We are in the age of Digital Marketing and Artificial Intelligence tools that have the ability to place personalized information in our hands in the fash of a second making the world feel like it’s moving so fast that you barely remember making your own choices, much less try to remember your thought process before you made a purchase or signed up for a new subscription. Digital Marketing can be so fast with so many touchpoints that you don’t have time to process one channel before that same message or something slightly different appears on another channel with a flash-sale deadline no less.  Our natural fear of missing out on something sets in and it’s just not worth the stress, due to Digital Touchpoint Fatigue. In some cases you move away from the purchase altogether or worse yet, unsubscribe from all communication. 

Don’t let this happen to your customers.  Be aware of Digital Touchpoints that you have with your customers.  No one is saying that Digital Marketing and AI should go away, but maybe a bit of finesse and humanity are in order so fatigue doesn’t set in.  We can’t expect Artificial Intelligence and Digital Marketing to replace the kind of personal touch with our customers that makes them like you care.   We need to pay attention to Digital Touchpoint fatigue and how that affects our customers.  

A survey from Agility PR Solutions shows that since the pandemic, our overdependence on digital technology has increased tremendously causing digital fatigue.  Marketing leaders have started to increase their use of direct mail experiences to overcome digital touchpoint fatigue and deepen customer engagement.  Reports show that analog touchpoints, such as direct mail, have seen a performance boost.  

Consumers expect to be engaged on their terms and trust that companies collecting their behavioral data will use it to enhance their experiences.  Monitoring digital touchpoint fatigue is so important in this world where we have so much data in front of us every day.

So now we know that Digital Touchpoint Fatigue is happening, what do we do to minimize it?  Here are 3 tactics to consider.

  • Consider Modern-Day Direct Mail.  Most of us may think of Direct Mail as junk mail, but that doesn’t have to be the case There are tools at your disposal to modernize your direct mail and monitor your digital touchpoints at the same time. 
    • Personalized URL links (PURLs)
      • Personalized URLs (PURLs) allow marketers to create contact-specific URLs to help drive offline activity online as part of a multi-touch marketing campaign. You can easily include a contact’s PURL on a direct mail piece and drive them to a personalized landing page to help increase conversion rates.
      • A PURL consists of your microsite, landing page vanity URL, and a PURL name. The PURL name is unique to the contact

      • In Oracle Eloqua, you can export a contact’s PURL name to a Microsoft Excel or .csv file using a Segment that includes the “PURL Name” field on the Contact view. You can then use this export to help generate the PURL.
  • Oracle Eloqua offers a cloud service to help monitor digital fatigue. Other marketing platforms likely offer similar tools. 
        • Fatigue Analysis: Helps marketers avoid customer burnout and disengagement. With Fatigue Analysis, you can identify how fatigued your contacts are by your emails, and change your message frequency to reduce disengagement and minimize opt-outs. A contact’s Fatigue Level is generated using machine learning and stored within a system contact field that makes this information available across Eloqua, including for use in segmentation, orchestration, personalization, lead scoring, and analytics.
        • Send Time Optimization: Allows marketers to send emails at the optimal time for each contact. It helps marketers engage more effectively with contacts, gaining contacts’ attention when they are historically most attentive to their emails.
  • Make the experience personal. By providing a customized experience to your customers or allowing them to choose their own adventure, they can more efficiently find the information they want, learn at their own pace, and ultimately get more from the experience.  The key to providing the right experience for your consumers is content at the right time and in the right stage of their journey.  Content platforms like PathFactory excel in delivering the right type of content at the right stage.  If you are not familiar with this service, please check out our blog Practical PathFactory for Sales. 

If you need more information on how to minimize digital touchpoint fatigue, or if you’re interested in learning more about any of the tactics discussed, Relationship One is always here to help.