Consumer preferences have changed drastically since the Covid-19 pandemic, led by the twin culprits of convenience and availability. The unprecedented act of quarantining, temporarily confining ourselves to our homes for weeks on end, didn’t stop people from shopping ...

With millions of marketing dollars at stake for one Super Bowl commercial, modern marketing methods can mitigate the risk of failure while maximizing creative output to package a commercial product that's both persuasive and entertaining and meets marketing goals. KERN recently used marketing techniques rooted in neuroscience to break down six of 2022's Super Bowl commercials into winners and losers ...

Not the Same Holiday Shopping Season: How Neuroscience Increased Sales. COVID-19 continues to upend our lives in new ways. Though the virus disrupted its second holiday shopping season, retailers once again showed their resilience with U.S. retail sales growth of 8.5% year-over-year this holiday season ...

Why Marketing Assessments Are Critical to Launching a Personalized Continuous Revenue Marketing Strategy. Where are you with your personalized Continuous Revenue Marketing strategy? If you’re not sure, you’re far from alone. Marketing organizations on both the client side and agency side have a mixture of ...

The Seven Components of Superior Personalized Continuous Revenue Marketing. Consumers have changed. They no longer buy in the same ways. They no longer decide what to buy in the same ways. And, more importantly, they no longer hold the same expectations of a brand that they held even yesterday. In fact ...

Now Is the Time to Move to a Personalized Continuous Revenue Marketing Approach. With the recent, rapid changes in shopping habits and media diets, and as customer expectations and values take on a multitude of new forms, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are finding themselves ...

Personalized Marketing has long been one of the biggest challenges for marketers — using data to reach the right person with the right message at the right moment, automated at scale — but now it’s experiencing renewed urgency and focus.

I’m not going to bury the lead. The answer is “yes,” you would sell your data, and in fact you already do. The more difficult and nuanced questions to answer are: Exactly how much is it worth, and do you have a choice? In the U.S., this topic is being argued among big tech, consumer advocacy groups, the federal government ...

Will COVID-19 Help the Grinch Steal Christmas This Year? COVID-19 has completely reshaped the world, and those effects will continue to be felt this holiday season. With financial turmoil and fears of social interaction, it’s a holiday stage even the Grinch himself couldn’t have imagined. Both consumers and retailers will rely heavily on technology to pivot effectively and retain some ...

Remember trick-or-treating when you were a kid? Going house-to-house in a costume and a mask, with the neighbors trying to guess who you were? We never thought we’d be wearing masks around the neighborhood today (and we have to admit it’s not as fun as we remember). The COVID-19 crisis is raising new questions about identity and privacy. Now that ...

Consumers already have a lot to consider in 2020, what with a global pandemic and social unrest. So, adding who will be our next commander in chief will carry a lot of weight for most. More than ever, brands must be timely and relevant to ensure their messages are heard and considered. Is Your Marketing Plan Ready? As we gear ...

Privacy. Tax loopholes. Monopolies. Hacking. Fake news. What do they all have in common? Big Tech and its influence on current consumer mindsets, the economy and state of the media. The big question here is—do Americans care enough to do something to take away that influence? The short answer is yes. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans say it’s time to ...

Social listening has a variety of applications to help businesses meet their business and marketing goals. It provides marketers with the ability to monitor awareness levels, the competitive landscape, consumer segments, product features and brand sentiment. Social listening also provides marketers with access to near real-time online discussions and posts to quickly address reputation or crisis management issues. As marketers, ...

The decision to buy, and how a brand might influence that choice, is a code we are constantly trying to crack for our clients. Lately we’ve been exploring triggered communications based on actions a prospect might take and all the factors that go into a successful triggers campaign. Today I’ll share a few trigger ideas for auto dealerships looking to ...

Things are happening, and our strategy team would like to share two main cultural and socioeconomic events that are, or may soon be, affecting consumers’ buying habits. I think it’s important to frame what a consumer may think and feel with what’s happening around them outside of the market transaction of goods. After all, there are many factors that contribute ...

In the age of the empowered consumer, buying journeys are rarely linear. This means that the traditional purchase funnel isn’t aligned with the modern customer experience, and it’s time marketers adapted their view to drive conversions.

Everyone has heard of the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle—80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers—but RFM is the best way to determine the actual makeup of your customer base and gain insights to help improve your targeting, messaging and marketing ROI. RFM analysis is the first step in helping you define customer segments ...

Triggered emails are outperforming standard direct marketing emails but make up only 7% of marketing emails delivered. These vastly underutilized campaigns boast an average of more than 50% compared to the 20% cross-industry average open rate. They can also drive two to five times more revenue than standard emails. While the results speak for themselves, setting up a trigger campaign ...

