Cheetah Digital recently published the 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Report. We take a look at the three main takeaways from that report and how to use them to sell more to Muslim customers.
1- Email Drives Way More Sales
Email is the most prolific channel for driving sales. It is so good that it beats all of the following by up to 108%:
- banner ads,
- social media ads,
- organic posts, and
- SMS.
Half of the consumers who took part in the 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Survey said that they purchased a product directly as a result of receiving an email within a year.
Get Your Muslim Customers Reading and Converting
Do you want your Muslim customers opening, reading, clicking, and converting through your emails?
We have one word for you: “personalization”! We don’t mean just the first name in the subject line. We mean completely personalizing the customer’s experience with Muslim-friendly products they have expressed interest in, that fit their budget.
These experiences must also feature keywords that entice engagement.
Such purchase motivation and preference insights are so valuable, especially with the impending third-party cookie armageddon.
Capturing Consumer Preference Data
Insights are mainly conclusions that you use to make decisions. You can reach those conclusions from a variety of sources. Let’s take a look at some of the best sources to get insights into your Muslim customers.
Customer Feedback
The simplest and probably most efficient way to get insights from your Muslim customers is simply by asking them directly. Remember that when customers point out the products or services they like and dislike, purchase motivations, and so on, you not only get data for personalization but you also get to understand what keeps them loyal to your brand or makes them leave. Understanding what causes churn in your business and fixing it creates a major success factor.
Third-party Research
You may be a new business or organization without a large customer base, yet. If so, you can always use research from larger organizations in your industry – third-party research.
You can use the insights you gather to understand the pains your Muslim customers face, which can help you craft email campaigns with better empathy.
Behavioral Data
The above approaches are great to get insights into the preferences of your Muslim customer. However, the customer’s responses are limited by the questions you put on the table. To fill the gap it’s important to determine how they interact with your website, product, or content.
The following tools can help you determine this:
- Google Analytics – customer interaction and flow on your website
- Hotjar – heat mapping software
- Lucky Orange – screen recording software
2- Rise in Demand for Loyalty Programs
According to the 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Survey, there is a steep rise in consumers expecting:
- exclusive access and content (58% increase),
- personalized product recommendations (56% increase),
- brand recognition (45% increase), and
- community (33% increase).
Create Exclusive Access and Content for Your Muslim Customers
Exclusivity works because, frankly, people like to be in on the secret. Exclusivity makes people want something. If they can’t have it, they want it all the more.
Source: Julie Neidlinger for Co-Schedule
Here are some ideas for creating exclusivity for your Muslim customers, according to Julie:
Create Exclusivity Through Content Marketing
- exclusive offers
- become an insider
- be one of the few
- get it before everybody else
- be the first to hear about it
- only available to subscribers
Create Exclusivity through Product Offer
- limited offer
- supplies running out
- get them while they last
- sale ends soon
- today only
- only 10 available
- only 3 left
Create Exclusivity through Gated Offers
- members only
- login required
- class full
- membership now closed
- ask for an invitation
- apply to be one of our beta testers
Offer Personalized Product Recommendation
If you are an eCommerce website you can easily recommend personalized products on your website and retarget ads and email-based on what a visitor was looking for on your website.
You can also broaden the options by recommending products based on:
- Best selling products
- Complementary products
- Trending products
- Most viewed products
- Purchase history
If you don’t have an eCommerce setup don’t despair. AI platforms like Optimizely can give you a multitude of options for personalization.
Increase Your Brand Recognition
The five stages of brand recognition that you need to achieve, from start to finish, are:
- Awareness
- Preference
- Reputation
- Trust
- Loyalty
There are certain aspects that you need to consider when it comes to these five factors for Muslim customers:
- What You Must Know About Islamic Advertising
- The Complexity of Advertising to Muslim Consumers
- Myths About Targeting Muslim Consumers
- How to Build a Muslim-friendly Brand
- How to Create a Halal Brand Personality to Gain Loyalty
Create a Community Around Your Brand that is Welcoming to Muslims
Here are some statistics from the 2022 CMX 2022 Community Industry Report. While you are at it, just remember that community is extremely important to Muslims.
- 22% of respondents report having a dedicated community department, up from 15% in 2021.
- 87% agree that community is critical to the company’s mission.
- 79% believe that community has had a positive impact on their organization’s objectives.
To learn more about building Muslim-friendly communities for your brand check out Creating a Community Around Your Brand for Ramadan.
Marketers Are Falling Short on Proper Personalization
The report explains that most marketers are failing to impress consumers with their personalization efforts and it’s getting worse.
Brands with oceans of data to work with lose sight of what matters as personal. Personalization ends up becoming nothing but a buzzword and source of statistical showing off. This is typical of brands suffering from information overload and a consequent inability to execute decisions to achieve goals (infobesity).
If you would take the same approach you would end up with frustrated Muslim consumers with irrelevant content offers. This would add to the feeling of being Muslim and misunderstood.
Here are some stats from the 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Survey:
- 49% expressed frustration with receiving irrelevant content or offers.
- 41% got frustrated with messaging that doesn’t reflect their wants and needs.
- 35% felt frustration at messaging based on information that they hadn’t shared directly.
- 31% were frustrated with messaging that didn’t recognize their shopping or loyalty history.
The bad news is that these frustrations seem to be on the increase:
Get Your Personalization up to Standard for Muslim Consumers
First things first. Remove the infobesity hurdle and only work with data that makes sense to use.
A good starting point is identifying the basic data types that you want to use:
- Demographic data – Data points about a person, such as their name, email, title, and location.
- Firmographic data – A business’ information, such as company name, industry, number of employees, annual revenue, and stage in the sales cycle.
- Behavioral data – A visitor’s actions while using your website or app.
- Contextual data – A visitor’s unique properties while providing context to their behavior on a website or an app.
There are certain things you can do “to accelerate personalization and create value” according to McKinsey & Company. We look at two of the simplest in their list:
- Research your Muslim customer life cycle and build pinpoint where the most value is. Leverage segments and microsegments and include behavioral, transactional, and engagement trends. Use those insights to define and quantify your personalization objectives
- Use advanced analytics for rapid activation capabilities. Harnessing the power of AI, you will be able to create content and offers based on real-time customer signals. To understand this point, here is an example of how KFC did it.
In China, over 355 million people order food online, with 78% placing an order at least once a week. On rainy days, KFC’s online orders jump by 10% but its deliveries on such days are often marred by delays, leading to customer compensation and a decrease in profit margins. To leverage this opportunity, KFC partnered with a weather app and used retargeting technology on its owned media, leading social platforms, and dynamic out-of-home screens to promote its brand through a campaign that evolved in real-time based on the weather. Additionally, to mitigate long wait times and late delivery compensation, KFC created a dedicated and simplified rainy day menu on its app that offered limited edition products.
Source: Driving real-time media strategies with data and signals – Essence Global
Next Steps on Getting Insights to Sell More to Muslim Customers
Today we live in a world where it feels like almost every day there is a new consumer market report coming out. This is a good thing if you have a business.
Of course, if you are busy running your business you don’t have time to read and adapt learnings from these reports to your Muslim audiences all the time.
The good news is that we do that for you. Stay up-to-date with consumer market trends that are relevant to Muslim audiences; sign up for the Muslim Ad Network Newsletter.
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