The past two years have spurred an unprecedented acceleration of digital transformation for business-to-consumer companies in Singapore, advancing their digital strategies by an average of 6.8 years, according to Twilio.
As a result, B2C companies in Singapore that invested in digital customer engagement also saw an average increase in total revenue of 61%.
This is based on Twilio’s third annual State of Customer Engagement Report, which reflects the findings from a survey of 3,450 business leaders and 4,500 consumers across 12 countries, including Singapore.
Findings show that third-party cookies, which are now blocked by Firefox and Safari, will also be blocked by Google Chrome by the end of 2023.
Thus, businesses need to prepare quickly for these upcoming changes, especially as the majority of consumers in Singapore (88%) prefer for brands to make use of only first-party data when delivering personalised experiences.
The deprecation of cookies will cause even more difficulty for brands who rely on such cookies to identify and track visitors to their websites.
Close to three-quarters (73%) of B2C companies in Singapore surveyed rely on third-party data for their current marketing strategies. In addition, nearly two-thirds (65%) companies in Singapore say they are not fully prepared for a cookie-less world.
This means that when a key pillar of the advertising- and social media-driven internet disappears, collecting and relying on first-party data won’t just be a competitive advantage anymore – it will be table stakes for survival.
Also, personalisation has emerged as one of the most important aspects of delivering a competitive brand experience that will attract customers and create brand loyalty. The consequences of not providing personalised experiences to customers can be severe, especially as consumers in Singapore tend to expect personalised experiences compared to other countries.
Four-fifths (81%) of consumers in Singapore say they’ll stop using a brand if it doesn’t personalise their experience, compared to the global average of 61%.
However, while both brands and consumers agree that personalisation is important, the report uncovered some startling gaps.
For one, 90% companies in Singapo resurveyed believe that personalisation is critical to their customer engagement strategy.
Yet, while 75% of companies claim to provide good or excellent personalised experiences to customers, more than half of consumers (53%) disagree, reporting bad, poor or average personalisation.
“The research clearly shows that companies that prioritise digital customer engagement reap the biggest rewards,” said Lee Hawksley, SVP and general manager in Asia-Pacific and Japan at Twilio.
“Personalisation is actually getting harder to deliver, with high customer expectations, changing technologies, and the diminishing value of third-party cookies,” said Hawksley. “We’ve seen five fundamentals to overcoming these challenges: embrace digital, personalise every interaction, shift to first-party data, close the trust gap, and avoid engagement fatigue by increasing the quality of your interactions.”
