As the end of the year rolls around brands want to see what worked in 2016 and what didn’t. Brands want their 2017 marketing strategies and campaigns to be a step up from what they did before, surpassing consumers’ expectations as well as their own. To achieve this success brands need to deepen their understanding of their consumers’ current mental space and their feeling regarding the brand.
How can marketers achieve this in a way that the consumers will want to engage with? The answer is the interactive list, which might be the greatest gift to content marketers especially this holiday season as they begin preparations for their 2017 marketing campaigns.
What’s so special about a list? Here are 6 reasons why an interactive list is essential to your end of the year marketing campaign:
- The Wish List
The wish list is a trend that is taking the marketing world by storm this holiday season with the biggest brand names including, MAC Cosmetics, American Eagle, Amazon, and Victoria’s Secret actively offering their consumers to choose and share their favorite products.
The wish list allows fans of the brand to not only choose their favorite products, offering the brand the opportunity to further understand the existing interests of the consumer, but also share their favorites with their friends and family. This sharing promotes the brand, brand loyalty and potentially converts more passive consumers into active buyers.
- The To Do List
Everyone knows that the holidays are a busy time of the year. People get lost in the craze of Christmas shopping, meal preparing, baking the thousands of sweets, etc. Everyone also knows that this is the time of year to create resolutions intended to better ourselves with “New Year, New Me” self-promises. Both of which means this is the time for goals, prioritizing and self-organization so we manage the growing list of things to do and also achieve everything we want to by designated deadlines.
Brands can create an interactive “To Do” list, where consumers can list out their goals for the week, the month, or the new year, placing the highest priorities on top. The brand can then help its consumer complete their goals with the assistance of the brand’s products. The “To Do” list would boost engagement, encourage consumers to come back to the site to cross off accomplishments and check progress, and increase brand loyalty.
- Voiced Preferences
By giving consumers a set list of products and allowing them to prioritize which ones they like better consumers are given the chance to share their opinion. It showcases the brands high priority of the consumers themselves and also provides the brand with specified data about its consumer base.
By creating a top 10 list out of 20 options or by simply rearranging a list of 8 products and placing their favorite at the top, consumers are offering the brand valuable insight into how to access their audience better. Brands like Madewell, Target and Coca-Cola have already incorporated this idea of picking your favorite products out of a list of options, whether it’s through interactive videos, slideshows or quizzes.
This is valuable at the end of the year as marketers begin to get ready for 2017 with the intention of designing more personalized and fundamentally unique marketing campaigns for new and existing customers.
- Accessible Across Multiple Platforms
The most wonderful and yet the most subtle aspect about lists is that they are everywhere and essential to simple organization of our daily lives. They can be made anywhere on anything. Whether it’s a napkin, your phone, the palm of your hand, or the shallows of your mind, they can be accessed and help you from anywhere.
Interactive lists aren’t any different. They can be utilized on multiple digital platforms, filling the screen with designated options wanting to be moved around and fitted in their proper space by a stylis, a finger, or a mouse. Especially with mobile marketing on the rise, this accessibility across multiple channels is essential.
This allows brands to gain feedback and drive up their consumer engagement from just about anywhere, anytime. With the year rapidly drawing to a close brands are going to need every one of their consumers to participate and those consumers are going to need to access the interactive content from anywhere.
- Increased Consumer Engagement
Allowing your consumers to drag around items in a list, to pick their favorites, to prioritize issues, etc. furthers their relationship with your brand and your products. Their participation with the interactive lists allows the existence of a two-way conversation between you, the brand, and the individual consumer.
According to a Content Marketing Institute (CMI) study conducted in 2016, 46% of marketers surveyed agreed that their audience engagement has increased since their brand started using interactive content tactics, 20% of marketers surveyed strongly agreed with the statement.
Responsive content, like a list that rearranges itself at your touch, is likely to be seen as more entertaining, more fun and most importantly more unique. Your audience wants to be engaged, especially the younger members, they want something to interact with and something that holds their attention. A list the responds to the consumer’s desires and will is going to do all those things while offering you, the marketer, the information you need to better your upcoming marketing strategies.
- Specified Feedback
An interactive list allows you to ask a question like “how do you think we can better your digital experience?”, give them a series of focused options like “More emails about promotions”, “More mobile quizzes” or “Shorter blog posts” and then received specified feedback that will then allow you, in the future, to create better marketing strategies designed with specific customers in mind.
The digital customer experience is becoming more and more unique to the individual consumer. This is achieved through specified feedback turned into data that allows the brands to create a more individualized experience filled with featured content that speaks to the individual’s exiting interests.
If you’re looking to create more personalized, creative, engaging content in 2017, you are going to have to find out what your audience loves, hates, wants, expects or needs. The best way to find that out is asking them specified questions with specified options for answers, that way you gather focused data that will allow your content building team to create the most effective content possible. Here in the final days of 2016, interactive lists are as beneficial to you as they are fun for you consumer!
Interested in learning more how to better your end of the year marketing campaign check out our blog here.
Want to start building your interactive list today, click below to start a free trial with Votion today!
{{cta(‘affecf33-5739-4906-8570-b3c686bb1c2d’,’justifycenter’)}}