5 brands in SG that spoke to customers with personalised marketing

In a world cluttered with content, it is no surprise that consumers will be frustrated with irrelevant marketing messages on their screens. According to a McKinsey research, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions and 76% get frustrated when this doesn't happen. When it comes to shopping, 72% of consumers expect the businesses they buy from to recognise them as individuals and know their interests.

When asked to define personalisation, McKinsey said that research respondents associated it with positive experiences of being made to feel special. Consumers also respond positively when brands demonstrate their investment in the relationship, not just the transaction. 

With marketing no longer being a one-size-fits-all approach, the team at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE turned to our Marketing Excellence Awards Singapore 2021 results to find out which companies are excelling at personalised marketing. Listed in alphabetical order, these were the top five brands that amazed top-notch industry professionals with their strategic yet ingenious marketing campaigns. 

Aspire Lifestyles

With the COVID-19 pandemic and lock-downs hitting especially hard on the international travel segment, Aspire Lifestyles knew that it had to pivot to the changing needs of consumers in order to stay relevant amid difficult times. Based on its study, it discovered that consumers were beginning to seek information on localised travel activities and educational guides on COVID-19. 

This led to the birth of the programme "Relevant Service Offering APAC" which was championed through Aspire Lifestyles' Singapore headquarters. The programme aimed to generate higher utilisation and stickiness with its clients and provide better customer experience and engagement by proactively offering additional relevant services to its clients' members. Additionally, it sought to empower its frontlines, as well as create additional revenue for countries.

It aimed to achieve 5,700 monthly relevant service offering requests from APAC between July 2020 and June 2021 and a revenue target of US$1.2 million. With these motivations in mind, Aspire Lifestyles launched relevant guides containing information ranging from travel tips during the pandemic, COVID-19 vaccination facts and myths, to local destination guides. For example, if a customer from Singapore called or emailed about a dining request, the concierge would then offer a guide to Asia's 50 Best Restaurants.

CPF Board

As COVID-19 ripped through the economy, financial uncertainty became a rapidly urgent concern that many faced, with Singaporeans juggling rising costs of daily expenses and home mortgages. For CPF Board, this spelt trouble as saving for retirement was placed on the back burner, and there were increasing calls to withdraw from CPF savings for usage amidst the pandemic. 

To solve these challenges, CPF Board sought to motivate Singaporeans to continue planning for retirement by leveraging intrinsic cognitive biases, targeting CPF members aged 36 to 54, through its CPF planner. The CPF planner, a simplified online planning tool, offered a personalised guide to help members recognise the role of CPF in their retirement planning, and how they can then make the most of their CPF savings. Through a series of five simple questions, members were able to identify gaps in the management of their CPF savings, and receive tips, resources, and recommendations relevant to their context and better the use of their CPF savings.

In addition, the planner was personalised in three ways: personalised content infused with financial planning motivations, personalised tips and actions through interactivity and gamification elements, and personalised actions through data collection and follow-ups. 

In the end, the CPF Planner and microsite were warmly received by CPF members, exceeding every campaign's ROI and improving the overall experience members have with the Board. More importantly, it achieved its fundamental mission to help Singaporeans grow their CPF savings to ensure retirement adequacy amidst COVID-19. 

DBS Bank

Today, with a preponderance of apps, DBS Bank realised the hassle that consumers needed to go through of downloading and registering DBS PayLah! on every app and service. To overcome this, the bank launched partner tiles on PayLah! to bring varied services within one convenient app.

From within their PayLah!, users can now buy travel insurance, book movie tickets, order food delivery, pay bills and transport expenses, browse entertainment and dining offers, make fund transfers and scan to pay for their purchases at more than 180,000 QR-enabled merchants island-wide.

Continuing with the theme of helping its consumers "Live More, Bank Less" , DBS Bank integrated its lifestyle app into PayLah! to enable cardholders to enjoy personalised credit and debit cards services, and conduct their everyday transactions on one unified app. By integrating the two, more cardholders could enjoy personalised nudges, contextualised offers, as well as manage their everyday transactional needs seamlessly all within one app.

These personalised offerings turned out to be a stunning success, as DBS Bank observed a more than double increase in the value of scan to pay platform to business transactions in October 2020 from October 2019, setting it on track to grow its existing user base of more than two million to 3.5 billion by 2023. 

Maybank Singapore

In the current credit card market, customers are often frustrated with pre-determined card benefits that may not be fully relevant to them, which forces them to go through the cumbersome process of applying for multiple cards to enjoy different benefits offered on various programs. In fact, card benefits offered on their existing cards may also become obsolete as they progress into different stages of life. For Maybank Singapore, it found that its previous Maybank Family and Friends Card was unable to cater to all customers of different lifestyles and life stages.

Taking into account customers' sentiments and feedback, Maybank Singapore created a timeless card via the re-launch of its flagship Maybank Family and Friends Card in order to increase the acquisition of new customers of all ages and lifestyles and improve customer engagement by allowing customisation of their benefits. It also sought to improve customer retention by giving customers the flexibility to change their benefits annually. 

For the card re-launch, Maybank Singapore adopted a four-stage plan over a period of one year: curating the eight cashback categories, designing the new Friends and Family card, facilitating cardmembers to track and maximise their cashback earnings, as well as promoting social responsibility. It also engaged in selected traditional, digital and OOH ads with the focus on mobile-first to create greater awareness of its re-launch. 

With this campaign, Maybank strove to achieve an increase in card base driven by higher acquisition, higher customer engagement leading to improved card spend and card active rate, as well as greater customer retention.

Pan Pacific Hotels Group

Pan Pacific Hotels Group, like other hospitality groups in the region, faced significant challenges in the international tourism and local consumption sectors, rendering its existing business models obsolete. In particular, its occupancy rate worldwide dropped to 44%, with revenue per room down by 50%. The Group quickly realised that the focus was to ensure the safety, comfort and well-being of its guests and associates, pivoting to new revenue streams and channels by adapting its products and services to meet new needs. 

As such, the Group revised its existing iterative multi-year data-driven programme, giving it a new name "Experience 2020". The revised programme focused on strengthening data collection capabilities, obtaining better insights from customer data with the help of analytics, micro-surveys, and guest feedback from prior personalisation tests. In addition, the Group launched four personalisation tests to improve on-site booking, dining conversions and loyalty member recruitment with its highly precise audience segments. 

To work around travel restrictions, the tests were geared towards local consumption, such as staycation, dining, and members sign up. From a delivery process perspective, the Group first analysed data from the web, CRM, and survey platforms it had access to. This created audiences with key customer attributes that it could identify in the CDP. Once the Group had that, they were then activated via its demand marketing partners and used for personalisation on the corporate website.

The Group's "Experience 2020" left a huge overall positive impact on business recovery, where room bookings, dining visits and new members sign up volumes have recovered well with the project's implementation. In fact, it even recruited over 6,500 new members, achieving an impressive 8.8:1 ROI. 

Photo courtesy: 123RF

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