Tag: What's NEXT

This is the era of privacy. The modern consumer expects truly personalized experiences on whatever touchpoint they engage with your brand. Challenge accepted. But here’s the kicker, they want this complemented by heightened privacy, tighter data controls, and the right to have the information erased with the click of a button.

During the past three years, major technology companies have been announcing their removal of third-party cookie plans. Their decisions have been influenced heavily by the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal which emerged in early 2018.

Since March 2018, when Chris Wiley blew the whistle on the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal, governments have been investing in regulations. The European Union was the first to tighten the General Data Protection Regulations GDPR in May 2018. Less than two years later in January 2020, the state of California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act.

In January of 2020, Google announced plans to phase out support for third-party cookies within a year. Since then, browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Safari have announced they will be stepping away from cookies too. However, the timelines changed in June 2021, when Google explained that third-party cookies will not be eradicated until 2023.

They moved out the timeline for phasing out cookies, giving a new period of grace for advertisers and publishers that we’ll see in late 2022. Stage two, which is the phasing out of cookies, will start in mid-2023, and then end in late 2023.

A consumer’s perspective

In the past, consumers surrendered their data in exchange for convenience, however with all these changes coming in the next couple of years, the consumer has never been more aware of how they are being tracked online. We can certainly see more consumer awareness around what marketing tactics are considered creepy versus cool.

According to a 2021 Consumer Trends Index Report by consumer engagement Cheetah Digital, 73% of global respondents said they were okay to receive recommendations from brands based on past purchases. The report showed 54% of consumers were also ok to receive an email reminder about an abandoned cart, however, 66% said they do not like adverts that follow them across devices.

Furthermore, 69% of respondents said adverts relating to something they talked about near a smart device are ‘creepy’, while 72% said they do not want advertisements from companies they don’t know based on their location data.

There’s a big difference between targeting a golden audience segment with a silver bullet of an offer versus going through a consumer’s proverbial trash by analyzing their browsing history.

A marketer’s perspective

Consumers want more personalization and more privacy, this is the paradox marketers are grappling with right now. We can see marketers are primarily using segments or cohort-based personalization, versus true one-to-one personalization.

As we get closer to the cliff edge of the deprecation of third-party cookies, we’re going to see marketers ramp up and hopefully get more people into using advanced personalization at a one-to-one level using known data.

How to thrive from the death of the cookie

As brands and marketers start to address what they’re going to do in this cookie-less future, many are starting to build first-party relationships and incentivize direct engagement.

The entities in the advertising and marketing supply chain that have first-party relationships are the brand marketers and publishers. Everybody else in the middle of that is an intermediary, from the big agency holding companies to supply-side tech platforms to data management platforms. These are all intermediaries without a relationship to an end consumer.

Those entities, over the next two years, need to be able to leverage any element of advertising transaction, whether it’s through programmatic channels, automated channels, private marketplaces, or direct type deals. Many other marketers, including the analysts, are promoting zero-party data as a sensible strategy, given the need to balance privacy and personalization. This is data that a consumer willingly gives a brand in return for getting better, personalized products, content, or services.

While marketers can take advantage of free services and personalized discounts to get the best direct engagement, the best way for organizations to engage with customers directly without the need for cookies is through loyalty programs. And as the cookie begins to ‘crumble’, marketers need to reduce their reliance on third-party tracking and look towards the future of first-party data sources such as loyalty brands to ensure they can build a harmonious relationship between the brand and the consumer.

Loyalty programs that when done well govern the value exchange between brands and consumers, not just for a single interaction, but for direct engagement over the customer lifetime. With contextually differentiated, personalized experiences, they can be the conduit for the one-to-one relationships that build customer lifetime value.

This article is written by Billy Loizou, VP for Go To Market for APAC at consumer engagement solution Cheetah Digital.

The article is published as part of MARKETECH APAC’s thought leadership series What’s NEXT. This features marketing leaders sharing their marketing insights and predictions for the upcoming year. The series aims to equip marketers with actionable insights to future-ready their marketing strategies.

If you are a marketing leader and have insights that you’d like to share with regards to the upcoming trends and practices in marketing, please reach out to [email protected] for an opportunity to have your thought-leadership published on the platform.

Why do marketers need digital experience platforms (DXP)? The answer is simple. Most people check out a brand online before they walk into the store, or check out its physical office, or if they even have one at all. And this touchpoint has become even more ingrained in a consumer’s journey in the new normal, where lockdowns have dampened the relevance of brick-and-mortar stores.

According to the latest E-conomy report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, the Southeast Asia region is charging ahead at full steam, having added 60 million new digital consumers to the internet economy since the pandemic started, with 20 million of them joining in H1 2021 alone. And this will further increase as e-commerce becomes the be-all-and-end-all of consumers’ shopping demands.

DXP as the vital baseline of consumer experiences

When we walk into a store, say Uniqlo – the entire experience matters – from the lighting, the smell, and the layout to the customer service and the checkout experience. Now imagine trying to replicate this online, purely digitally – you take away the physical elements like touch, smell, and feeling of being in the store; so what you have to do is to ensure the online experience is as powerful as possible to instill positive emotions in the customer.

In the case of digital experience, this will be the user interface, the simplicity of navigation, the speed of page loading, the personalization of the page itself, and micro components to make the experience enriching while being bespoke, along with the checkout process remaining seamless, the omnichannel engagement fulfilling, among many others. If the experience is positive across the customer journey and all the multiple touchpoints, then the customer’s experience towards the brand will naturally be uplifting, leading to more engagement, advocacy, sales, and loyalty.

Digital experience has been way underrated – brands spend many more times the budget on traditional campaigns, loud billboards, and posters, but all these are turning into spam and noise for the customer. Even if the advert catches their eyeballs, and they land on a website that is poorly designed, all that money spent will be in vain. However, a superbly executed website or app has the potential to go viral effortlessly simply because of human nature – we experience something good and we want to share it with others, and if the site is made to be shareable easily, then it will proliferate.

There are many ways to measure DXP ROI – but rather than using a template and then measuring that against variables which may not matter or are very intangible, using a composable DXP allows you to build a martech stack against a specific business objective. So, for example, with all things being equal, you want to measure increase in conversions – adding a shopping cart + marketing automation and then tracking the differences over a period of time, or against the same interval as compared to last year or years before – this will allow you to see the incremental gains which you can then use against the tech/resource investment to get the ROI.

Breaking ROI down into specific objectives will allow marketers to pinpoint what really works for them and what doesn’t, rather than get a digital transformation solution that costs millions and waiting for a couple of years for that to ‘transform’ the revenue. It simply doesn’t work that way; apart from the tech investment, there is also change management you need to take into account – the retraining of people and reshaping of processes in order to fit the new ‘solution’, not to mention the attrition as well.

Asia is one of the most creative and competitive markets in the world, and they are constantly leading the pack with innovative ways of engaging the customer. For some of the brands, there is a ‘family business’ approach where marketers work in silos, and for the others, they pay millions of dollars a year for solutions that they barely even use 10% of. 

As marketers get savvier digitally, and the role of digital leaders become more empowered, they will be able to focus their investments better and get better ROI from those investments, as well as use agile solutions to adapt rapidly to changes in the market in order to take advantage of these disruptions.

The new marketer is the one who sees change as an opportunity, not as a tragedy. And with this new normal, the future of DXP in Asia is really the only way to go – whoever can embrace digital first, will displace the competition first. And once you gain that foothold, the others can only play catchup. Our younger generations are digital natives, and digital is the future as the world becomes a giant online city.

This article is written by Don Lee, managing director for APAC of CMS provider Magnolia.

The article is published as part of MARKETECH APAC’s thought leadership series What’s NEXT. This features marketing leaders sharing their marketing insights and predictions for the upcoming year. The series aims to equip marketers with actionable insights to future-ready their marketing strategies.

If you are a marketing leader and have insights that you’d like to share with regards to the upcoming trends and practices in marketing, please reach out to [email protected] for an opportunity to have your thought-leadership published on the platform.

More marketers are recognizing the power of branded content in our rapidly evolving digital age. Consumers are constantly being bombarded with all sorts of adverts, so it is vital for brands to tell stories that resonate with their customers to ensure they stand out from the crowd. 

Content marketing also offers a range of other business benefits, including helping companies to build brand awareness, cultivate consumer loyalty, and generate organic growth through publicity.

Up to 80 percent of marketers regard content creation as one of the top priorities, according to a 2021 report by Hubspot. It also shows that content marketing makes up 26 percent of their business-to-business marketing budgets, while spending is on the rise.

Plan your next successful content marketing campaign

To better plan, manage and evaluate a successful content marketing campaign, it is important that companies put a clear structure in place. Here is our five-step guide to help you plan your next content marketing campaign.

1. Define your strategy with a framework for measurement

Brand equity modeling is a useful tool to assess the impact of measures of brand equity on long-term brand performance. Marketers should first include metrics such as ‘trust’, ‘quality’, and ‘reliability’ with a definitive monetary value and hierarchy, alongside other tangible indicators such as the audience engagement level or sales conversion.

With such a framework, marketers can constantly measure the effectiveness of each campaign and adjust their strategy to optimize the results.

2. Know your audience through data

Storytelling is a form of art, but tailoring your content to the right audience is a science. Making use of first-, second- or third-party data is instrumental in mapping out the key communications challenges of engaging your target audience.

By analyzing the data, which shows such things as who your audience is, what content they consume, and how they behave; marketers will have a better idea about how to strengthen the brand relevance to the target audiences in the right context.

3. Internal support for creative process 

Compelling content requires creativity, but the bureaucratic approval process sometimes kills imaginative thinking. As such, marketers should lobby internally and get the backing of C-suite, or senior executives, to ensure the least intervention in the creative process, while gatekeepers are in place for quality assurance and crisis prevention. Ideally, two to three sign-offs would be sufficient in keeping the right balance between gatekeeping and the creative process.

4. Tailor your distribution plan to match user journey

With a massive volume of content available, both online and offline, marketers need to work towards more than just clicks and eyeballs. Instead, they should curate a content journey – through the right distribution channels at the right time for the right audience – that allows people to discover your brand, generate interest and build brand loyalty.

5. Focus on long-term benefits

Most content marketers define the success of a content marketing campaign by the number of sales conversions. This overemphasis on short-term results prevents marketers from benefiting from the long-term returns – gained from: creating real bonds with your customers and cultivating customer loyalty.

This article is written by Darryl Choo, regional sales director for APAC at South China Morning Post.

The article is published as part of MARKETECH APAC’s thought leadership series What’s NEXT.

This features marketing leaders sharing their marketing insights and predictions for the upcoming year. The series aims to equip marketers with actionable insights to future-ready their marketing strategies.

If you are a marketing leader and have insights that you’d like to share with regards to the upcoming trends and practices in marketing, please reach out to [email protected] for an opportunity to have your thought leadership published on the platform.

Our lifestyle today revolves around platform businesses, and the need for such services has been further heightened with social restrictions over the course of the pandemic. From what we eat (food delivery), how we commute (ride-hailing), to how we consume entertainment (video-sharing websites), we use the services provided by platform players. In fact, the market size of the global platform economy has surpassed the US$7t mark and is still growing at a compounded annual rate of 15%.

In 2022, there will be more startups coming to the scene disrupting traditional markets, and even established companies shifting their business model, all adopting the platform-based approach.

With increasing competition coming next year, what does it take for a platform player to emerge as a winner? The answer is the ability to create an ecosystem that not just meets the needs of both the consumers (buyers) and suppliers (sellers), but also one where both sides of the platform are committed and engaged in interacting with each other.

This can be achieved via platform loyalty programs. Platform loyalty programs are different from traditional loyalty programs. The program design of the latter is geared only towards the consumers whereas in the former, both players have their own roles to play to drive sustainable growth of the platform.

