Australian retail brands do not meet their customers’ needs and don’t understand what they want, according to a survey commissioned by 3radical.

Chris Tew, 3radical executive vice president for Asia Pacific said the survey asked 500 respondents about their relationships with brands and what mechanisms they should implement to build brand loyalty.

“Interestingly, given the rapid development of technology and the fact that most people use smart phones as their main device for researching information on brands as they are shopping, retailers have yet to fully understand and embrace the ability to communicate with their customers when they are in their store or nearby,” Tew said.

3radical, which began operating in Australia last month after a successful launch earlier this year in Singapore, brings together mobile, gamified offers and competitions, social media and mobile games to deliver a mobile channel enabling real value exchange between consumers and brands.

The survey found:

• 75% of Australian use their smartphone to access the internet on a daily basis
• 78% use their smartphone while shopping
• 78% use their smartphone to research products and services
• 90% use their smartphone to look up local information
• When asked to rank which of nine sources they got their information on brands from, respondents picked a brand’s website and a brand’s social media as the second and fourth most important. Family and friends was number one and TV was number three.
• Almost 60% of respondents said that brands they buy from were just “okay” at communicating with them about products and special offers
• 51.1% of respondents wanted a brand to “give something back” in return for reading and responding to marketing messages
• Loyalty schemes largely do not persuade respondents to purchase from that brand rather than another brand

“It was also clear from our research that discounts would make respondents more likely to visit a store, more likely to purchase from that store and more likely to share that information on Facebook,” Mr Tew said.

“Respondents felt brands were not keeping up with their needs as the effectiveness of marketing channels both on a brand’s website and via their social media channels had not changed in the past 12 months,” he said.

FIVE THINGS A BRAND CAN DO TO BECOME MORE RELEVANT TO CUSTOMERS:

1. Add mobile to your channel strategy; a mobile phone is unique in its ability to be present with a consumer at all points of their lifecycle with you.
2. Mobile messaging and marketing content must be kept relevant and fresh to ensure continued engagement.
3. Engagement tactics should be targeted to relevant points in the customer lifecycle and personalised, based what you know about the customer.
4. Be flexible in applying both real and virtual incentives and ensure they represent true value.
5. Integrate gamification into your mobile strategy – target relevant customers with valuable rewards and prizes in return for engaging with the brand

CASE STUDY:

DELL CAPTURES THE IMAGINATION OF SINGAPORE CONSUMERS WITH MOBILE GAMIFICATION

The Challenge:

Dell continues to innovate – delivering new products that enable consumers to do more.

But in a crowded market, and mainly selling through resellers, getting the attention of consumers to ensure they are aware of Dell’s great innovations was becoming increasingly challenging. They knew that they needed to find a new way to capture the imagination of consumers and engage them and their friends in learning about Dell’s Alienware’s and Touch product lines.

The Solution:

The 3radical mobile gamification platform was implemented, giving all the core functionality required to deliver personalised, relevant “gamified” engagement with consumers out of the box.

As part of the implementation the consumer App was configured and branded as Dell Engage SG and two new games were developed and released.

The World Cup was chosen as a popular and topical theme for the games:

• Dell Ultimate Striker Challenge (DUST) where consumers dribble a football down the field and score goals for entries to lucky dips

• Guess The Goals letting consumers wager “coins” on the outcome of matches in the World Cup, with great prizes for those with the most coins at the end of the tournament

Players earned Coins – used for level ups in DUST and to wager in Guess The Goals – by reading

Dell content about new products, liking the Dell Facebook page, visiting Dell resellers and by sharing Dell content including photographs and information with their friends on Facebook.

This was all achieved over just a few weeks to deliver a solution that engaged consumers with fun and rewards, while delivering against Dells objectives of awareness and permission to engage.

Working alongside Dell, 3radical helped generate downloads through running events and online promotions and provided a range of services to ensure ongoing consumer engagement throughout.

The Benefits:

Awareness – Thousands of Singaporeans downloaded Dell Engage SG and played tens of thousands of games – all of which were heavily branded as Dell and Intel.

Engagement – The vast majority of those downloading gave Dell their Facebook details and permission to engage including with push messages. Consumers made thousands of visits to Dell’s website, stores and Facebook page and read about Dell’s new products within the app.

Peer promotion – Half a million impressions of peer shared content were delivered by consumers sharing news about Dell Engage SG, Dell’s new products and even photographs of consumers with Dell messaging.

Insights – Information on content that works, and doesn’t work, and the level of engagement by each individual are all available to Dell to optimise offers within Dell Engage SG and to drive learnings throughout the business. This can be analysed against users’ Facebook profile information to give even deeper insights. Daniel Chia, marketing communications manager, Dell Singapore said:

We cut through the marketing noise and generated a two-way relationship with key consumers using the 3radical Mobile Gamification Platform.

Operating in Singapore for the past six months, 3radical’s clients include Dell, DBS Bank, Forever 21, Lend Lease Retail and Gong Cha. A case study of the Dell gamification campaign is below: