Customer Acquisition Starts With Data Acquisition

Customer acquisition starts with data acquisition

Using gamification and data analytics to hit acquisition targets

Grace Alexander

MarTech Blogger | April 26, 2022

Brands need to be data-driven to compete in today’s digital-first world. Are you leveraging your first-party data to acquire new customers, retain existing ones and increase customer lifetime value (CLTV)?

Customer loyalty and rewards programs can be powerful drivers of success, to the tune of a 2.5 time increase in revenue growth, per Harvard Business Review. But there’s a catch — loyalty programs can’t simply be the same cut-and-paste point systems used by so many companies. Instead, really sticky, effective retention and reward strategies should be backed by accurate, abundant, and accessible data about your consumer base.

First-party data is the master key

First-party data is your most valuable asset; it unlocks everything, from new customer acquisition to retention and beyond, decreasing costs, increasing ROI, and driving operational efficiency.

But where do you collect data in the amount and granularity necessary to have a real impact? The Harris Poll asked companies about their issues maximizing the customer experience. The top answer, shared by 25% of companies, was that their data pool was too shallow to boost processes. To avoid falling into this disappointed group, you can collect data from multiple touchpoints, including:

Existing customers providing data during the purchasing process

Every time a customer makes a purchase, they provide data. This data can include their name, address, mobile phone number, email, purchase history, and more. Data analytics can help you group similar customers based on their location, customer behavior such as purchasing preferences, and so on. Analyzing these groups can help you plan new offers and interactions.

Example: Create personalized approaches based on loyal customer attributes, and identify and qualify new leads using lookalike audiences as a starting point. Show products to customers as part of an “Other people who purchased this product also liked” listing as a way to drive more purchases and enhance their rewards.

Current or potential customers who sign up for programs

These customers may not have made a purchase yet, but may have signed up for a mailing list, a newsletter, or — yes — a customer rewards program. Rewards touchpoints don’t just use consumer data — they can also generate it. For example, according to MarketWatch, Starbucks noted that 40% of its transactions involved loyalty program customers. Of course, those customers share data with the coffee chain through their continued interactions, but the process is mutually beneficial, as they are also unlocking bonuses.

Example: Increase customer loyalty before they even make their first purchase! For instance, you can present a chance to play a free game and win a reward through a message texted to a mobile phone number or sent to an email address. Introducing customers to gamification and rewards from first contact is a great way to build relationships. Indeed, Starbucks cited immediate gratification for new members as a key feature of its program.

Customers of partners who have shared their data with you

Data partners (organizations who share their own consumer data with you based on business relationships) can also be a valuable source of first-party data and a way to expand your own datasets. The more data you have, the more effective data analytics processes spot patterns and builds highly targeted customer groups.

Example: Reduce customer acquisition cost by leveraging data from trusted partners. A bank might receive data from an insurance provider and can use that information to build tailored offerings that encourage opening a new account and joining a loyalty program.

Analyzing customer behavior delivers actionable insights

Customers’ behaviors deliver even more powerful insights than their raw persona data. For example, you don’t need to know a customer’s name to understand that a person is a big repeat spender or tends to buy every new product or service you launch.

Behavioral patterns based on consumer data deliver actionable insights you can use to boost your customer acquisition rates and strengthen your existing base. It would help if you had a constant flow of new data to build out datasets and make it easier to spot these patterns.

To see a real-world example of how these more data-rich interactions can revolutionize loyalty and drive CLTV, there is the case of the digital solutions company StarHub, which built a new interactive rewards program on the Perx Platform.

Take away impediments to interaction

Legacy customer loyalty program strategies may actually be keeping customers at arm’s length. StarHub envisioned a type of continuous interaction with customers, creating many more touchpoints that would keep the brand top of mind and encourage new, more profitable behavior. The key was to develop a rewards strategy that did away with the earn-points, burn-points loop common to so many loyalty programs.

Track customer behavior on a deep and personal level

Every rewards-based customer interaction is a chance to learn more about that person, and customer loyalty strategies allowing continuous engagement enable more of these touchpoints. For example, after StarHub rolled out a weekly, gamified reward program, powered by a new and simple in-app experience, user requests per second increased by four times, a huge increase in interactions that brought a tidal wave of data.

