Emerging Technologies Can Improve Every Digital Experience

While this may sound like a no-brainer, Forrester’s study reveals a surprising depth of benefits to be had from emerging technologies. Of course, emerging technologies will improve the speed and smoothness of digital experiences. Reduced load times, faster CPUs and GPUs, and the increasing efficiency of AI will allow for more streamlined customer experiences on any device available. But the advancement of interactivity will make these interactions more natural and seamless until they—from the customer’s point of view—disappear entirely. Read [the full report] for a breakdown of other surprising ways technology will advance our digital experiences.

Contextual Data is Key

The future of digital experiences will be driven by the intersection of two things: data and context. Connected devices will leverage their massive data collection abilities, while the types and extent of data these devices can connect will grow rapidly. According to Forrester, “over the next 10 years, sensors will become smaller, less expensive to produce, and more energy-efficient. [. . .] They will appear in every piece of clothing, tablet, food packaging or device sold — not just premium products.” With such a massive amount of actionable data available, future digital experiences will leverage context to provide customer experiences that are immediate, convenient, and built specifically for the recipient in that very moment. Just what can businesses do with all of that data? Read the report to find out.

Don’t Guess, Use the Tools

With technology advancing by the day, and more technologies to keep up with than ever (Forrester’s study references more than 50!), trying to keep up can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, the tools to manage digital experience technology are evolving right alongside those technologies themselves. First and foremost, your digital experience strategy should be guided by your customer experience strategy—how your product or service fulfills the needs of your customers, and how you can optimize improving those moments that drive the greatest customer and business benefits. As for the technology side of your strategy, Forrester is leading the way with its [Moments Index.] The Moments Index is based in mathematical models that help gauge how likely customers are to engage in what you build to support your strategy. It’s highly interesting, so be sure to learn more about it here.

These are just a few of the insights we gained from Forrester’s new report, “The Impact Of Emerging Technology On Digital Experiences.” For much more information, including insights on medical devices, VR, AR and more, be sure to download the full report today.

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Read on for three of our top takeaways, and be sure to download the full report—available for a limited time only—here.

Get Obsessed with Your Customers

Sure, many businesses say they’re customer-obsessed, but to truly make the most of marketing technology, you need to understand the full scope of your customer’s interactions with your product at every touchpoint. Being able to trace a customer across channels creates opportunities to engage with them in the moment (more on that later) and gives you a wealth of actionable data upon which to build your martech strategy. This may sound intimidating, but tools like Airship Journeys can make this process easier than you think.

Replace Campaigns with Moment-based Engagement 

If there’s one thing this report makes clear, the successful B2C businesses are reducing their reliance on costly time-bound campaigns and investing instead in data and technology infrastructure—like Airship’s Customer Engagement Platform—that lets them connect with customers wherever they are. Personalized, on-demand interactions are the key to outstanding customer experiences, and those customer experiences are the key to growing your B2C business.

Emphasize Customer Experience and Build Marketing to Match

One of the most common struggles for companies trying to establish their marketing technology is that it may not fit within the existing infrastructure of your company. Per the previous takeaway, many companies are built to run campaigns, and shifting gears to focus on ongoing, moment-to-moment engagement can seem like an impossible task. Making such a dramatic shift in marketing is never easy, but companies who do often start with a dramatic shift in mindset.

Thinking about the customer experience holistically, and building your marketing around how to engage every available opportunity makes investing in martech not just a good idea, it’s a necessity to ensure you’re fulfilling that goal. And with tools at hand like Airship’s Channel Coordination, it’s never been easier to keep an eye on every piece of the puzzle.

Get Your Complimentary Copy of the Report

All of these insights and more are available for a limited time in Forrester’s new report, “Enable Moments-Based Marketing With Enterprise Martech.” Download the full report and get your marketing technology started off on the right foot.

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Want to dig into the details? Check out our webinar, “How QSR, Fast Casual, and Restaurant Brands Can Create Incredible Customer Experiences.”

Acquisition: Show Them You Care

It can be tough for brands to overcome the transactional feeling of customer purchases, especially in the fast-casual and QSR spaces. That’s why it’s so important to start off strong, with an acquisition strategy that shows that you understand and care about each and every one of your customers.

While one of the key strategies for great ROI on QSR customer experiences is to focus on retention rather than acquisition, a great onboarding experience can lay the groundwork for a long and loyal relationship between your restaurant and your customers. In fact, a well-designed welcome series for a new app user can result in 3x the user retention down the road.

Retention: Keep Them Coming Back For More

Once you’ve made your customers feel welcome and recognized, keep the good vibes going with thoughtful, personalized content. Say your customer just drove by your restaurant but didn’t stop in. With geo-fencing, you can deliver a message and a generous offer right to their phone, inviting them back the next time they’re in the neighborhood. 

