CDP Institute

It’s been a slow news week, so I’m glad to have something concrete: Hearst announced yesterday it is buying the content business of Rodale, publisher of health and wellness books and magazines.

Plenty of surveys, including this one from Euclid, show that retail shoppers ultimately care more about price than experience. But long-term brand relationships are something else. Incentive program provider Blackhawk Network found that consumers rank customer experience, convenience and payment process far above price as reasons they remain loyal how to a brand. How far? Good customer experience was cited by 94% while low price was cited by just 57%.

But maybe experience isn’t enough? Heresy! Yet a fascinating report on “brand relevance” by the marketing consultancy Prophet found that consumers ranked Apple, Google, and Amazon as most relevant to their lives, while social networks Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat didn’t even make the top 50. The difference, according to Prophet, is the social networks don’t connect emotionally with their customers.

More heretical still: the brand’s image matters less than the image of the brand’s customers. So argues research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey, which has just introduced AffinID Score, a way to measure how strongly consumers identify with their image of a brand’s consumer. “Strategic brands don’t win on price: they win on tribe,” says the research firm’s head of consumer psychology.

Decisions, decisions. Should we talk today about artificial intelligence or visual marketing? We can do both this item about Adhark, whose Ava platform uses AI to score the “visual resonance” of images, based on its understanding of the visual preferences of marketing audiences. This apparently represents a pivot for Adhark, which last year introduced a now-vanished product to recommend social media activities.

Let’s go with visuals. ViralGains offers video advertising that changes as users move through the buying journey and asks users for feedback about what they’re shown, product interests, and brand sentiment. It’s an interesting if complicated concept. They’ve raised $28.7 million including $13 million last month.

And here’s one straight out of Minority Report: imageSurge changes the ads behind a storefront window based on preferences defined in a nearby user’s mobile app. No iris scanning is involved, so far as we know.

Truth be told, I have no news for you today. But I do have interesting studies about personalization. First is a marketer survey from Sailthru. You can almost hear the teeth grind as they report 75% of marketers think segmentation and personalization are the same thing and 65% believe email response rate is a critical success measure. Even more frustrating: while 91% of respondents personalize their emails, just 44% personalize their Web site and only one quarter personalize mobile Web, social media, or mobile apps. Worth a look.

Next we have the customer perspective. Salesforce surveyed B2B and B2C buyers and found that business buyers have significantly higher expectations about interactive and personalized experiences. Less surprising: Millennials and GenXers are more attuned to personalization than troglodytes Baby Boomers. But convenience is still king: while 52%of respondents are likely to abandon brands that don’t personalize their communications, 74% would switch because of a difficult purchase process.

Surveys are nice but how about some real data on personalization’s value? The folks at ecommerce personalization vendor Qubit analyzed two billion customer journeys and 120 million purchases to find what worked. They found messages that highlight low-stock items, trending products, and time limits were most effective. Product recommendations were less so. But the main news is that messages driven by individual-level behaviors and preferences were three times more effective than non-targeted messages. Fascinating.

As if the marketing landscape weren’t confusing enough, grocery giant Kroger has created 84.51°, an agency that runs marketing programs for packaged goods manufacturers wanting to reach 60 million Kroger-buying households. Channels include in-store advertising, co-branded Web advertising, and a private social network for Kroger’s most engaged customers. Are retailer-based marketing networks the next big thing?

You don’t need to be a retail giant to reach your customers. Aislelabs has just released a free version of its in-store WiFi marketing product. Customers can sign in to free in-store WiFi and retailers get customer data analytics and limited user profiles. A paid version gives more detailed profiles and allows targeted marketing campaigns via email, SMS and social posts.