How PepsiCo Masters Game-Changing Loyalty Strategies

For years, brands have been perfecting personalisation strategies that resonate with consumers and make them feel like individuals. For many B2C brands like PepsiCo, classic personalisation has meant plugging simple forms of data like email, names, addresses or recent purchases into outbound channel communications to ensure touchpoints are viewed as timely, relevant and contextual.

Chris Muscutt, Head of MarTech at PepsiCo outlined what it takes to drive more personalised experiences and drive loyalty in today’s data-driven, digital environment during a special edition Cheetah Digital’s ‘Thinking Caps’ series, available here.

In this interview, Muscutt calls on brands need to invest in and bring together three game-changing loyalty drivers, including:

1. Real-time personalisation: This allows brands to learn more about consumers to deliver a better experience every time. It’s about understanding what the consumer intends to do in that specific moment and includes monitoring web interactions as well as mobile SMS, web, app, social, point of sale, etc. This personalisation strategy ensures real-time data is captured from these touchpoints and brought back to the platform to be appended to the consumer’s profile.

2. Journey orchestration: Journeys should be simple in nature; think triggered events or a multi-pronged approach that unfolds over time based on consumer behaviours and preferences. Personalised customer journeys lead to growth in interactions, increasing the likelihood of purchases and conversions.

3. Intelligent offers: Offer management is being redefined by modern marketers. Leveraging the power of machine learning and analytics to score content and determine, not only the right offer, but the best sequence of offers, time and optimal context and channel is something that can be greatly automated at scale. This can drive efficiency and efficacy.

“There’s definitely room for marketers to improve their efforts,” Chris says. “Making things relevant is one thing, but true personalisation is another journey altogether. There can be pockets of both, but they’re not the same thing. That’s where the gaps come — is it personalisation, contextualised marketing or journey planning? Many brands still have a long road ahead before they achieve true personalisation.”

Emphasizing the importance of a well-functioning customer relationship and personalization strategy, the most recent Cheetah Digital 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Index survey found consumers are rewarding brands that make personalisation a priority. More than half of the respondents said they would trade personal and preference data to feel part of a brand’s community. At the same time, there’s been a near 50% increase in consumers who feel frustrated with a brand that does not recognise their unique desires and needs in its personalisation strategies.

“Marketers have to look at all the different signals they’re receiving from consumers, even the more subtle ones, as the third-party cookie crumbles,” Chris says. “They have to prioritise the data that is useful in their marketing strategies and then focus on developing those data-collection opportunities. With that, marketers can start to build impactful strategies toward improving the customer journey.”

Customer data resides in systems like analytics, email, mobile, campaign management, point-of-sale, and social – areas that weren’t designed to be integrated. Overcoming this challenge of disparate systems can be as simple as a customer data platform (CDP).

Tim Glomb, VP of Content and Data at Cheetah Digital, says as a platform that is CDP-certified from the CDP Institute, Cheetah Digital does more than just bring all the data together. It provides marketers with a single, accessible and actionable view that can be used to drive meaningful engagement with consumers.

“With the Cheetah Engagement Data Platform (EDP), you can dynamically change an experience based on the data that exists. Essentially, you can change the journey,” he says.

“What differentiates the Cheetah EDP from a traditional CDP is that it provides marketers with a holistic view of the customer, machine learning, native omnichannel touchpoints and solutions that drive customer acquisition, loyalty, and retention. Together, these capabilities provide marketers with solutions to create value throughout the customer lifecycle, from acquiring customers to watching them become brand advocates.”

To learn more about how PepsiCo using technology to deepen customer relationships and drive engagement at scale, watch the full interview, available free and on demand here.