club catalyst. You’ve got 30 seconds or less

Thirty seconds or less — this is the average length of time that consumers spend reading or listening to online marketing communications. Consumers watch TV, surf the internet, and check new e-mails simultaneously, which means marketers are dealing with increasingly distracted consumers.

Moreover, today’s digital natives are clearly setting the agenda for future marketing practices. As connected devices become the norm, the way consumers engage digitally with any organisation — retailer, a government body, or any other — will transform in line with this expectation.

Given the influx of digital information and access to multiple devices, consumers are becoming more selective about which messages they pay attention to — and from what brands. As a result, mass marketing techniques may no longer pay off. The challenge for marketers now is finding out how to engage with consumers and keep their attention while they hop from one device to another.

As consumer attention moves away from reading brand marketing content, the channels that brands are using to engage with consumers can make or break the success of a campaign. Perhaps surprisingly to some, the channel on which consumers spend the longest time interacting with marketing messages is e-mail. Fifty per cent of consumers spend on average between five and 30 seconds on incoming marketing e-mails.

Only 32 per cent of consumers spend the same amount of time on marketing SMS texts, demonstrating that as a marketing channel, mobile continues to be challenging as a method for distributing marketing content.

Incoming social posts from brands are even less likely to be read. Only 27 per cent of consumers spend five to 30 seconds reading Tweets, Facebook posts, or content posted on other social channels. This might be surprising, considering the popularity of social media as a means to provide feedback or complaints directly to brands.

However, it is still pertinent to have an all-encompassing strategy and solution to be able to market to customers across channels, whether e-mail or social.

Finding the right channel for a particular set of audiences and then offering personalised communication on it can ensure successful outreach.

Vendors such as Oracle have solutions that can enable marketers to target, engage, convert, analyse, and use award-winning marketing technology to create ideal customers and increase revenue.

As a result of the increasing number of digital touch points available and the ability to engage with brands instantly at the touch of a button, communication channels — web, mobile, social, and e-mail — are in use practically simultaneously by consumers. This has a major impact on the customer journey and how and when consumers expect brands to deliver on their promises. To the consumer, this isn’t an unrealistic expectation. They are savvy to the fact that marketers collect data on them.

They expect this to be used to provide quick, highly relevant discounts, services, and products based on the behaviours they have shared with the brand. With the right tools, these challenges can be translated into an opportunity. Effective use of customer data on a data management platform (DMP) with data activation will only become more increasingly crucial to the success or failure of marketing campaigns.

Using different devices for different stages of the purchase journey, the distracted consumer is undoubtedly complex. So how can marketers make sense of it all? Here are some actionable tips to capture attention and increase conversions:

Get to know your customers: Gathering customer data gives marketers the foundation to centre their marketing on customer behaviour and preferences.

This process starts with the capture of customer permission, contact information, and preferences across multiple channels. One such way to get this data is to create a set of compelling offers that are scheduled to go to a wide audience over a short period of time. This time-bound marketing generates valuable insights into individual consumer interests and preferences.

Deliver individualised experiences: Research shows that 61 per cent of consumers feel more positive about a brand when marketing messages are personalised, while 53 per cent are more likely to purchase when a brand personalises digital communications.

Draw on the power of brand advocates: Those who forward and share e-mail promotions to their friends are the same customers who will return to purchase time and time again. Looking after your existing customers can reap massive rewards.

Look for the anomalies: Understanding individual customers and their browsing, searching, and purchasing habits should alert marketers when something is out of place. These anomalies in customer behaviour can present the biggest opportunities for conversion if acted on quickly.

Marketers are faced with the challenge of communicating to consumers who are not only receiving messages across multiple channels and devices, but also becoming increasingly selective about what they tune into and for how long. To cut through the noise, marketers must remember that turning up the volume on mass marketing is not the answer. Rather, modern marketers must begin to personalise individual interactions with customers based on their profile data and preferences. With the right technology, this is possible on a massive scale.

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