Loyalty programs are also a great way to retain your customers, with incentives, rewards, and exclusive access to your brand that doubles as an amazing resource of customer data for your business. You can also use in-app interactions to fuel other loyalty-drivers, like ratings, updates, and opportunities to opt into other channels.

Growth: Bring More Customers to the Table

A 1-point increase in Customer Experience Index scores can mean millions of dollars of growth for your business. As your diners find their favorite dishes, engage in your loyalty program and respond to your incentives or offers, you have a great opportunity to expand your impact—and your ROI. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to driving growth, but QSRs and restaurant brands can maximize their customer experience potential through targeting, audience segmentation, and data-driven automation. By creating experiences that feel seamlessly helpful—thanks to the strategic application of data—you’ll continue to drive improvements in your customer’s experience, loyalty, and purchasing.

Every step of the customer journey presents a chance for restaurants to improve their customer experience. For a deeper dive into just how this is done, make sure to watch the webinar!

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Read on to learn more about these three strategies, or watch our webinar, “How QSR, Fast Casual, and Restaurant Brands Can Create Incredible Customer Experiences” for a more complete look.

Key Strategy 1: Use Data to Get the Full Picture

To create personalized experiences you’ve got to get to know your customers. The timing, mode of delivery and even the length and type of content you’re sharing can and should be shaped by their preferences. This is the real value and strength of robust customer data.

For example, with a comprehensive understanding of your customer, you can craft a loyalty program that’s built to keep them engaged and drive repeat visits. A successful loyalty program also creates a direct line between marketing actions and business outcomes, helping you build the case for bigger and better investments.

Key Strategy 2: Navigate Channel Complexity Through Customer Profiles

Many businesses are wary of irritating or overwhelming their customers by sending too many messages across the wide range of channels they have available—and with good reason. Even a single poorly-timed text can turn an engaged customer into a distant one.

For restaurants, the solution is to leverage detailed customer data to create profiles that guide and shape decision making. From location data to buying behaviors, these data sets drive smart decisions that help you create the best customer experience possible. 

Key Strategy 3: Focus on Repeat Behavior and Loyalty

Engaged customers are repeat customers, and as we all know it’s better and more cost-efficient to retain current customers than to acquire new ones. Plus, customer retention has a compounding effect on overall sales and growth as your diners find favorite dishes, engage in your loyalty program, and respond to your incentives or offers.

This means that restaurants can benefit hugely from optimizing their current customer experiences and focusing on long-term loyalty from the get-go. While loyalty programs and promotions can play a big role in this, even something as simple as a well-delivered welcome series for a new app user can result in 3x user retention.

Three strategies, one goal: An outstanding customer experience for restaurants, fast-casual dining establishments, and QSRs. For a more detailed look into how your restaurant can keep your customers coming back for seconds, make sure to watch the webinar!

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Read on for four of our favorite examples of QSR, restaurant and fast-casual brands driving innovation, or watch our webinar, “How QSR, Fast Casual, and Restaurant Brands Can Create Incredible Customer Experiences,” to get a closer look. 

TGI Fridays Goes All-In on Data & AI 

Since its inception in 1965, TGI Fridays has tried to create an innovative-yet-personal approach to the bar and restaurant experience. Today, that approach takes shape as an integrated AI and machine learning platform that has more than doubled its online business—to the tune of $150 million. By leveraging customer data gathered across multiple platforms, TGI Fridays has built a detailed understanding of their customers’ desires and behavior, highlighting optimal opportunities for SMS, online and in-app experiences. In addition to doubling online business, this has increased their customer engagement by 5x.

Starbucks Drives Sales Through Mobile-First Loyalty

Starbucks knows that its customers are always on the go. That’s why it pioneered a call-and-pickup ordering system nearly 20 years ago, and why it doubled down on this value-add through the power of mobile technology. Users of the Starbucks app can choose a location, place and customize an order, view a timeframe for pickup, and even prepay, all before ever setting foot in the store. Combined with a dynamic loyalty program that delivers a personalized experience for each customer, it’s no wonder mobile technology now drives more than 40% of the company’s US sales.

Chipotle Innovates the Ordering Experience

As a pioneer of the fast-casual restaurant, Chipotle is no stranger to shaking things up, and the company’s approach to customer engagement is no exception. Knowing that customization is key to its customer experience, Chipotle’s app makes crafting your best burrito or bowl a breeze. This also provides the company with valuable customer data it can use to further enrich the experience, like adding a pick-up timer for hungry customers, a favorites and reorder function in-app and even an in-store pickup shelf for prepaid orders. The result? Chipotle has doubled digital sales in the first quarter of 2019, and things show no signs of slowing down.

