marketing equips you to collect your consumers’ feedback with detailed data like their purchase history to create personalized campaigns and lead to higher loyalty.

What is the difference between D2C and B2C marketing strategy?

While both D2C and B2C marketing strategies have similarities like direct consumer targeting, there are some key differences between the two of them. While a B2C strategy relies on pushing sales through a distribution platform, a D2C strategy gives you total control over your marketing and advertising strategy to reach every consumer directly.

For example, Daily Insight Group partnered with businesses like Tarot.com and Numerology.com to give every consumer a daily personalized horoscope and astrology reading. The brand leveraged first-party data to create a sustainable advantage and programmatically personalized its emails to improve purchases by over 300%.

5 D2C marketing strategies you can employ:

1. Offer customized subscriptions.

Have every consumer choose their subscription and customize it to their liking. It’s effective because you can retain customers and improve their lifetime value by building a predictable revenue source and knowing exactly how much inventory you need to maintain.

2. Employ social media.

Enhance your customers’ overall brand experience using social media platforms. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram can all be great for building an online community to collect a ton of direct feedback and incorporate that to refine your marketing strategy, such as connecting social to email campaigns.

3. Turn marketing into a game.

Engage and retain every consumer by turning their experience with your brand into a game. Gamification is a great way to motivate your consumers through challenges and rewards, turning your brand into a thrilling, fun experience they want to return to and engage with regularly.

4. Craft targeted content.

Transform content into a way of leveraging first-hand consumer experiences to establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry. Content marketing both educates and entertains your target audience based on what they want to learn, helping you bond your brand with their interests successfully. For example, original content recommendations can go a long way to build loyalty and trust.

5. Influence your brand image.

Collaborate with influencers to reach a larger audience and market your products or services more effectively. Influencer marketing can transform a faceless brand into a personality-driven community of consumers who both understand and support your brand’s mission.

How automated 1:1 personalization can impact D2C campaigns

One common trait among all successful D2C marketing strategies is their ability to leverage precious first-party data. There is power in knowing the products and pages your consumers have interacted with, purchased, and disliked, and 1:1 personalization is the solution. Brands like Molson Coors have turned this data into hugely successful revenue charts even at the height of a global pandemic.

All elements of your brand, from product ideation to marketing to consumer service, can benefit from accessing and analyzing consumer data on an individual level. By personalizing every step of their purchase, you can curate your consumer’s brand experience to best reflect their needs.

5 reasons why 1:1 automation is vital for D2C brands:

1. Increase revenue with better targeting.

Turn the consumer’s likes and dislikes into hyper-target media across your channels, improving conversion rates and net revenue.

2. Tailor your messaging.

Dynamically personalize every consumer’s product recommendations as they shop, increasing your consumer lifetime value significantly.

3. Identify individual pain points.

Identify potential issues and resolve them with UX improvements or personalized ads to ensure a frictionless shopping experience for every consumer.

4. Build a loyal consumer base.

Make every customer feel special, inviting them to leave positive feedback, write reviews, and build brand loyalty.

5. Plan future scaling efforts.

Reach more consumers and scale your brand with better offerings without losing the touch of personalization.

How to boost ROI with automated 1:1 campaigns for D2C

Consumer relationships are one of the most important elements for any D2C brand. A staggering 80% of Sephora’s sales come from within their Beauty Insiders loyalty program, and they have over 25 million members.

This is proof that added incentives like free samples and bonuses that are curated to fit the consumer’s purchasing patterns go a long way to boosting the brand’s performance. A tried-and-tested campaign invokes an emotional bond between the consumer and the brand and can immediately differentiate you from the competitors.

10 of the most effective campaign types for D2C brands to improve ROI:

1. Send special invitations.

Make your consumers feel valued by sending them special invitations to brand events, both online and offline. These interactions help consumers build trust with your brand and drive more sales in the long run.

2. Personalize your offers.

Turn one sale idea into thousands of personalized offers for each of your consumers by leveraging some aspect of their first-party data. Their favorite categories, purchasing patterns, and other behavior can help you understand the best approach for personalizing the offer and boosting revenue.

3. Reduce cart abandonment.

Notify consumers who have added products to their online shopping carts but haven’t completed the purchase yet. Each consumer with an abandoned cart is a high-intent buyer and a few reminders can significantly impact your conversion rate.

4. Push back-in-stock products.

Consumers if they wish to be notified if their product of choice is out of stock and send a message when you restock it. With this campaign, you also get better control over your inventory and easily ensure your consumers’ needs are always met.

5. Launch a rewards program.

Convert your current consumers into lifelong members by encouraging them to become a part of your exclusive rewards program and offering them incentives like birthday discounts and loyalty points. With automated messaging, every member also gets personalized notifications and is more likely to buy from you.

6. Share price drop alerts.

Maximize your inventory by strategically dropping specific products’ prices and notifying consumers who have browsed, wishlisted, or bought that product before. This sense of immediacy is a powerful tool to increase engagement and conversion and allows you to build a strong brand image in the consumers’ minds.

