What We Can Learn About Marketing In 2020 From Leading Brands Leaving Amazon

Amazon has changed the world of retail. Anyone doing business today, from local small and midsize businesses (SMBs) to large enterprises, from wholesalers to shipping companies, must abide by new rules to meet customer expectations infused with Amazon’s standards. There were no headlines when well-established brands set up shops in Amazon Marketplace. However, recent pullouts from the retail giant have certainly made front-page news.

Taking the most recent desertion as case in point, Nike recently ended its two-year pilot program with Amazon. As vastly reported, the sports titan entered the Amazon marketplace cautiously, aiming to ensure brand integrity amid concerns of unauthorized vendors and counterfeit products (which reportedly caused Birkenstock to leave Amazon in 2016).

But do fakes and fraud tell the whole story, or are we seeing a shift? Nike, Birkenstock and Ikea seem to be the tip of the iceberg, or perhaps, the dawn of a new age in marketing. When asked about the recent move, a Nike spokesperson shared that the company aims to focus on its direct-to-consumer business, which yields 30% of its annual sales, or $11.8 billion.

What the world is perceiving as a monumental move, those of us in relationship marketing see as a no-brainer. E-commerce has shifted from harboring transactional relationships to experiential ones. Customers increasingly expect brands to understand their lifestyle and empower them to live it. Brands, including industry leaders like Nike, must now show emotional intelligence to promote brand-customer relationships and stay relevant.

In this new age of customer centricity, customers know how, where and when they’d like to be engaged with their favorite brands. They have many channel options open to them, and they expect a unique and unified brand experience across all these channels. That’s quite a challenge for anyone on Amazon.

So, how can brands enhance their customer experience through their marketing strategies?

It starts with capturing data from multiple channels to gain a full 360-degree, single-customer view. To achieve such levels of customer engagement through relationship building, brands must harness data. When selling on Amazon, they face a walled garden — the merchant does not get any data on a single-user level, making the resolution of granularity in segmentation and ability to target specific users with tailored messages impossible.

Data is crucial because what’s derived from it is actionable insights and, hopefully, the harmonized orchestration of personal customer relationships across all available channels. The idea is to deliver the right message at the right time through the right channel. The next step is to leveraging this data to create customized experiences that resonate with customers. At Optimove, this is something we help our clients do in order to exhibit emotional intelligence to their customers.

In Nike’s case, there’s a strong awareness of customer experience. The most apparent example of this would be its flagship store in New York City, which crosses between the physical and digital experiences, with highly customized features, down to personal lighting preferences in the fitting rooms.

Leveraging data to create a personalized customer experience starts with knowing your customers.

Your neighborhood grocer knows you and your preferences, welcomes you with a smile and recommends new items you might like. They may even throw in a free sample. Brands that deal with millions of customers aim to do the same, only at scale. For that, they rely on data and segmentation.

Once you know your customer and their segment (which could and should be dynamic), you can target players differently, based on their previous activities, preferences and behaviors. Your campaigns should be timely and creative, offering value that goes far beyond mere discounts. Show your customers you’re in it for the long run.

Once you’ve created your scheduled campaigns, you’ll need to consider the channel through which you’ll be communicating with your customers. We live in the “multichannel age,” and you should definitely consider using the channels available to you: email, push notifications, pop-ups, etc. But don’t forget to orchestrate your channels to reach full harmony. Without careful orchestration, your multichannel isn’t harmonious; it’s actually harmful. If a customer gets too many messages, or the same message too many times, through various channels, it’s not serving a purpose. It’s serving up spam.

And speaking of spam, when dealing with your customers’ data, you’re dealing with a very precious commodity: their privacy. Be worthy of it by being fully compliant with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and be transparent with your clients. This is the only way to build trust and get your customers to engage with your brand and increase their lifetime value. Without trust, there is no relationship.

I’m finding that a growing number of marketers are realizing pushing products is obsolete and are keen to generate experience-based customer loyalty. Increasingly, they are turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning to create these hyper-personalized customer experiences that the individuals making up their target markets have learned to expect. The direct-to-consumer strategy is one I believe we’ll see more and more of this year.