In this follow-up Q&A, Julie answers key questions related to the business value of AX, the right channels for its implementation, and typical challenges businesses may encounter. She also shares her views on the potential risks of brands overstepping the mark with AX and suggests metrics marketing teams should consider when evaluating their AX efforts.

A huge thanks go to Kevin Davis, Chief Data Officer at More2, and Dotdigital’s Juliette Aiken and Steve Shaw, who joined Julie in the webinar to share their knowledge.

Don’t miss the chance to learn from an expert and discover the potential of data-driven anticipatory experiences in your marketing strategy.

Q&A: How to leverage anticipatory experiences

How do anticipatory experiences (AX) translate into business value?

Anticipatory experiences deliver a broad set of business values. Since the design point for AX is delivering consumer convenience, improved customer satisfaction and delight top the list. When consumers are task-oriented or need peace of mind, they will prioritize convenience or speed —the next business value in operational cost savings.

When companies serve customers more proactively with status updates, reminders, and more, customers are less likely to reach out to a contact center (i.e., higher cost than self-service) to get help or information. Finally, when customer needs intersect with business needs, there is an opportunity to sell consumers more products or services. Forrester calls this variation of anticipatory experiences (AX) –  the next best experiences (NBX). NBX experiences optimize customer life time value (CLV) when making suggestions to customers.

Is there a risk of brands overstepping the mark with AX? When does proactive verge into creepy or even obnoxious?

There absolutely is a risk. Everyone remembers the 2012 story of Target sending prenatal vitamin promotions to a teenage girl whose father did not yet know she was pregnant. Just because a brand can anticipate a customer’s need does not mean the brand should act on it. Brands must constantly make judgment decisions on timing and actions based on a holistic view of the customer – not just a single business function’s view – as well as objective ethical functions. Smart brands will prioritize the needs of customers (e.g., eat less sugar, save money, mitigate risk, etc.) over their own needs. 

AX experiences must also evolve over time as customers learn to trust brands based on the value the brands deliver – what Forrester refers to as a “value flywheel.” Brands should ask customers for a little bit of data and then provide a little bit of value. This initial exchange builds trust. Consumers will provide a little more data in exchange for even more value. 

You talk about how anticipatory experiences are constantly evolving. Can you provide examples of the most recent trends or expectations?

AX experiences are evolving along three distinct dimensions. First, brands are evolving how much action they are willing to take on behalf of their customers. Today, many can send content (e.g., “It’s time to board your flight”). In the future, more will send suggestions (e.g., “You should leave now to make your flight” or “Do you want to reload your stored value card?”) and ultimately act on behalf of their customers as they build mutual trust and confidence.

Second, brands will deliver AX on increasingly complex customer journeys. They will start with well-understood journeys (e.g., food delivery, boarding a flight), then watch and listen to their customers so that they can react quickly (e.g., detect potential fraud and pause charges to a credit card), and then ultimately truly anticipate the need of a customer (e.g., if the customer has a stroke). Finally, brands will evolve from a static assembly of moments to a dynamic assembly or construction of moments (e.g., who, what, where, and when) in real time based on insights.

When thinking about creating anticipatory experiences, what channels should be top of the marketers’ list?

Forrester recommends that marketers understand how their customers use technology to access digital experiences – and then marketers should choose their use cases before making technology or channel decisions. For example, nearly all consumers use email, SMS, and push notifications – but fewer consumers may feel comfortable with audio or haptic notifications on their smartphones or smartwatches. 

Marketers should choose channels based on how well matched that channel is to the use case. For example, mobile notifications work best when immediacy is important, and the content is simple (e.g., a short text message or image). Email is more appropriate for longer forms or less urgent content. 

Creating anticipatory experiences is reliant on having real-time information to act on or trigger from. What are the biggest challenges businesses face here?

Decision makers – people or technology solutions – need access to accurate, real-time data or insights that take into account a holistic view of the customer. According to Forrester’s 2021 Global Emerging Technology research, 46% of executives surveyed believe that they are collecting all the customer data they need – but only 34% assemble it into a single profile, and just 14% distribute it to enable critical decisions. Other inhibitors to delivering more anticipatory experiences that executives cited included a lack of automation and the complexity of integration into existing platforms. 

What metrics of success or engagement should marketing teams consider when thinking about AX?

Ultimately, marketing teams want to measure (1) a decrease in time (i.e., for a customer to complete a task) and (2) a reduction in inbound engagement, whether to a contact center or on a mobile app. These metrics purely focus on a customer’s convenience. However, they should use more operational metrics as they start their journey toward delivering AX and then evolve their metrics as they become more sophisticated. 

For example, initially many AX may be mobile notifications that give consumers peace of mind about the status of a process or the location of a delivery. Marketers can start by measuring how many consumers opt-in to receive notifications. They will also need permissions (e.g., use of location) and zero-party data to deliver more personalized and timely content. Marketers can measure the effectiveness of these tactics.

Next steps towards anticipatory customer experiences

If you’re looking to create anticipatory customer experiences, it’s important to use data and analytics to personalize interactions and anticipate customer needs. To get started on this, schedule a call with the Dotdigital team to discuss incorporating this approach into your customer engagement strategies. Visit our partner directory to find out more about More2.

Whether you’re a consumer brand actively working on capturing Gen Z’s attention, or a B2B business planning new ways to reach your decision-makers audience – we’re all thinking about how we will stay relevant.

The Dotdigital platform changes with you and your audience

We mean it when we say our platform is constantly evolving. At Dotdigital we typically have four big product launches a year. Each launch brings new functionality or improvements to much-loved existing features.

We work closely with customers and analyze market trends to determine what updates will take your marketing game to the next level (and beyond your competition). In addition, our team is always looking for ways to integrate with other technologies to make your martech stack even more powerful.

Want to know what we’re working on next? We have a public roadmap where you can even submit your own ideas (just click on the tab on the right side of the page). You can also sign up to be the first to hear about product updates, free resources, and other news here.

Now, let’s look at what rules we’re applying and what you can do within Dotdigital today to get ready.

Rule #1: Integrate your martech stack and bring all your data into one place

Integrating your martech stack and bringing all your customer data into one place is important for effective marketing. Every marketer can relate when I say it can take a lot of different tools to power the engine we call our marketing team. Depending on what works for your business you might be using a loyalty platform, a PowerBI tool, or a prospecting tool in addition to your main marketing platform.

The key is bringing it all together. Integrating your martech stack improves efficiency and allows you to get the most out of each technology – and it helps you save money.

New to the Dotdigital integration hub

In 2022, we expanded our new self-serve integration offering with some much-requested partners. In just a few clicks, you can integrate Dotdigital with Zendesk Sell, Google Sheets, Eventbrite, ZoomWebinar, Typeform, Trustpilot, and more. So whether you’re trying to better sync up with your sales team, or access your reporting data in Google Data Studio, we’ve got the integration for you.

Cross-account analytics for all your entire marketing function

For years, Dotdigital has been known to be a great fit for complex, global companies and our platform is adaptable to seamlessly integrate into any martech stack. Multiple business divisions, regions, or brands can easily be managed with our parent- and child-account setup.

Plus, with multi-language and multi-currency support, each account can be tailored to fit the team’s needs. Account analytics brings all of the data from your global marketing function into one dashboard. See which of your teams are performing best, use actionable insights to foster a cross-team learning culture, and easily track against business and growth objectives.

(Account analytics is also available for customers using a single Dotdigital account).

Rule #2: Know your customer like you know yourself

That’s a big statement, isn’t it? But for marketers, that’s what it’s all about. Understanding your audience to the point that you don’t have to think about when and what they’ll purchase next, or what you need to say for them to download that piece of content.

To go into this detail at scale is only possible when you have a platform to bring the pieces together. To help you on this mission, we’ve recently released some major updates to Dotdigital. 

Lookalike segments in your single customer view

Your single customer view (SCV) is where you dive into an individual customer’s story. You learn their engagement patterns and see persona characteristics at a glance. Besides using SCV to better understand your audience, we can now turn an individual customer into a marketing persona ready to use in your martech stack strategy. Create a segment that automatically pulls together all contacts who look, behave, and buy like the one you’re looking at.

Analytics for every address book

When you’ve already decided who you’re sending a campaign to and are working on getting the message just right, address book & segment analytics are ready to help on the job. New in 2022, address book analytics give you quick insights into your audience’s engagement, web, and commerce behavior. Use this knowledge to optimize the content in your campaign and ensure every message lands.

User-generated content in your campaigns

Your customers of today and tomorrow don’t shy away from putting time into researching a company before deciding to give it their time, money, or even attention. In fact, it’s now thoroughly ingrained in their decision-making process. This makes putting real customer reviews and user-generated content front and center in your marketing more important than ever. Dotdigital lets you pull your latest customer reviews into any campaign with integrations such as REVIEWS.io, Trustpilot, or Yotpo.

Rule #3: Meet your audience where they are

Forrester predicts that this year, up to 20% of your customers might be at risk. This a scary statistic for any marketer, but also one that can motivate us to plan ahead. We expect that tried-and-true marketing channels will take the front seat when creating customer retention strategies. At the same time, we want to use lead generation and retargeting more efficiently to address new audiences and future-proof our pipeline.

Lead generation with Facebook and TikTok

Acquiring future customers of the next generation is top of mind for consumer and B2B brands alike. With a new Facebook Lead ads integration, Dotdigital customers can expand their addressable marketing audience and instantly enroll new contacts into conversion-driving marketing programs. Combine this with a Zapier integration to TikTok Lead Generation and you’re all set for the next consumer wave.

Improved Facebook and Google audiences builder

Too many marketers lose money to the big ad networks without seeing any return. Why? Because they haven’t optimized it to only retarget customers who are yet to convert. With the latest Dotdigital update you’ll never have to worry about spending money where it’s no longer needed.

Not-to-be-missed notifications

There are few automations that drive as much revenue as one that gets triggered by explicit customer purchase intent. Abandoned cart campaigns are a well-established and unconquered winner here, a staple in every commerce marketer’s plan. (If you’re not on the AC train yet, I suggest you get on it, soon.)

Next up on the winner’s podium are product notifications set by the customer themselves. In 2022, we launched back-in-stock messages for our Shopify customers. With a customizable template that goes live on your storefront in minutes, you’ll never miss another purchase intent.

Advanced revenue attribution

If there’s one thing we as marketers have in common, it’s the need to demonstrate the value our efforts have brought to the business. Advanced revenue attribution in Dotdigital helps you do just that. Multi-touch attribution assigns credit to each campaign in a customer’s journey.

You’ll not only get a better understanding of what touchpoints to improve and where to focus your time, but you’ll also be able to show how the full marketing lifecycle generates revenue for your company.

No doubt the new year will bring new challenges and surprises, but with the right technology and an agile mindset, we’re ready for it. All the items covered in this blog are ready to use today and integrating Dodigital into your martech stack will help you take your marketing game to the next level. Head to the what’s new page to read more about our releases, or go straight to the help center and follow the steps to start implementing the tactics now.