7. Celebrate their milestones.

Transform consumer-brand interactions into key milestones they get rewarded for crossing. So the frequency of purchasing, loyalty points, or the total amount spent in a year can get the consumer a bonus voucher or special discount code and solidify their relationship with your brand.

8. Make personalized recommendations.

Study your consumers’ shopping patterns to share logic-based product recommendations that they will likely buy from your brand. By showing the consumer that you know and care about their preferences, you can increase their cart value and bring in more profits while enhancing their brand confidence.

9. Reward them for referrals.

Improve your footfall massively by rewarding your consumers for every new consumer they can bring to the brand. Lucrative cash-backs and other incentives are good ways to improve engagement and push your existing consumers to promote your brand organically.

10. Win back lost consumers.

Track which consumers have recently stopped purchasing from your brand and reach out to them with personalized messages to make them feel valued and regain their trust. By attempting to make contact with past customers, you help boost sales and repeat buyers.

Examples of D2C brands winning with automated personalization

When stepping into the world of D2C, it’s a good idea to take inspiration from brands that have employed automated personalization strategies and campaigns to succeed in their industries and occupy a major chunk of the market share today.

Here are 10 D2C brands that stand out and what you can learn from each:

1. Adore Me

Adore Me is a D2C lingerie and swimwear brand that gives consumers a personalized shopping experience with 1:1 automation. Their tailored approach to marketing across all platforms is focused on the consumer’s style, which they learn using their first-party data and an online quiz about the shopper’s unique needs and preferences.

2. BarkBox

BarkBox is a subscription-based D2C brand that customizes a monthly delivery box to the consumer’s doorstep filled with treats, activities, and toys for their dog. Based on the dog’s breed, age, diet, allergies, and other needs, the brand offers several subscription options with 24/7 customer service and a happiness guarantee for their 2 million consumers.

3. Casper

Casper is a popular D2C sleep products brand that encourages consumers to take a free online sleep habits quiz and learn which pillows and other products would be best suited for them. By getting to know its consumers well, the brand can improve its offerings and ensure a seamless shopping experience from discovery to delivery at an affordable price point.

4. Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club is a subscription-based D2C brand for men’s grooming products personalized and delivered at a set frequency. Along with learning about the consumers’ needs with 1:1 automation to tailor their selection of products, the brand also shares shaving tips across its channels to establish itself as an expert in the industry.

5. Glossier

Glossier is a renowned skincare and cosmetics D2C brand that rose to fame with its marketing campaigns that employed a range of automated personalization techniques to attract and retain consumers. The brand leverages first-party data to personalize ads for its consumers and targets its 1:1 messaging with recommendations based on their purchasing behavior.

6. Lume

Lume Deodorant is a D2C brand for doctor-developed, aluminum-free deodorants driving business growth with their automation strategies to create dynamic content blocks and connect thousands of data points to personalize the consumer experience. Their use of Abandon Browse campaigns and personalized recommendations based on their online quiz helps them turn visitors into loyal consumers to quadruple revenue.

7. Mixtiles

Mixtiles is a D2C brand that turns consumer photos into wall art tailored to their decor preferences. The brand uses automation to understand its consumers’ needs and increase retention with retargeted ads. Their personalized messaging aligns with the consumer’s style and makes every browsing experience feel unique to their taste, helping the brand achieve high repeat customers and boosting conversion rates.

8. Saatva

Saatva is a D2C home and lifestyle brand for home furnishings and luxury mattresses that leverages its data platform to send automated emails to every consumer and visitor and stands out from its competitors with its unique offerings. With Cordial’s platform, they’ve improved their abandoned cart consumers by 80% and crafted a sustainable marketing strategy across email, SMS, and website.

9. Thinx

Thinx is a well-known D2C feminine hygiene products brand that helps consumers understand and navigate menstruation with their range of sustainable and personalized product experiences. The brand’s social mission combined with its 1:1 automation marketing strategy helped them amass a huge following and provide innovative solutions to every consumer’s unique needs.

10. Warby Parker

Warby Parker is an online D2C eyewear brand that employs its online quiz to understand every consumer’s face shape, and style, and needs to recommend a selection of glasses that are tailored to suit them. Through their website, social media, and email communications, they also maintain a 1:1 relationship with their consumers to keep up engagement and boost consumer retention.

Is your brand leveraging your customer data?

D2C brands leveraging the power of 1:1 automation exceed their projections and supplement their revenue with millions of dollars. Understanding your consumers’ needs, likes, and preferences is the key to driving success. By maintaining seamless cross-channel experiences with personalized marketing campaigns, your consumers will engage more and organically grow your brand with every purchase.

At Cordial, we work to help you realize this power. With our solutions team, discover how to leverage your consumers’ data to drive growth. Request a demo to learn more today.

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Although it’s easy to assume Gen Z are “just kids” on TikTok, here’s a bombshell reality: Gen Z is expected to be the largest consumer cohort by 2030. They’re fueled by discovering purpose and prioritizing all things good for them and good to them. With this in mind, this generation’s approach to connecting with and supporting brands differ significantly, but here are five concrete ways that will help you with messaging and build advocates within a generation that approach consumerism with intentionality.

