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Customer Experience Archives - Page 3 of 4 - NVISION, A BradyPLUS Company

NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Building Products, Marketing ROI, Marketing Supply Chain, Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Performance Measurement, Marketing Operations, Marketing Strategy, Accountability

The Top Building Materials Trends for 2019

The 2019 NAHB International Builders Show is around the corner and NVISION is gearing up to be there!

S&P Global recently released its Building Materials Industry Top Trends 2019, highlighting some of the key trends, takeaways, and forecasts the building materials industry will be keeping its eye on this year, and especially at IBS 2019.

Based on the trends report, here are our three key takeaways that all building materials industry leaders should know!

steel rods - building materials

Commodity Costs Will Continue to Grow

As the report points out, commodity costs for the building industry in North America rose in 2018 for several reasons, including decreasing unemployment, new tariffs, and increased demand. And S&P Global expects those same factors to continue to drive commodity prices up in 2019.

“So far, most building materials companies have been able to offset the cost increases with higher pricing, but it remains to be seen if companies can continue to maintain higher prices in 2019,” the report says. With S&P Global predicting a 3 percent increase in building materials costs in 2019, the building materials industry will need to look at cutting costs and optimizing their supply chains to offset this increase in prices and maintain their margins without continuing to raise prices.

Increased Prices Could Slow the Building Materials Recovery

As the report states, low inventory, higher home prices, and higher interest rates may be pushing marginally qualified homebuyers out of the North American market. This, S&P Global says, could bring a halt to the building materials recovery. “Existing home sales (a big driver of repair and remodel activity) could slow if values remain high and available inventory low,” the report claims. With fewer pre-existing homes being purchased, fewer old houses will be getting remodeled and repaired by new homeowners, and that means less business for building materials companies.

With building materials companies competing for homeowners with fewer dollars to spend – or with new construction townhomes that don’t need remodeling – they will need to find other ways to protect their margins, including finding ways to cut costs and compete on the customer experience with enhanced agility and responsiveness.

home building site

The Building Materials Market is Healthy, But with Growing Risk

When it comes to the numbers, the S&P Global report predicts modest growth in the North American building materials market. “We expect 2.3 percent real GDP growth, 3.6 percent unemployment, and 1.3 million housing starts. We further expect mid-single-digit growth in repair and remodeling activity, and only 2.8 percent growth in nonresidential construction,” the report states.

As a result, S&P Global is predicting another year of improved sales and earnings for building materials companies. But, the report says, “with much less growth than in 2016 and 2017.”  What’s more, due to the affordability and availability issues of new homes mentioned above, S&P Global warns that housing starts could actually retreat slightly in 2019. To combat this problem, many builders will “attempt to address this by offering more value-based entry-level housing,” which will present an enormous opportunity to building materials companies who are able – thanks to a nimble, efficient supply chain – to offer reduced prices on materials and faster delivery timelines.

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The 2019 NAHB International Builders Show promises to be one to remember. With these trends in mind, building materials companies will want to be on the lookout for experienced partners who can help them cut costs and better optimize their supply chain management in order to capitalize on this shifting market.

NVISION will be there, and we hope to see you!

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For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Operations, Marketing Strategy, Retail Trends, Online shopping, E-Commerce

Looking Ahead: What Winning Customer Experiences Will Look Like in 2020

With 2018 in the books and 2019 officially here, smart brands have already begun looking forward to 2020, and the biggest trends for the coming year. And one of the most significant areas where brands are looking to set themselves apart from the competition is with personalized customer experiences.

In fact, according to a recent report by Econsultancy:

  • 86% of customers prefer brands that offer personalized experiences, even if that brand isn’t the cheapest.
  • 73% of customers call customer experience an “important factor” in their purchasing decisions.
  • 65% of customers say that good customer experiences are more important than good advertising.

So, how can savvy marketers and brand directors capitalize on the biggest customer experience trends of the coming year? According to Mark de Bruijn of The Future of Commerce, there are three areas CMOs and decision-makers should focus on.

Let’s take a look at them.

interactive shopping experience-girl touching touch-screen

Hyper-Individualization of Retail Experiences

Thanks in large part to the increase in connected technology known as the “Internet of Things,” brick-and-mortar retail spaces will compete with online shopping by offering unique in-person experiences. How will such a connected retail store look in reality? De Bruijn offers the example of a shoe store.