Focus on value-based last-mile engagements

As consumer data increases in volume, it’s possible to both notice overall patterns and deliver highly specialized experiences to individuals. The StarHub platform delivers instant gratification for customers in the present while also measuring every response to strengthen engagement in the future. The very positive experiences served to these customers improve offline engagement with the brand and in-the-moment online engagement.

Balance retention and acquisition with data-driven loyalty

While a rewards and loyalty program starts with the retention of existing customers, it can serve as a way to attract new clients, please them and turn them into loyal customers. Instant-gratification customer interactions that provide a valuable feedback loop of data don’t take long to solidify loyalty. StarHub’s telco business boosted retention by 6%, then increased new customer acquisition by 11%. Its Net Promoter score also rose across mobile, TV and broadband.

How perx uses gamification to drive customer acquisition

Perx technology empowers brands to act on customer insights, boost interactivity, and build highly configurable and personalized engagements quickly, for reduced time-to-market and a more delightful customer experience — all without compromising customer privacy or data security.

Most legacy loyalty programs are generic and bland, failing to connect with customers on a deeper level and missing the chance to build brand stickiness and loyalty. Personalized engagements that leverage known customer behavior data can bring authenticity to the process and encourage ongoing revenue-driving actions.

The Perx Loyalty and Engagement Platform (LMP) helps brands hit their customer acquisition targets through gamified engagements that instantly deliver gratifying, relevant, and personalized customer actions.

Are you ready to harness data acquisition to drive customer acquisition and elevate your average customer’s LTV? Ask for a free Perx demo today.

Global businesses have driven over 4 billion customer-brand interactions on Perx.

Ready to join them?

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Drive MAU Through Aha! Moments With Gamified Customer Touchpoints

Drive MAU through Aha! Moments with gamified customer touchpoints

Grace Alexander

MarTech Blogger | November 23, 2021

Building a strong MAU base is crucial to growing your brand. Your MAUs (Monthly Active User) are your most interactive customers, but if you are not providing them with continuing opportunities to engage, you could be missing chances to convert.

By creating a road map that anticipates and proactively encourages customer behaviors, brands can continually prompt engagement and keep the customer journey active, leading to more and repeated conversions.

What is Your MAU Ratio?

The effective reach of your brand is determined by the number of active users measured over time. Your daily active user (DAU) number counts how many unique users were active in the span of a single day.

Your monthly active user (MAU) number measures how many unique users were active at least one time within the one-month window.

The relationship between these two numbers — DAU divided by MAU — provides the MAU ratio. The higher the percentage, the more people your brand is reaching consistently (stickiness). A 20% ratio is an acceptable range for many industries. A brand like Facebook has a (self-reported) MAU ratio of 50%.

Each wow moment provides an opportunity to encourage a customer to perform a trigger event.

Monthly active users are important because they are consumers you can reach through lifestyle marketing. Think about Facebook. How many users get up, check Facebook, and maybe play a round or two of a game on the platform before work? Facebook has become part of their lifestyle.

From Wow to Aha! and Beyond

Customer journeys consist of multiple touchpoints. When a customer’s journey ends, so does their engagement with the brand. Brands must then work to restart a customer journey or create a new one.

By creating a road map that anticipates and proactively encourages customer behaviors, brands can continually prompt engagement and keep the customer journey active, leading to more and repeated conversions.

Gamification delivers instant gratification through hyper-personalized rewards through customized engagement mechanics that drive the customer journey from one micro-experience to the next.

Each touchpoint provides an opportunity for customer engagement and a wow moment. So, what is a “wow” moment? It is when you offer a pleasant surprise for your user and exceed their expectations, even in a small way.

In gamification, this can mean giving them a free powerup for the next game round or extra points just for logging in. For a bank, you might provide a stamp every time your user checks their balance. For a retailer, you could award points when they click to view the day’s deals.

Every Aha! moment reinforces your value to the customer and encourages them to keep engaging with your brand, performing actions that directly correspond to increased revenues.

