How to Get Your Marketing Back to Connecting to Humans and Consumers; Not Algorithms

A positive human connection is key to an exceptional customer experience with a brand. The experience stays with them, leading to loyalty and engagement.

Keeping, or improving, that connection is increasingly difficult in a digital-first environment. Technology is everywhere, losing the human element in the process. Data and personalization should be used to amplify human insights and creativity, not replace it.

Technology in Marketing

The use of data and technology in marketing has been ramping up for years, but the COVID-19 pandemic sent it into overdrive. Consumers became more accustomed to Zoom meetings, remote work, online shopping, and social commerce. Brick-and-mortar stores struggled to stay in operation.

The digital world became the new norm for non-essential businesses, limiting human interactions to only closest family and friends. We need more interaction now than ever, which includes interactions with brands.

Customers want to call a customer service line and speak to a real person or chat with a real person on social media. We’re craving human connection.

This is partly because of the pandemic, but also because technology may have taken things too far. Technology can enhance operations as a time- and labor-saving tool that serves customers, but when they have zero interaction with a human, it has the opposite effect on their experience.

Personalization that’s too personal comes off as creepy, rather than customer centric. Humans need to be at the heart of the effort to contextualize data and information and deliver it in a meaningful way.

How to Embrace Technology While Becoming More Human

Center Humans in the Customer Experience

Data helps marketers deliver more relevant and valuable messaging to customers. Without it, marketers are making assumptions that may or may not serve the customer. Still, too much data can lead to complacency with human insights and creativity. Marketers can rely too much on the data to gain information and insights, instead of providing context and using it to guide marketing efforts.

Humans should be at the key touchpoints in the customer journey as well. While technology can help with time and customer demands, humans need to be positioned at the relevant touchpoints to foster meaningful connections.

Personalization

Personalization is a focus of many marketing campaigns. As we get more data, we can offer rich personalization to better serve customers. But that can go too far.

With most companies aiming for personalization, one way to stand out is with humans at the center of personalization efforts. Armed with data insights, you can add context to deliver the most relevant and valuable message to the customer at the right time.

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is one of the best tools for collecting customer data. Though customers may not be eager to complete surveys, you can make them more enticing by asking specific, relevant questions and eliminating surveys that are boilerplate. Incentives like discounts, early access to products, exclusive content creation, and giveaways can also help incentivize customers to complete surveys.

Once you get completed surveys, it’s important to do something with the information. You won’t be able to apply all of the feedback, but if customers can see that you’re listening, they’ll be more likely to provide feedback in the future.

Optimization

Automation was revolutionary for businesses looking to serve customers better. Chatbots and autoresponders can be used to address simple questions or direct customers in the right direction.

The problem occurs when the customer can’t speak to a human. Complex issues can’t be handled with pre-determined scripts and responses. For those concerns, customers should have a way to reach a real, live person, whether on the phone or in chat.

Bring the Human Connection Back to Marketing

Data, automation, and algorithms are a boon for marketers. You can gather more customer data than ever before and automate processes to save time and resources, but the human element can get lost. We crave human connection more than ever before, even with interactions with businesses, and that comes from keeping real people at the center of marketing efforts.

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