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New research from Silverpop™, an IBM company and a leading provider of digital marketing software that enables personalized customer experiences, reveals consumers only have five ‘Best Friend Brand’ companies from which they will repeatedly open emails and buy products. The research, which examined the online shopping habits and communications preferences of nearly 4,000 consumers across the UK, the U.S. and Germany, found relevance and trust to be at the heart of building these relationships.
More than 70 percent of surveyed consumers indicated they would be more likely to make a purchase if a brand’s initial email outreach was tailored to their likes and preferences, while 64 percent of consumers polled said they would be more inclined to open an email because they already trusted the brand sending the email. The importance of trust was even higher in the U.S. with 70 percent of respondents influenced by it, nearly 10 percentage points higher than the UK and 5 percentage points more than Germany.
“Consumers prioritize brand relationships much like they do personal relationships, with some being closer and more important than others,” said Dave Walters, product strategist at Silverpop, an IBM company. “While brands are competing for attention, it’s critical for them to get their correspondence with consumers just right in order to be considered a Best Friend Brand. Brands can no longer simply take the same-for-all approach. Outreach must be tailored to each individual’s needs and email offers a fantastic opportunity for this type of relationship building.”
In addition to underscoring a strong consumer desire for relevancy the report also highlighted the important role email in particular plays in helping brands build relationships with customers. Only 14 percent of respondents worldwide said that email wasn’t important in the communications they received from their favorite brands. This was even lower in the U.S. and Germany, where 8 percent said receiving communications with their favorite brands in this way wasn’t important to them. But, individualized email is what matters most, with more than half (58 percent) of consumers across the globe saying they wouldn’t open an email if they thought it was irrelevant to them or their needs.
And becoming a Best Friend Brand should be a priority - especially as the research showed people only open half of the emails they get from brands (55 percent) and will only tend to purchase from three brands online within the space of three months.
The research also found that, when it comes to brand communications, more than two thirds (67 percent) of consumers want to receive information such as new products, special offers, transactional information and newsletters via email. And yet, over a quarter (26 percent) said that a brand’s email approach would stop them from buying from them in the future.
About Silverpop
Silverpop (silverpop.com), an IBM company, is a digital marketing software company focused on helping marketers transform the customer experience increasing engagement and driving revenue. Silverpop makes this possible by using customer data and each individual’s behaviors to inform and drive every interaction in real time. Silverpop uniquely enables marketers to automate these highly-personalized interactions at scale. Silverpop’s top-ranked email marketing and marketing automation tools serve the needs of B2C and B2B marketers from a wide range of industries. Silverpop is trusted by more than 5,000 brands around the globe.
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