San Francisco-based AI-powered personalization platform Formation.ai surveyed over 2,000 US customers in the first quarter of 2020 about their feelings toward brand loyalty.
Its report, Brand Loyalty: the Need for Hyper-Individualisation, shows that personalization is critical to earning consumer loyalty in today’s competitive market.
The majority of consumers only belong to between one and three loyalty programs, meaning a program must really deliver to make the cut for consumers. Almost four out of five (79%) of consumers agree that the more personalization tactics a brand uses, the more loyal they are to that brand. But for 77% of consumers, businesses are not doing enough to earn that loyalty. The report found that over four out of five (81%) of consumers are willing to share basic personal information for personalization and that 83% of consumers are more willing to share data if the brand is transparent about how it will be used. But consumers want to receive something in return. And loyalty programs could be the key. These programs could be the key to unlocking greater data personalization and building long-term loyalty.
- Four out of five (79%) consumers agree the more personalization tactics a brand uses, the more loyal they are to that brand.
- Three out of four (73%) said they’re more likely to engage with a brand that offers a loyalty program compared to one that does not.
- One out of five (20%) of consumers surveyed feels they receive marketing emails that “extremely frequently” feature content relevant to their specific lifestyle, interests, attitudes, or past purchases.
A similar percentage (18%) reported receiving marketing emails that contain content so unique to their needs that they feel it recognizes them as individuals “extremely frequently.”
But there is a trade-off between receiving hyper-personalized emails and privacy in some industries. In the healthcare sector, people are increasingly wary of losing their privacy.
San Francisco, CA-based marketing analytics platform W20’s Consumer Attitudes in Health Care Data Uses and Privacy surveyed over 1,000 consumers across the US before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It wanted to understand if consumers were comfortable with certain types of data used in targeted advertising.
The study showed that consumers demand transparency and visibility on how their data is being used. Seven out of 10 (70%) of respondents said that health data should either not be shared, or shared only with their permission, and that they should have the ability to opt-out — not in.
Consumers also care most about the altruistic purposes of health data use. Half of those surveyed indicated that they would only want their health data shared if they knew it would be used to improve healthcare outcomes for others.
As a result, organizations should clearly outline how they are sharing and using health data, and how it can advance public health. People are increasingly wary of losing their privacy and require more education on how their data is used. Companies need to be more transparent with how they use your data — whatever it is — to avoid the ultra-targeted message that makes you convinced that you are being watched and targeted.
This article originally appeared in ZDnet.