The Direct Commerce Association recently held its Silver Marketing Lifestyle Day to discuss changing purchasing behaviours of mature consumers and the marketing implications of these.

A savvier mature market

The perception of what constitutes a mature market customer is certainly changing. Driven by longer life expectancy a more youthful, active and savvy group of individuals have emerged, ones who value their independence and quality of life during their retirement years.

The DCA event focused wholly on this key market segment to share relevant insights and experience to support the business growth of its members.

Featuring an impressive array of speakers from organisations such as Whistl, Royal Mail and Sky AdSmart, the topics covered sparked a lively debate. There were also interesting anecdotes and case studies from e-commerce businesses such as Suave Shoes, Serious Readers, Scotts of Stow, Peter Hahn and BioGuard.

Hot topics of the day

Ideas and conclusions from the discussions included…

• Subscription-based sales models are experiencing growth from this customer segment.
• Businesses have to keep current with fast-changing consumer preferences and behaviours. Having access to the real-time data and analytics helps to gain key insights of changes as they emerge.
• Targeting innovations increase at a pace, as customers come to expect personalised communications and interactions – irrespective of age. Sky AdSmart gave a tour of a new targeting technology for TV advertising.
• There is an ongoing challenge of measuring and adapting your approach to respond to changing behaviours if you want to generate a strong return on investment.
• A holistic review of the organisation’s structure and processes is sometimes needed to kick-start growth – from marketing processes to inbound calls. In tests, Serious Readers were able to generate £100 more per call from such a review.
• Finding a single attribution model which can draw in both offline and online channel data.

Finding the ideal attribution model

Indeed attribution is one of the burning issues for today’s marketers. As they deploy an ever-increasing array of media, how can organisations be certain which campaign is driving consumers to buy from them and where their most profitable future customers can be reached.

Fusion Analytics’ MD – Howard Thompson – gave a presentation which explored the marketer’s dilemma and offered solutions. It addressed:

• Examples of traditional offline measurement, and why they have started to struggle
• How TV bridged the gap between online and offline
• How digital is also starting to struggle
• New innovations in measurement
• The challenge for the future; thinking in customer journeys
• What do you need to consider to future-proof your measurement

Here’s the presentation…How to measure the impact of offline marketing in the digital age

 

Summary

We greatly enjoyed the DCA’s Silver Marketing Lifestyle Day. It emphasised that common assumptions about marketing to mature customers need to be rethought.  Like other market segments, this one is equally subject to changing behaviours as it gets more tech and marketing savvy.  Blending online and offline campaigns will be important to secure engagement and resonance, but so too will be finding the right attribution model to measure your effectiveness.

For more information about Fusion Analytics’ work in tracking and measuring marketing campaigns and sales journeys contact us on e: info@fusion-analytics.co.uk  t: 0203 287 5 387