“The moment a customer passes the store, he or she should get a personalized deal offer on their smartphone, letting them know that the newest edition of their favorite shoe is on sale for 20% off, and is available in-stock at that store, right now,” he explains. But the opportunity for personalization goes further. That customer can then enter the store, and “get measurements on their walking patterns, soles, and weight. Based on that data, they can get advice on the footwear that best suits their needs.” That is an engaging, personalized customer experience worth coming into the store for.

Putting the Customer at the Center of the Product Cycle

Plenty of companies use focus groups and market research during the research and development stage of a product. It’s an excellent way to make sure you’re giving your customers what they want. But what if you could solicit customer feedback and make improvements during the product lifecycle? That’s what brands like Tesco and Burberry are doing with their customer experiences.

Fashion retailer Burberry invited customers to share the ways they personalized their famous Burberry coats, snapping pictures of clever uses and various ways to wear them. Burberry then took several of the most popular suggestions and used them in marketing materials, from print images of models showing the coats worn a certain way to in-store mannequins featuring them.

Burberry saw a 36% rise in sales of their coats during the campaign. Your products should be designed with your customers in mind. Now, you can make sure your customers know it.

augmented reality mobile for shop - retail continuity

Virtual Reality Blending In-Store and Online Experiences

One customer experience trend that will carry over from 2018 is the rise of virtual reality (VR) in shopping. But as de Bruijn explains, retail brands will soon be using VR to bring the in-store shopping experience online. “Consumers will not just use [VR] for gaming, but also for home shopping sessions. They can literally walk through the virtual store from the comfort of their couches,” he explains, adding that retails gain an edge, too. “Retailers will enjoy the traditional advantages of brick-and-mortar stores in an online setting: the element of surprise, the ability to steer impulse buying and strategic product placement.”

Meanwhile, de Bruijn says, brick-and-mortar gets the customization treatment from VR. “The digital setting also offers a unique feature that is not available for brick-and-mortars. The store’s layout and even the inventory are fully customizable to the preferences and habits of the individual customer.”

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2020 is shaping up to be a big year for retailers and marketers. Big on keeping the growing importance of personalized customer experiences in focus, brands can compete and win by delivering truly engaging, winning shopping experiences.

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Why NVISION?

For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Performance Measurement, Marketing Strategy, Online shopping, E-Commerce

How Blockchain Will Revolutionize
Marketing in 2019

With 2018 coming to a close, brands and organizations around the country are shifting their focus to 2019. Rapidly changing customer demands have left many marketing teams scrambling to capitalize on every advantage, while also making sure they can deliver the experiences customers want; convenience, flexibility, and affordability. For marketers, that’s where blockchain comes in.

What Is Blockchain?

If you’re not a mathematics or computer science Ph.D., the specifics of blockchain will be challenging to follow. But that’s okay – just about anyone can grasp the basics.

Put simply; blockchain is a digital record of ownership that cannot be altered or modified.

Whenever ownership or possession of something is transferred, both parties leave a sort of encrypted digital signature in the blockchain, like signing a ledger, that is verifiable by every other user in the world and cannot be altered or modified. So, why should marketers care about blockchain? Campbell R. Harvey and Christine Moorman at Harvard Business Review examine a few good reasons.

marketing-brainstorming

Blockchain Will Make Email Marketing More Effective

“Fraud verification via blockchain will also help verify the origin and methodology of marketers,” as HBR explains. *135 billion spam emails are sent every day, making up approximately 48% of all emails sent. Varying in sophistication, this tidal wave of fraudulent and unwanted emails has led to catch-all spam filters that dilute the effectiveness of email marketing for everyone.

But with blockchain, brands and marketers can verify their authenticity with an extremely small microtransaction (thousandths of a cent), thus proving their identity and eliminating the need for overreaching spam filters. And this will make email a more effective part of a multichannel engagement strategy for marketers everywhere.

Blockchain Will Make Real Marketing Revenue Attribution Possible

“By using blockchain technology to track their ads, marketing teams can retain control over their automation practices, ensure that marketing spend is focused on ROI-generating activities, and directly measure the impact of marketing down to a per-user, per-mail matric,” HBR predicts. And that has real upshot for marketers.

