Marketers in the Middle East region are having trouble gathering ‘real time’ analytics because of which their marketing, social and mobile teams are working in silos. This in turn has resulted in disengaged customers who either drop off at the last moment while shopping or refuse to become repeat customers.
This problem can only be fixed if their current marketing tech stack can be replaced with an insights-led customer engagement platform. An innovative and data-led platform will not only help them stay relevant but also create hyper-personalized experiences for customers. The report also points out that almost 26 per cent of the of the brands in the Middle East still prefer CRM platforms, closely followed by Customer Data Platforms (CDP), although they are limited by technology to churn out insightful information to brands. Very few prefer the more advanced and innovative Multichannel Customer Engagement platforms (CEPs).
The findings of a study by MoEngage, an insights-led engagement platform, clearly signals the importance of gaining actionable insights into customer behavior to build an impactful engagement strategy and provide a delightful customer experience. Keeping customer preferences in mind while deciding on the preferred channel is a good practice adopted by marketers, but brands need to evolve their strategy to draw insights from attributes, purchases, likes, and clicks as well instead of just engaging few customer segments. Also, pivoting on just the campaign-centric insights might provide a skewed analysis.
This is where a smart CEP goes a step further and helps build a unified customer profile and drives a personalized, omnichannel experience for customers. It helps brands by removing siloed operations and bringing data from different sources under one umbrella. So, marketing teams get a 360-degree view of their customers, which is the key to getting and retaining them.
The study titled, ‘The State of ILE Report 2022 | Middle East Edition,’ was conducted across 2000+ male and female marketers, product managers, and C-level executives in the Middle East (from five industries: Banking and Fintech, Media and Entertainment, Consumer Shopping, Ed-Tech, and Hotel & Grocery) to understand their approach to customer engagement, the insights they currently analyze, and the engagement platforms they utilize.
Commenting on the relevance of the report, Kunal Badiani, Regional Head, MEA, MoEngage said: “As digital touchpoints evolve and the market becomes hyper-competitive, brands have to capture relevant data insights to provide personalized experiences with the help of new-gen technologies like analytics and predictions. Brands that adopt the right tech stack by shifting to an insights-led customer engagement platform stay relevant by knowing what their customers really want.”
Other key findings
The study also found that 25 per cent of the respondent companies measured time, capital, and resources to assess customer interest, choice, or affinity. And only about 14 per cent made important aspects of customer insights such as preferred channel, the probability to purchase, churn or hibernate, and segment personas as their top priority. The report also showed that personalization of communication was not consistent across industries and brands. While some based it on customer attributes, others used behavior-based data to personalize messages. Although 27 per cent of marketers use various digital channels such as social, web, and mobile, to send personalized product or content recommendations, and educate customers, very few (only 8 per cent) use factors such as behavioral attributes to figure out a channel and time preference for the communication. These limitations were because of their restrictive current tech stacks.
MoEngage is an insights-led customer engagement platform with clients across global consumer brands such as Azadea, Landmark, GMG, Brands For Less, Mashreq Bank, Commercial Bank of Dubai and Batelco. It provides marketers and product owners with insights into customer behavior and the ability to act on those insights to engage customers across the web, mobile, email, social, and messaging channels.