1. Lead with Inclusivity.

Leading your marketing efforts, messaging, and overall brand mission with diversity at the forefront is no secret. Furthermore, with the BIPOC community’s buying power, this prioritization of diversity is not a strategy but a requirement to be successful with resonating with your audience. This is profoundly important when considering Gen Z. Beyond speaking of, showcasing, and communicating your values toward diversity, Gen Z’ers want to see you be a champion for diversity and create a space for inclusion. To be inclusive is to be thoughtful, kind, and sincere in creating an open space that allows people to feel they’re welcome to be themselves.

The approach of building inclusivity within your messaging will look like an intentional plan for your community management responses. It’s more than reactive replies, but crafting your messages with the person in mind. Additionally, consider how you integrate your customer service practices into your community management building on social media and within your email marketing campaigns. When treated like isolated channels, they can appear disconnected. However, in reality they’re all connected to create a stronger, more cohesive way for your brand to build a welcoming community that Gen Z will appreciate and advocate for among their realm of influence.

2. Prioritize personalization.

As Gen Z’ers have an unwavering expectation for diversity and inclusion, they also have high expectations for a brand experience that’s unique and personable. Standardized, templated responses or bulk messaging won’t resonate with this generation. To avoid a perceived lack-luster user experience, be vigilant with hyper personalization. As you’re building your evolving conversations, actively listening to your Gen Z audience will be a fantastic resource and guiding light to making your efforts as impactful as possible.

According to Colormatics, the attention span of Gen Z’s is a whopping 8- seconds (in comparison to Millennials at 12 seconds). With this in mind, keep your content and messaging easily digestible for your audience and maintain hyper personalization. In building your relationship with Gen Z, they want to know that they’re more than profit to a brand, and that the brand truly cares about building a relationship.

3. Lean into honesty and authenticity.

When communicating and engaging with your Gen Z audience, honesty and authenticity is the best policy. When cultivating intention around being transparent about your process you open up the door of trust and brand advocacy. This can apply to marketing strategies, messaging, and processes.

American Eagle’s Aerie brand knows and lives this approach through their active listening, data, and sales centered around their target audience of tweens and twentysomethings. As Gen Z began getting older, they made a “no photoshop” policy, which reinforces their philosophy of living beyond fashion while promoting the natural, authentic beauty of their models. Their commitment to remaining true to their audience had an immediate impact on the brand and their bottom line. Furthermore, their intentionality toward adjusting to their needs and things that matter to their audience helps them to connect with their younger audience in a very sincere way.

4. Live your brand values out loud.

If you’ve heard the saying, “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything,” you have an idea of Gen Z’s perception of brand values and culture. Unlike prior generations, their generation grew up during the information age, with high expectations of technology and a very vocal stand and inclusivity and belonging. They’re your consumers who will see your core values on your website or social media content, then vet it by Googling you to see what you’ve done in the community. This isn’t to “catch you” or form a place of skepticism. It’s primarily rooted in a core expectation that brands live the things they say matter to them.

When your brand values connect with them, they want to be supportive and an active participant in your efforts as well! Whether it’s showing support through sharing or advocating your support through their personal social media or finding ways to be an ally though other avenues, they want to be a part of the change. They want to not only feel inspired, but inspire others to make a difference as well.

5. Connect with Gen Z through platforms that resonate with them.

Similar to Millennials, Gen Z is known for their deep understanding of technology and social media, but the primary difference between the two resides in where expectations land when it comes to dealing with technology. Gen Z is the first generation that was born and raised with advanced technology. While Millennials witnessed the evolution of technology, Gen Z began their lives with an evolved version of technology. This is imperative to understand when considering the manner in which you engage with your younger audience. They’re not opposed to corporate brands or distrust them. However, they are more inclined to dig deeper into researching your company, the things you say matter most, and the products or services that you provide. We call this a healthy skepticism of verifying through doing your own research.

Strategies that will encourage connectivity with Gen Z through your brand messaging would include tactics such as:

• Incorporating two-way messaging into your communications with customers. When brands include two-way messaging, it informs consumers that their feedback, concerns, or insight matters. It requires a bit of effort on behalf of the brand, but the effort is well worth the investment. It can be as simple as a chat feature on your website that’s managed by a human being.
• Stay relatable. For Gen Z, social media and technology are very natural places to connect with friends. Consider ways to maintain a friendship, relatable connection with Gen Z through your content and messaging. Have fun with them on social media! A genuine interaction is what matters most to them.
• Thank them with rewards. Loyalty programs are always a win for building customer advocacy and this is no different with Gen Z. Create fun gamification or a point system for reviews like Shein. Their gamification encourages reviews and engagement of other consumers with those reviews. It’s birthed significant engagement within their community of buyers!

When your brand creates an impactful effort in these areas, remember that there is no better time than the present to adjust or pivot. With Gen Z, your transparency and sincerity matters. So, leading with a genuine interest in connecting with your audience will never steer you wrong.

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