Boston Market is Transforming For the Future

Boston Market has taken to the digital sphere to bolster its ongoing transformation. After launching its proprietary app, Boston Market unveiled the Rotisserie Rewards program in August. This program allows customers to earn points for every order they make online, in-store, or through the app, which can be redeemed for delicious offerings like sides, sandwiches, and even a full meal for 12. This also provides Boston Market with a streamlined platform to maintain engagement with its customers and drive sales year-round.

These are just a handful of the restaurants thrilling their customers through personalized digital experiences. For a more detailed look into how your restaurant brand can do the same, make sure to watch the webinar!

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The post How Leading QSR, Restaurant and Fast Casual Brands Are Innovating Customer Experience appeared first on Airship.

Check out five key takeaways below, and watch the full webinar here.

Digital Experiences Are Critical to the Customer Lifecycle

From new customer acquisition, to retention and engagement, to loyalty and growth programs, your customer journey offers touchpoints from end to end that present opportunities for great ROI. Improving the QSR customer experience starts by understanding each and every one of these touchpoints, and how to make the most of them.

Customer Data Is the Key to Optimization

Knowing your audience is essential to any good marketing endeavor, but this is doubly true for digital touchpoints. Customer data can provide critical insights into channel preferences, location context, engagement and in-app behaviors, helping you shape a well-informed strategy around specific customer experiences.

Navigate Channel Complexity Through Customer Profiles

Digital engagement can be daunting, as businesses are wary of irritating or overwhelming their customers across the range of channels available to them. The solution for the QSR customer experience is to leverage your customer data to develop specific profiles, which provide context, preference and priority for your engagement strategies. 

Focus On Repeat Behavior and Loyalty

Studies show that it’s much cheaper to retain than to acquire customers, and customer retention has a compounding effect on overall sales and growth. For QSRs, this means focusing on long-term loyalty from the very beginning: even something as simple as a well-delivered welcome series for a new app user can result in 3x the user retention.

Optimize for Behavior-Driven Engagement

Remember that customer data we mentioned? Well after you’ve used it to build out your engagement strategy, you can also use it to automate these moments for optimal customer experiences. Identifying key customer moments like their first app login, first purchase, or recent visits can help you plan ahead, delivering the right message at just the right time.

For a more detailed look into how your restaurant can create lasting customer experiences, make sure to watch the webinar!

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SMS Does What No Other Marketing Can 

SMS stands apart from other marketing channels with direct, immediate, native-to-mobile engagement with no app required. It also features the highest open and response rates of any mobile channel: users open 98% of SMS texts received, 90% of those within three minutes of receiving them. Even compared to a channel like Email, SMS has 6-8x higher engagement than email and a 32% response rate. With numbers like these, SMS can be a valuable component of your customer engagement toolkit.

Engaging Every Step of the Customer Journey

SMS marketing gives you the unique ability to engage customers no matter where they are in your sales funnel. Send promotions to new customers to get them browsing. Offer reminders and discounts to save an abandoned purchase. Keep customers in-the-know with order and shipping notifications. Or provide offers and incentives through a loyalty program. SMS texts give retailers the power to strategically connect with customers throughout their journey, building affinity and engagement in the process. 

Actionable Insights to Perfect Your Personalization

Data-driven insights can make a huge difference in how and when you engage your customers, and SMS marketing provides a rich well of information to shape your strategy. For example, your data may suggest that there is a particular subset of your customers you’d like to target with a promotion. SMS enables you to build out automated keyword segmentation for these customers, create custom event triggers, and design dynamic, personalized messages that make your customers feel seen and valued. Even better, this approach is scalable, helping you build on successful campaigns to generate nearly endless opportunities for engagement.

To see just what SMS marketing can do for your business, check out the full eBook, “9 Ways Every Retailer Should Be Using SMS Marketing.” Download your copy today! 

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That’s why we’ve put together our top six considerations for any marketer looking to expand their toolset with SMS. With these in hand, you’ll be well-equipped to choose the best SMS marketing platform to help your business engage, convert and retain customers.

How Well Does This SMS Platform Coordinate with Other Digital Channels? 

As noted above, the true strength of an SMS platform is how it integrates with other digital channels. Pairing SMS with mobile wallet, for example, gives you a dream-team combo that lets you directly communicate with your users on mobile, no app required. Combining SMS and email, on the other hand, enables you to use emails such as order confirmations and promotions to prompt SMS opt-ins for time-sensitive information such as shipping notifications and sale alerts. 