Five Strategic Archetypes of Platform Loyalty Programs to consider in 2022

As we enter 2022 with service platforms now deeply ingrained in consumers’ day-to-day, today proves to be the best time to double down on their engagement and build loyalty programs that will make the stay and long for a brand’s product or service.

Here are five strategies platform players can adopt in building a winning engagement strategy as their growth engine.

1. Two-pronged programs

The most direct way is to create a separate reward system for both consumers and sellers as means to create growth loops i.e. consumers bringing in more consumers; while sellers bringing in more sellers to the platform – to create more activities. 

Example: foodpanda

Foodpanda is a great example of how they create a separate rewards program for both sides of the platform ecosystem. Consumers have access to challenges and rewards where you get to unlock badges and points and redeem them for vouchers. Meanwhile, foodpanda has Bamboo Rewards to recognize riders. Through Bamboo Rewards, riders get to earn rewards such as fuel incentives, vouchers, and free merchandise.

Source: Screengrabs from foodpanda app and website

2. Customized programs

A platform owner can allow sellers on their program to launch their own mini loyalty program, which offers and rewards customers based on their own business needs, but still within the overarching rewards design principle of the platform.

Example: Lieferando

Lieferando is a food delivery platform in Europe. While they have an overarching points program, they allow the participating restaurants to customize their own stampcard program where users will get to earn a stamp for every order they make and redeem it for vouchers – personalized from that very restaurant – after collecting x number of stamps.

Source: Screengrabs from Lieferando website

3. Coalition programs

Multiple brands join together in a partnership and offer a joint loyalty program, often having a single rewards currency in the ecosystem.

Example: PAYBACK

At the core of the coalition program, PAYBACK has market-leading brands in the everyday spend category. This helps to ensure sufficient scale to support the economics of the program and in turn attract other partners to the coalition. A highly liquid rewards currency is the main draw for the consumers where they can freely earn/ burn across the participating brands thus allowing them to stretch their dollars.

Source: Screengrabs from PAYBACK website

4. Alliance program

Similar to a coalition loyalty program except that participating brands do not have to forfeit their own loyalty program and consumers do not have to sign up for a new program to be part of the alliance ecosystem

Example: Star Alliance

Star Alliance is a two-tier rewards program that gives passengers more options to book their tickets from the participating airlines, simplified in-flight operations, and the ability to earn and redeem miles on other alliance members. To be a member, customers just have to be enrolled in any of the participating alliance members’ frequent flyer programs. For airlines, joining an alliance gives them access to more customers and by combining networks, member airlines can offer more flights to many more designations without having the need to operate these routes on their own.

Source: Screengrabs from Star Alliance website

5. Employer-Employee program

While this model is not quite a typical platform rewards program, the program is meant to solve the pain points of employers and employees while still driving the main activities to the platform itself.

Example: Grab for Business

The program helps employers and saves them from having to give and track transport allowance to staff, and staff (users) do not have to be bothered with manual expense reporting while still being able to earn rewards points on their business travels.

Source: Screengrabs from Grab website

Program design principles for a successful platform loyalty program

Whichever model a platform player chooses as their engagement strategy, they need to adhere to these principles to ensure their program is successful:

1. Platform owners must solve the pain points of both consumers and sellers; or at least give sufficient reasons for them to join the program

2. Program insights should be made available to sellers (e.g. real-time dashboards) to improve targeting and offerings

3. Personalization and segmentation are important ingredients for sellers

4. Loyalty economics (e.g. earn/burn, breakage, floats) are critical for platform growth.

5. Balanced earn and burn across all partners and program must be independently owned by 3rd party

Platform business is in abundance and the market will get even more crowded in 2022. Only those who can foster healthy relationships between consumers and sellers will be successful, therefore, it is imperative that platform players start investing in their engagement strategies today.

Platform loyalty programs are an important growth loop strategy for platform businesses to grow their players, both buyers and sellers. Introducing such a concept in the current market environment could prove to be a winning asset and a strong differentiator from the competition.

