Aiming for the heart: Brands are paying attention to customer emotions

Jeff Larche

Aiming for the heart: Brands are paying attention to customer emotions

Do you remember the last time you made a purchase that made you happy? Was it steered by a need, or was it more influenced by a want?

Purchase decisions are closely linked to our emotions — the way we feel often impacts our purchase intent. Brands are catching onto this and are now paying attention to the emotional and human aspects that factor into our decision-making processes.

This is where emotional analytics comes in. Emotional analytics help marketers understand how customers convey their feelings, both verbally and nonverbally. If you have insight into your target audience’s emotional responses, you can customize your marketing strategies and brand experiences in new ways to make an emotional connection.

Emotions and Customer Experience

In today’s digital world, people express sentiments and feelings digitally via things like emojis, likes, and dislikes. It's crucial that businesses understand the underlying meanings behind these electronic symbols because emotion-related data plays a key role in customer retention and brand loyalty.

Through emotional analytics software, companies can understand how a customer perceives a product or even an interaction with a customer service representative. Just as with other forms of data based on consumer behavior, emotion-related data can be leveraged to create strategies that improve customer relationships.

In fact, emotional analytics is emerging as the gateway technology to the next level of personalization, known as individualization. This is expected to continue to develop and provide brands with a deeper way of understanding and targeting customers.

A Balanced Approach to Emotional Analytics

Our smart devices are already capable of analyzing our intentions. When we do a simple Google search for “hiking poles,” our Facebook profiles carry advertisements for hiking poles when we log in seconds later. Or when we mention an attachment in an email but forget to attach a document, Outlook reminds us to attach it before we hit Send.

Emotional analytics expands on this concept, giving marketers unprecedented insights into what customers really want. In this way, emotional analytics is expected to transform individualized experiences.

But the key to emotional analytics’ success is the ability to tap into customers’ sentiments in a non-intrusive way. The most effective method involves marketing campaigns that provide relevant content.

Say you bought a gift for your golf-loving friend. Based on this purchase, you start to receive “personalized” ads for golf equipment. That gets tiresome when you’re not the one with the golf hobby. Individualization takes a more holistic view of your online interactions and potentially recognizes that you're not actually that interested in golf.

Bottom Line

The next generation of consumers will be more digitally mature, and they’ll expect not just personalized, but individualized experiences. By focusing on emotional reactions, emotional analytics can help your organization make individualized interactions with each customer.

When you’re ready to take the next step in understanding and communicating with your customers, our Sales & Marketing Technologies team will help you identify and track real-time emotion-related metrics and leverage them to optimize your marketing strategies.