20+ years ago, B. Joseph Pine II wrote about our entry into the experience economy—an economy in which growth strategies including the orchestration of events and experiences drive product value beyond the functional value of the product itself. But what is it about experiences that enable a company to attract and retain customers over time? This question is particularly important ...

We all know that personalization increases customer engagement, loyalty and sales because people naturally connect with brands that create relevant experiences which address their wants and needs, but it’s not always easy to get it right. Here are 5 tips to help you improve customer communications that lead to stronger relationships. Think of your customers as individuals. Start by determining ...

The cost of acquiring new customers is 5 to 25 times higher than retaining existing customers. If you want loyal customers, you have to do more than sell. You need to provide them with highly relevant experiences. If consumers can’t find added value through your brand, they’ll go somewhere else. Knowing where your customers are on the ladder will help ...

Marketer, meet Generation Z. Not just a Millennial spinoff, this generation born 2001 and on is a new breed of consumer, and it’s vital that marketers give them the attention they need, and want, to drive conversions. Download your free whitepaper and gain email marketing insights and tips to help catch the attention of this up-and-coming generation.

At KERN, we periodically ask ourselves, “what’s next?” Summer 2017, there was a heavy focus on what we could do with technology partners and APIs. We spoke to partners like Movable Ink, Iterable and Foursquare to bring together new ways to market our client’s products and services. As we continue these conversations and create innovative solutions for our clients, it’s ...

Today, informed customers know they have choices. If your loyalty program isn’t firing on all cylinders, your customers will find something better. You don’t have to outspend the competition, you just have to outthink them. Download your free white paper.

Today’s consumers are no longer responding to the hard sell the way they have in the past. They now look to brands to be educated about products and services that make their lives easier when making buying decisions. They seek out informative content, and inbound marketing is made to meet this modern buyer’s behavior. The more content you create and ...

Welcome to the Age of the Customer. The fastest-growing companies are focused on improving their customer relationships. With competitors just one click away, it’s essential to build loyalty and trust with every customer interaction. Here are five principles that will help you build better relationships with your customers. Download your free white paper.

From acquisition through loyalty, growth hacking is strategically used throughout the customer journey, with a key focus on rapid and continuous growth. Startups thrive on this practice and have cleverly developed marketing strategies that allow them to make quick decisions and optimize their marketing programs. Many innovative cultures are flourishing from their ability to take strategic risks while rapidly testing and ...

If used effectively, your CRM email program can be one of the most powerful marketing tools you have for building ongoing, profitable growth. Your program can help you stay in touch with a range of customer segments, providing each of them with unique value while strengthening their relationship with your brand. To make your CRM email program more effective, here ...

As we move through the Modern Buyer’s 10-Stage Journey, we’ve identified not only the consumer’s mind-set but also how brands can combat potential consumer anxieties, and suggested marketing strategy and channels to better reach a target audience. We have followed our subject, Tara, along her buying journey purchasing a new laptop. Tara has had concerns about both the price and ...

Last week, we reviewed stage 2 of the Modern Buyer’s 10-Stage Journey, “Need Recognition.” Our subject, Tara Technology, recognized a need days after she experienced her initial distraction in stage 1 due to monetary concerns. We learned that while in both stage 1 and 2, it was important for brands to target customers through pre-determinded personas to communicate brand benefits ...

We continue our weekly series traveling through KERN’s Modern Buyer’s 10-Stage journey. The 10-stage journey was developed based on rapidly changing human patterns, the accelerated adoption of online searching and sharing, and the proliferation of social networks and always-on communication abilities. Stage 2: Recognize Need After the distraction stage, the consumer recognizes a need which brings them into stage two. ...

A comprehensive look at what CRM leaders across industries experienced in 2017, what they will prioritize and how partners can help them enhance CRM program effectiveness.

KERN developed the Modern Buyer’s 10-Stage Journey based on rapidly changing human patterns, the accelerated adoption of online searching and sharing, and the proliferation of social networks and always-on communication abilities. In this weekly series, we take a deeper look at each of the stages in this journey, what each means for brands and takeaways to act on each stage. ...

The modern consumer is ever-changing. Armed with advancing technology, their mind-set has evolved and no longer fits traditional personas. KERN recognized this problem and sought to develop a solution that would fit modern needs for marketers. Recognizing that the convergence of faster connection speeds on both mobile and home devices, the accelerated adoption of online searching and sharing, and the ...

We’ve been entertaining the hypothesis that video viewers can and will follow preferred content wherever it goes. Regardless of platform, cable service provider or mobile device, consumers can now comfortably navigate different service providers. In the not so distant past, consumers were locked into single service providers by geographical boundaries. Entire counties could be serviced only with content from one ...

A detailed look at forecasted 2018 CRM Marketing trends, from technological advances to shifts in the structure of marketing departments. This white paper provides information to aid in rethinking strategies and incorporating the best resources to optimize results and achieve 2018 goals.