This article was written by Loyalty & Growth Leader Henry Christian. He is the former general manager of Singapore’s loyalty program NTUC Link, and previously the head of loyalty program of leading lifestyle retailer MAP in Indonesia.

The article is published as part of MARKETECH APAC’s thought leadership series What’s NEXT.

This features marketing leaders sharing their marketing insights and predictions for the upcoming year. The series aims to equip marketers with actionable insights to future-ready their marketing strategies.

If you are a marketing leader and have insights that you’d like to share with regards to the upcoming trends and practices in marketing, please reach out to [email protected] for an opportunity to have your thought leadership published on the platform.

Manila, Philippines – The pandemic has turned the way brands engage with consumers on its head. With people cooped up in their homes, digital has not only become the platform to deliver creative and interactive experiences but has become the channel that answers best to consumers’ bounds and capabilities in a physically-challenged environment.

The question now is what’s next for digital marketing? How do we go from here and what future trends in digital marketing must brands set their eyes on? 

With a brand new year fast approaching, MARKETECH APAC, the digital publication dedicated to the marketing and ad industry in the Asia-Pacific, is launching a webinar for the Philippines that aims to give brands a headstart on the next big thing in digital marketing and what marketers and advertisers can do to stay on top of the game in 2022 and beyond.

MARKETECH APAC launches webinar to uncover future-proof marketing strategies for marketers in the Philippines

Gathering an esteemed group of marketing leaders from top Philippine brands AirAsia, Canon Philippines, and Max’s Restaurant, the webinar ‘What’s NEXT: Digital Marketing in the Philippines’ aims to present a future-oriented conversation on digital marketing strategies with a unique perspective from the Philippine industry. 

The panel which includes Allenie Caccam, head of marketing at AirAsia Philippines; Anvey Factora, head of marketing communications, e-commerce and retail, of Canon Philippines; and Mark De Joya, chief operating officer of Max’s Restaurant, will be discussing the state of personalization, the heart of every creative and strategic digital marketing implementation, in the new normal and the next. 

The panel discussion will be moderated by Marilyn Romero-Ventenilla, senior director for communications and marketing of Teleperformance Philippines.

Romero-Ventenilla commented, “In today’s world where physical distance does not mean customers and brands need to be socially and emotionally distant from each other, seamless interaction and meaningful personalized experiences will be key. Innovations around digital marketing will allow organizations to deliver services and interactions tailored to the needs of the market anytime, anywhere.”

The said marketing leaders will be going back to the ‘why’ of personalization and trace it from there – which personalization strategies work best for Philippine consumers and what comes next for the future of personalization. Most of all, leaders will be unraveling the best practices and fitting plans of action for brands to adapt to these foreseen changes. 

‘What’s NEXT: Digital Marketing in the Philippines’ will be held virtually on December 2, 2021 at 3 pm Philippine Time.

Travis Teo, the co-founder and executive director of adtech Adzymic, will be giving a presentation on the role of technology in delivering engaging creatives and how to best harness present advancements in adtech for optimal campaign performance. 

Teo commented, “The programmatic media space is one where audience targeting can be highly specific, and campaign performance determined by the richness of data available for machines to learn and improve. To thrive in this environment, it is important to consider using adtech to scale up on creative personalization and format variants for testing and optimization. We look forward to discussing some of these creative strategies with the Filipino marketing community at our upcoming forum.”

Meanwhile, Shaina Teope, MARKETECH APAC’s regional editor, said, “Digital is now deeply ingrained in consumers’ lives and while brands and marketers have at this point penetrated the interactive platform, the question to be answered now is, what should brands do next to stay within digital consumers’ radar? This industry conversation aims to help firm up their foresight into 2022 and beyond.”

Secure your spot for the webinar here. 

‘What’s NEXT: Digital Marketing in the Philippines’ is open to all marketers and advertisers looking to get actionable insights and expert guidance on how to future-proof their digital marketing strategies this 2022 and beyond. The webinar is also dedicated to any brand eyeing to enter and win in the Philippine market.