Every year new marketing trends rise to the surface — providing marketers with new ways to improve their marketing programs. The coming year is no exception. Through our experience and research, we’ve gathered 13 digital marketing terms that are poised to make an impact in 2022. Review the list and be prepared for the latest and greatest ideas in the coming year — and beyond.
ARPU is the measurement of revenue generated per unit or per user. It is typically calculated as total revenue divided by the number of units, users or subscribers. For marketers, ARPU provides direct insight into which website actions, such as personalization and optimization, translate into revenue.
This is the set of technologies behind automated messaging and speech-enabled applications that offer human-like interactions. Conversational AI communicates like humans by recognizing speech and text, understanding intent, understanding different languages and responding in ways that mimic human conversation. Conversational AI solutions can be offered over both text and voice modalities, and the channels and devices that offer support these modalities.
These are important elements in creating a privacy-first, customer-centric marketing strategy, along with more positive user experiences. Customer consent means asking users for permission to collect, process and store their data for use in email communications and personalized advertising. Preference management is allowing consumers to choose communication frequency, topics and channels. The two processes support each other in building customer trust and driving engagement.
This concept is about aligning business practices with moral and ethical policies. In marketing, customer data ethics is important in consumer segmentation, mobile marketing, advertising targeting, passive data collection, customer service and loyalty programs. The need for customer data ethics is based on two factors: the market power of a few digital technology giants who control massive quantities of customer data, and consumers’ concerns about how their data is being collected and used.
The customer onboarding process defines how a new customer progresses from the beginning of his or her relationship with a company (typically with a purchase) into a long-term relationship. The process is based on both the strength of a customer’s initial connection, and his or her ongoing interaction with a brand. The onboarding process is a crucial step in the customer journey. Companies must get it right to ensure optimum customer satisfaction.
Hybrid events are a combination of in-person and virtual components. They appeared on the scene as the pandemic shut down in-person events. Now, they have since gained traction and become a fixture of modern event culture. Companies have found that well-planned hybrid events are less expensive than in-person only events and more eco-friendly. Also, these events can be more inclusive of individuals with disabilities, which can make them ideal for accommodating larger audiences. As consumers get used to a virtual world, many prefer hybrid to in-person events.
This is a process that involves matching customer identifiers across devices and touchpoints to a single consumer profile. Identity means knowing who a customer is, what they want and need, and where they are in the buyers’ journey. This is accomplished by creating a connection point between all interactions — on and offline — across mobile apps, stores, the web, email, digital ads and more. Through this process, marketers can recognize individuals among the masses, and craft relevant and consistent personalized messaging.
Since the pandemic, more consumers have been moving out of urban areas and to the suburbs and rural regions. This has triggered a trend toward localized marketing, with consumers shopping primarily in neighborhood stores, and buying more locally sourced products. For these businesses, localized content and personalization will be important to strengthen a connection with local audiences.
A mobile wallet is a virtual wallet that stores payment information on a mobile device. Google, along with several companies, partnered in 2011 to launch this new mobile payment system. Apple Pay rolled out in 2014, and Google Pay in 2018. Consumers are increasingly using mobile wallets, and the technology is opening new marketing opportunities for brands.
To reach today’s customers, brands must meet them where they are — on their smartphones, tablets and laptops. Shoppers today don’t spend all their money in one place. They jump on perks like faster shipping, lower prices or a more varied selection via multiple channels. Multichannel selling involves listing products and completing sales on several channels, including marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart and more.
This is a marketing effectiveness measurement tactic that considers all touchpoints on consumers’ journey into consideration, and assigns fractional credit to each, so that a marketer can see how much influence each channel has on a sale. Multi-touch attribution offers a more sophisticated alternative to traditional, rules-based attribution approaches, such as first- and last-touch, which give all the credit to the first or last marketing touchpoint, before a consumer converts.
This is software that enables marketers to identify, deliver and measure optimum experiences for each individual consumer based on their current context, past interactions and predicted intent. Personalization engines leverage data from user profiles or from tracking anonymous user behavior. Profiles are enhanced with data from real-time behavior, transactions, geography and affinity. The engine helps marketers segment and target audiences, and trigger messaging and content delivery.
The role of marketers is not just about finding leads, but also tracking their progress through funnels and calculating how much revenue they contribute to a brand. As a result, marketing leaders are increasingly responsible for driving bottom-funnel metrics, such as revenue and growth, as they are for top-of-funnel metrics like awareness and affinity. RevOps is a growing trend that requires marketers to become revenue driven by engaging in practices such as financial modeling, niche targeting and pipeline management.
In a continuously changing marketing world, it’s vital for every marketer to stay up to date on new trends, tools and terminology. These 13 terms give you a head start on the biggest marketing trends to expect this year.
