Enhance your customer engagement: five steps to a perfect digital-physical mix
Hannah Stapleford, Operations Director at Paragon DCX, explains how integrating digital experiences and physical spaces can help brands capture attention, drive engagement, and enhance campaign performance.
In a noisy marketplace, where many companies compete to capture consumers’ attention and loyalty, brands must work hard to engage users. When done correctly, bringing your digital skills to physical spaces can enrich the overall customer experience and create more meaningful connections.
But what happens when you lack the right mix of data, digital campaigns and physical channels – or the skills to adapt when one approach falls short?
At Paragon DCX, we support many brands facing this dilemma. We help them achieve their goals with planning, strategy, data science, data build, analytics, campaign execution, technology implementation and post-campaign analysis.
We design our solutions to meet our clients’ needs, whether it’s a single customer view, a data warehouse, or a rules engine. We also handle the campaign aspect, including sending out emails, SMS and WhatsApp messages.
Together with specialist expertise across Paragon in areas such as design, print and mail, we can combine the right online and offline communication, using the latest technology, to develop omnichannel campaigns that lead to better engagement.
Here are five ways to help your brand resonate with every demographic, from Boomers to Zoomers.
1. Data-founded strategies to help you connect across customer journeys
Data drives everything we do, including developing strategies that make an impact with high-expectation audiences. We use customer data and our clients’ goals to create relevant messaging, then we execute the campaign, pulling the ideal imagery into the correct email to the right person at the best time.
Whether you’re a medium or large business, every stage from data planning to campaign delivery needs strategic thinking. We can build a data-led strategy from scratch or develop an existing plan.
Established brands know their goals – they bring brand expertise and we bring strength in data, communication and campaign delivery. Together, we drive brand impact, increase customer engagement and measure what matters.
2. Optimise your campaign engagement with tailored data
Data can help you to deepen your customer relationships but, according to Salesforce, “only 32% of marketers are ‘completely satisfied’ with how they use data to create relevant experiences”.
We can audit data to cleanse and enhance it, bringing it into a central repository. We can then profile, segment, and enrich the data to improve consumer insights and determine the optimal channel mix to drive engagement.
Audiences expect fast, seamless, and personalised experiences across every touchpoint. To engage them effectively, your data must reflect their individual preferences. And by enhancing existing data with profiling tools and third-party sources, you make it more relevant. For example, in a UK holiday campaign, we could combine demographic, weather and location data to adapt messaging in real time, reminding people to pack an umbrella if rain is forecast locally.
3. Combine the right channels for ultimate attention-capture
Multichannel doesn’t mean every channel – it means using the right mix of digital and physical touchpoints to create an experience that’s immersive, interactive and memorable. You need to combine channels in ways that meet changing consumer expectations.
For example, a utility company might be required to explain bills clearly but struggle with high call volumes. Adding a QR code to the printed bill lets customers scan and view a short explainer video, easing pressure on the call centre and building trust.
At a car dealership with limited sales staff, augmented reality can showcase a new model in an interactive way. Shoppers can explore the vehicle without needing one-to-one attention, increasing satisfaction and boosting sales potential.
Even complex documents like warranties or terms and conditions can be made easier to understand with a multichannel approach. Instead of relying on dense print or PDFs, a personalised explainer video sent by email can break down the detail and give valuable insight into how customers engage.
The goal isn’t more channels – it’s the right ones, used in the right way.
4. Provide hyper-personalisation tailored to customer-specific content
Customers want more than just a friendly greeting when joining a brand – they want hyper-personalised services. The value advantage for organisations is more engaged and loyal customers, but brands don’t always go about it in the right way.
We create hyper-personalised experiences across different channels steeped in data to match your customers’ preferences. Advanced technology that uses real-time data, artificial intelligence and machine learning can create the deeper personalised experiences consumers want.
To inspire brand loyalty, you must also demonstrate to consumers that you offer value that doesn’t prompt another purchase. For instance, a car insurance company could offer free advice on checking your vehicle during hot or cold weather, as well as what to pack for a long journey.
5. Leverage immersive, hybrid experiences to drive emotional engagement
Immersive, hybrid experiences create stronger emotional connections by reflecting how people really engage with brands, across both digital and physical channels, often unconsciously. It’s rarely about just one touchpoint - success depends on finding the right channel mix and optimising it for your audience. When done well, hybrid approaches boost engagement, retention and brand advocacy.
We helped a building society boost sales among under-35s through a pilot that replaced static print with dynamic digital displays, both in-branch and in window. Connected to live data feeds, the system could trigger content based on context – adjusting creative by time of day, weather, or audience profile to deliver more relevant, targeted messaging.
See how it works for your brand
Would you like to unlock the power of hybrid experiences for your business? Every day, Hannah and her team at Paragon DCX help our clients boost engagement and transform customer experiences. They’re here to help your brand resonate with every demographic through smart, personalised campaigns.
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