“By tying user behavior and micropayments together, blockchain could solve the attribution problem that has bedeviled marketers for decades.”

Indeed, given that blockchain works by keeping a record of a sort of transactional handshake, it could present the ultimate answer to attribution – a granular, user-by-user record of every single interaction of every single customer with your brand. That’s powerful marketing revenue attribution and opens up a world of possibilities into ROI accountability and analysis.

woman working on her laptop in the office

Blockchain Will Offer Better Customer Experiences by Making Personalization More Effective

Unlike credit card companies who charge a 3 percent fee to process payments, blockchain enables nearly zero-cost transactions. As a result, blockchain eliminates the need for “minimum purchases” to ensure profitability for brands. And marketers can use that to boost the effectiveness of personalized customer experiences and loyalty programs.

As HBR explains, “Blockchain could allow merchants to use micropayments to motivate consumers to share personal information – directly, without going through an intermediary [like paying Facebook or Google].” This means that brands can offer their customers a small reward for, say, allowing location tracking on their app, or even just opening the app for a minute at a time. “During that time, they push deals and special offers to the user. Indeed, user-tailored deals open a legitimate mechanism to deliver personalized prices that are a function of the consumer’s profile.”

With blockchain, marketers can deliver the granular personalization that not only builds brand loyalty but delivers superior customer experiences.

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Blockchain is more than just the latest buzzword. It’s a technological revolution, and the shortcuts to efficiency, security, and personalization. What it offers marketers are a big reason why brands will be leveraging it more in 2019. From customer experiences to email conversion rates, blockchain has a lot to offer marketing teams.

*Referenced source: The Statistics Portal

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Why NVISION?

For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends, Marketing Strategy, Retail Trends, Direct Mail

How Print Production Enables Direct Mail Success for 2018

commercial print-sustainability

When it comes to marketing, there’s nothing like a personal touch. And while digital may be rising, print is still king.

That’s why it’s so important, when it comes to your direct mail marketing efforts, to choose print materials that are engaging, eye-catching, and leave a lasting impression in the minds of your customers and prospects.

Print materials, and the quality of your partner in producing them, remain a difference-maker for CMOs everywhere. That’s according to EdgeMark Partners, who have laid out some of the top direct mail trends for 2018, and how an agile print production partner can empower you to capitalize on them.

Let’s take a look!

Stand Out With Color

According to Pantone, the Color of the Year for 2018 is “Ultra Violet,” an eye-catching purple shade. We expect to see a rise in the usage of bright, vibrant colors as CMOs look for ways to use print to help their direct mail materials stand out from the other junk mail and bills in customers’ mailboxes.

So go ahead: create your vision in Ultra Violet!

Textures: Feel the Difference

The average customer spends fewer than eight seconds looking at an advertisement. And that is precisely the power of print materials and direct mail: they provide a tangible, palpable item that customers can hold in their hands and imprint on their memory.

Touch, after all, is one of the senses most closely tied to memory in the human brain.

By working with a partner that offers many different textures, stocks, weights, and shapes in their print production lines, you can create powerful, lasting impressions with your direct mailers.

AR QR code to digital

Think Outside the Box With 3D

Thanks to advanced laser-cutting techniques now widely available, fold-out and pop-up mailers are now an affordable option at scale for many CMOs.

Imagine the lasting impact and powerful impression that comes from watching one of your products physically take shape in your customer’s hands. Add to that dynamic and eye-catching stamping options like foil and leaf, and you can create a direct mail marketing campaign unlike anything your competition is offering.

Personalization, Because Each Customer Matters

It’s absolutely critical that brands stand out from their competition by offering a superior customer experience. And that starts with personalized direct mail campaigns.

Not only do customers have a higher response rate to personalized mailers versus generic ones, but thanks to new tracking methods, CMOs can now send out mailers that speak exactly to a customer’s previous activities. If they’ve shown interest in a particular product, or tend to buy at a specific time of year, send them mailers that speak to the things you know they’re interested in.

What’s more, CMOs can and should include personalized coupons in their direct mailers. Discounts on specific items you know the customer is shopping for can be the final tool in your arsenal you need to close that deal and get them to convert.