Each wow moment provides an opportunity to encourage a customer to perform a trigger event. Maybe it’s just playing another game round. Perhaps it’s clicking to compare rates for their insurance coverage. It could even be agreeing to take a short, two-question survey that provides your business with beneficial data on consumer wants, needs, or behaviors.

Every trigger event provides the opportunity to wow the customer again. When they complete the desired action, they receive another reward or incentive. This could be a special offer, extra points that can be banked toward a tangible reward, or a discount code. Every action they perform and every reward they receive helps to establish the lifestyle ecosystem you are building.

When the customer is wowed repeatedly, they can experience an Aha! moment. This “Aha!” moment is when the customer realizes and understands the value of your product/service, and becomes both more loyal to your brand (and more likely to share it with or recommend it to others).

When nurturing customers through multiple micro-experiences leads to Aha! moments, brands never miss a chance to interact with customers and drive revenue-connected actions. Every Aha! moment reinforces your value to the customer and encourages them to keep engaging with your brand, performing actions that directly correspond to increased revenues.

CX + UX = Success

Customer experience (CX) is the journey, touchpoints, and milestones your customers progress through via engagement with your brand. User experience (UX) is how easy the environment your users interact within makes completing various actions.

Perx ties the two together, making every customer interaction with your brand easy, fun, and part of a larger plan to drive revenue. Gamification delivers instant gratification through hyper-personalized rewards through customized engagement mechanics that drive the customer journey from one micro-experience to the next.

By streamlining and aligning both CX and UX, you create a continual customer journey user experience that can do all of the following:

Acquire new customers, whether through referral or introductions to your gamification experience through a business app or an ad.
Activate these customers by incentivizing them to perform their first action, giving you the opportunity to wow them.
Retain your new customers by keeping them engaged with continued incentivized touchpoints and wow moments.
Drive revenues when your customer reaches an Aha! moment after continued rewards tied to desired behaviors.
Attract new customers thanks to the referrals your existing customers generate for your brand.

Gamifying each touchpoint on the customer journey allows you to keep customers engaged. When you track your customers and analyze their behaviors, you can identify important milestones at which your customer is ripe for a nudge.

Using push notifications via SMS or email when a customer has nearly achieved a milestone gives you the ideal opportunity to incentivize the desired action.

For example, an active customer with 8 stamps out of 10 can be provided with an opportunity to perform an action that wins them two stamps instead of just one, allowing you to wow the customer by boosting them to reach their goal, and guide them toward an Aha! Moment.

By unearthing deeper insights into customer behavior and creating additional customer-brand touchpoints, you can stay top-of-mind as you build your brand’s tribe and gamify critical journey milestones to increase campaign completion and engagement rates.

The cycle of action and reward can be repeated over and over. The customer becomes accustomed to participating in your gamification as part of the lifestyle environment. Continued interaction and revenue-driving actions increase their lifetime value (LTV) to your brand, and prepare them to be brand ambassadors, ready to act as an organic recruitment arm.

Perx Bridges the Gap One Micro Experience at a Time

Most rewards, loyalty and incentive programs are transient, meaning they do not have a strategy to maintain continuous engagement with the customer. They are also highly transactional, lacking a meaningful connection to the customer.

Your company needs to shift from these transient and transactional engagements to continuous and meaningful engagements. Making that change requires the ability to streamline the customer journey user experience and make each engagement personalized for the individual.

Perx makes it possible to string multi-action engagements into a seamless customer journey, combining specific customer actions with collaborative or competitive challenges to increase stickiness. As a result, each micro experience is a potential wow or Aha! moment.

By unearthing deeper insights into customer behavior and creating additional customer-brand touchpoints, you can stay top-of-mind as you build your brand’s tribe and gamify critical journey milestones to increase campaign completion and engagement rates.

The proof of what Perx can do to unify your customer experience strategy is undeniable. See what we have already done for our partners:

Leading telco: enjoyed 50% customer acquisition in 8 months and increased net new revenues by 100%.
Popular retail company: drove transactions worth $34M in the first 60 days after launching the campaign and acquired 225% unique customers.
Mobile-first bank: reached a 99.8 last-mile redemption rate, with 601K users engaged and 2.5M rewards redeemed.

Want your business to be predictably successful? Watch this short video of how Perx uses gamification to drive MAU and schedule a demo.