In business, success often comes down to a battle between the mind and the heart. It’s a subject where there are too many opinions and as many experts. While gut instincts like those theorized in Gladwell’s Blink have their place, today’s mobile-first businesses are placing bets on a strategy where data capture, analysis, and action form an approach to delight customers in order to create long-term, sustainable revenue growth.
It’s nothing new; gathering information and eventually data, to understand the interface between human behavior and business has literally been going on for well over a century. Here’s a selective, abbreviated history…
- In the 1860s, the Cyclopaedia of Commercial and Business Anecdotes advocated competitive analysis to form a business strategy.
- In 1911, the Principles of Scientific Management sought to gauge individual efficiency and productivity.
- In 1958, A Business Intelligence System detailed the “data-processing machines to create interest profiles.
Inasmuch as business intelligence is a strategic tool for success then, now, and in the future, the mechanics of it have changed. For today’s mobile-first brands, the fundamentals to understand and respond to customer behavior - hyperpersonalization - forms a critical pathway for success. Arguably, businesses without a mastery of it will be short-lived.
The longtail effects of the adpocalypse
Savvy marketers saw the writing on the wall when in 2021 Apple ended support for its Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), the tool it assigned to user devices, which allowed marketers to track data for targeted advertising campaigns without an explicit end-user opt-in. We are still seeing the ripple effects of this change to the entire marketing industry with rising cost of acquisition and less targeted advertising.
This new “cookieless” business world would force marketers to create a new business intelligence playbook to engage customers. Out of necessity, game developers, who understood the importance of aligning with player motivation, quickly emerged as early adopters of these new customer engagement techniques.
From customer retention to relationships
Ask any game developer and they’ll confirm that a hyper-focus on the customer isn’t just a platitude - it is literally do-or-die. This is evidenced by the diminishing number of games that simply exist. While these used to be the norm, today’s players literally aren’t buying it and won’t show any interest in any game experience that isn’t being constantly rethought with fresh, new content. The rub on this reality is understanding what customers prefer. Without access to the digital tools brands used to rely on how can they proceed? Hyperpersonalization holds the key.
Consider the significance to a game developer in knowing exactly what users think of their game. Imagine the power to understand that, for example, players seem to love level 1 but by level 3 are losing interest and dropping off. Such insights are likely to trigger certain responses from different teams.
- Knowing that levels 1 and 2 are exciting players should tell marketers that any campaign they execute should be heavily influenced by those positive experiences.
- Meanwhile, the very same data should raise alarm bells with the product development team about investigating issues with level 3 to determine whether player dissatisfaction lies with onboarding from an easier level, a poor gameplay experience, or some other reason.
Consider that gaming is that proverbial canary in a coal mine because the same principles exist for practically all apps that value an understanding of their users, which should be every mobile app out there!
For marketers, operating in this post-IDFA, cookieless world, there are new, powerful tools to rethink customer engagement and retention. At the center of these resources are the users, who voluntarily opt in by providing their first-party data in exchange for a deeper, more personal experience.
Curating this data offers a level of granularity to segment users. Staying on the gaming theme, a marketer for a certain game can use this data to understand that male players ages 18–25 years old, living on the East coast of the United States are playing X number of sessions in X number of hours.
With powerful tools able to spot patterns and preferences in a customer journey, developers are making the experience specifically for and about individual users. Through hyperpersonalization, great experiences are created, which go on to form the foundation of a great brand. Doing so creates the type of long-term customer loyalty every business craves.
Marketing success in a privacy-first economy
A new blueprint exists for today’s mobile-first brands to succeed in a privacy-first economy. Empowered with insights on user behaviors and journeys - from the marketing to the mechanics - brands can create the conditions to build a flywheel effect that not only retains its loyal customers but grows equally enthusiastic new ones.
Developers must understand that a focus on the customer must be constant. Users are dynamic, tastes change, and brands must build resilience into their plans and be ready to respond to customer needs in order to retain their loyalty.
As it was as far back as the 1860s, business intelligence remains a strategy for relevance and market leadership. In 2023 and beyond business will not be won on decisions of the heart.