How well your SMS platform plays with other digital channels can be a make-or-break factor in whether it fits with your customer engagement strategy. Before you buy, be sure to double-check that your SMS platform can deliver its content in harmony with your other customer engagement tools.

How Robust Are This Platform’s Automation Capabilities? 

Customer engagement strategy is all about timing and context, and the right SMS platform should give you total control over when and where to engage your customers—without the hassle of actually scheduling each and every message. 

For example, with custom event and tag triggers, you can deliver a message automatically after a customer opts into messaging, or the moment they join your loyalty program. And with keyword automation, you can personalize the content, such as loyalty points balance or flight status, your customers receive so they feel seen and supported. How well your SMS platform can automate, especially within a range of dynamic customer journeys, is an essential consideration for your customer engagement toolkit. 

Does This SMS Platform Offer Personalization? 

Speaking of customer journeys, personalized content is playing a bigger role than ever in affecting customer experience, and the best SMS platform will offer dynamic content that helps you reach your customers with timely and helpful information. From including a customer’s name in the message, to providing in-depth details like flight numbers, departure times and abandoned cart items, personalization is key to any quality SMS platform. 

Does This SMS Platform Partner with Tier 1 Aggregators? 

SMS aggregators are the intermediaries between your brand and the telecoms that your customers rely on for their mobile experience. And not all aggregators are created equal. In the U.S., aggregators are considered Tier 1 when they connect directly to the top five networks in the U.S.: Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular. SMS platforms that partner with Tier 1 aggregators have the highest throughput and speed, the best performance, and the most reliable data protection. So when shopping for an SMS platform, be sure to check who they’re working with to get your messages to your customers. 

Does This SMS Platform Allow Link Shortening and Tracking? 

Every character counts when it comes to SMS marketing. Shortening links is a great way to give yourself more valuable real-estate for customer engagement — as well as drive higher click-through rates — but not all SMS platforms have this feature built-in. The best SMS platforms also integrate link shortening with detailed performance tracking, such as user-level click data, so that you can gather audience data and make more informed, strategic decisions when it comes to your customer engagement.

Is This SMS Platform Compliant?

According to a recent poll conducted by Airship, 30% of marketers are hesitant to adopt SMS because of compliance concerns. SMS compliance requirements can seem daunting, but the best SMS platforms go above and beyond to keep their customers well-informed about all compliance-related requirements. When shopping for an SMS platform, look for detailed documentation around opt-in and opt-out policies, tools that help you maintain detailed records, and resources to help you engage in best practices.

Bringing It All Together

With Airship, you can make SMS a part of a seamless, integrated customer experience and deliver more personal and contextual SMS messages.  Our Platform’s Orchestration, Automation and Personalization capabilities mean you can fine-tune delivery time and context for all your text messages.

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The Right Channels Make for Better ROI

SMS is direct, immediate, native to mobile and doesn’t require an app. It also has the highest open (98%) and read rate (90%) of any mobile channel. This makes it a powerful tool in your customer engagement toolbox, made even more powerful when combined with other channels.

Maybe your customers want more streamlined experiences for their purchases and use of tickets. Or maybe they want personalized coupons related to purchases they’ve already made, delivered right to their phone. Wherever your customer preferences direct you, SMS pairs brilliantly with other platforms to create a seamless, integrated customer experience.

Get Personal and Contextual with SMS

SMS is far more feature-rich than many people realize. By leveraging tools like keywords, automation and even dynamic content, you can personalize interactions with your customers to maximize your SMS ROI.

For example, say a customer opts into your SMS content by texting a keyword. Now you’re delivering targeted content to an engaged prospect, who follows a link to a product they’re interested in.

Now let’s say your customer puts that item in their shopping cart, but fails to make the purchase. Intelligent SMS can time a reminder text to maximize the likelihood of purchase completion, and even provide targeted incentives to ensure your customer feels seen and valued.

Couple this with an SMS after the purchase that lets your customer know they’ve just reached the first tier of your loyalty program, and you’ve got an engaged, rewarded and satisfied customer. All through the power of SMS.

And That’s Not All

Adding SMS to your customer engagement strategy creates a new touchpoint to drive customer acquisition, a new engagement platform for customer experiences and a long-term investment in customer loyalty.

When combined with other channels, the ROI of SMS only increases. We’ve covered some high-level takeaways here, but for a breakdown of just how beneficial our favorite power combos can be, watch our webinar, “SMS Power Combos That  Create Fantastic CX — and Massive Value for Your Brand”, or download our SMS playbook for more use cases, tips and best practices.

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Learn more about SMS and its features on the SMS Marketing page.  

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