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Archived in According to a recent study many of the top brands struggle when it comes to being loved. In fact, none of them scored above 30% at the ‘love score’ amongst customers, based on criteria such as whether the brand ‘makes time to reward me’, ‘relates to me best’ or ‘cares about me more than just money’.
So what’s gone wrong with the top brands’ love lives? Why aren’t they creating the emotional connections that are supposed to come from millions spent on marketing?
Well, the low levels of affection for brands have been blamed on a lack of personalised engagement. After all, you need to make people feel special if you want them to love you back.
Internet dating is about relationship building
Internet dating is like marketing in many ways. There are two main approaches:
- You can send the same message to as many potential partners as possible
- Or pluck nuggets of info from their profile about their passions, hobbies and interests to drop into personalised messages
So which approach do you think works best? Yep, you guessed it – taking the time to show an interest in people as individuals is the best way to get a conversation going in the internet dating world.
Once you’ve started a dialogue you can then keep asking questions to make your messages more relevant before reaching a conversion in the form of a date. Where you go from there is the subject of a different blog entirely.
So what does internet dating teach brands?
If brands want to be loved they should try mirroring the tactics that work so well in internet dating, and deliver campaigns that are personalised to match the interests of individual prospects.
Thankfully, we now have the technology to build these campaigns.
With Purls (personalised URLs) we can create websites customised for each individual prospect, and then use variable data printing to send them personalised promotions based on every click and page view.
Boots, for example, could reward its customer better by sending them personalised print and online promotions based on their purchase history. Not only will this cut down on the printing costs of sending an entire catalogue, but will also deliver marketing that’s more relevant and better received.
Brands need to remember that people are individuals, with their own interests and preferences. So, as in the internet dating world, they need to treat customers as unique individuals if they want to be more loved in return.
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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.