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Modern print marketing materials are still the lifeblood of the modern CMO. And when you partner with a trusted supply chain expert who is responsive and agile, a whole world of ways to leverage them in direct mail activities is opened.

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Why NVISION?

For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In CMO, Hospitality, Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Performance Measurement, Marketing Strategy, Online shopping

Millennial Marketing: It’s a Whole New Ballgame

Millemmial Marketing

The world is changing, thanks largely in part to the efforts, habits, and preferences of “millennials.” And the field of marketing is no exception.

Millennials, those of us born between the early ‘80s and early 2000s, are now the single largest age demographic in the United States. There are currently 87.5 million millennials living in the U.S., compared to just 83.7 million “Generation X” Americans (those born between the mid-‘60s and early ‘80s) and 66.4 million “Baby Boomers.” This means one thing very clearly: to be successful in marketing today, you must engage with these millennials, and savvy marketers must understand their psychology.

Which is why NVSION has gathered some of the latest data on the psychology of millennial shoppers, and how marketing organizations can leverage this information.

hand holding mobile phone with AR

Millennial Spending Preferences: What Marketers Should Know

Due to broader differences in modern culture and values, millennials show distinct preferences for certain industries when it comes to how they spend their hard-earned money. By understanding this fact, marketers in these industries can feel confident in strategically focusing their efforts on capturing this millennial audience and allocating their marketing budgets accordingly.

Here are the Top 5 areas where millennials spend their money.

  1. Socialization. Whether nights out on the town, social organizations like recreational sports leagues, or just fun, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, millennials spend the lion’s share of their disposable income on socialization. Fun is on the menu for them.
  2. Education. We’ve all heard horror stories about student loan debt and for-profit colleges. But millennials are also spending their money on personal continuing education opportunities, like language courses, classes that teach specific skills (like cooking or brewing), and other opportunities to increase their knowledge.
  3. Apparel. We all want to look our best, and that’s especially true for millennials. Clothing retailers and marketers would be wise to closely study the psychology of millennials’ shopping behaviors.
  4. Services. The most precious commodity to millennials is time. As such, they are more willing to pay for time-saving services than any generation before them.
  5. Eating Out. Similar to the Services industry, millennials love to get their food out because it saves time and effort. They’re willing to pay a little more for it. Just look at the success of on-demand food delivery services like GrubHub and Uber Eats.

When you compare these trends to the top areas of spending focus for Gen X shoppers and Baby Boomers (things like pensions and insurance), it becomes clear that a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy just won’t work. Personal insurance marketers should be investing their marketing budgets differently than socialization marketers because their audiences – and their audiences’ preferences – are different.

Best Practices for Marketing to Millennials

Keeping the above spending preferences in mind, here are some best practices for marketers to leverage and increase millennial engagement.

Millennial Personalization

According to a study by the University of Southern California, millennials are 85% more likely to purchase a product if they have been exposed to it via personalized content. Whether this is with marketing promotions based on their personal shopping history or unique materials segmented for their unique buyer persona, millennials prefer highly personalized marketing.

In fact, a 2018 SuperOffice study found that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a product if marketed to them with personalized experiences. And that trend will only continue: customer experience will overtake price and product as a key brand differentiator among consumers by 2020. Agile marketing operations that can accommodate the creation of personalized experiences will win more millennial business for your brand.

Multi-Channel Marketing to Millennials

More than any other generation, millennials engage with brands across multiple different channels, including digital, mobile, in-store, and direct mail.

A recent study by the Harvard Business Review found that 73% of consumers regularly engage with their preferred brands via an average of four (4) different channels. What’s more, retail brands that engage their customers with a multi-channel marketing strategy see an average increase of 89% in customer loyalty and retention.

These numbers only increase for millennial shoppers, who own on average 7-8 internet-connected devices each. In fact, 60% of millennials expect a consistent experience across all of that brand’s channels. By working to establish well-organized, agile marketing operations, marketers can create the unified, multi-channel marketing experiences that win over millennial shoppers.

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The millennial generation becomes a larger portion of your marketing audience each and every day. By understanding their unique preferences, spending habits, and preferred methods of engagement, marketing teams can capture more of their business, increase overall revenue, and improve brand loyalty.

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Why NVISION?

For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

LEARN MORE