Customer data in the metaverse deepens your understanding of customers. Use this step by step process to get ready.
Customer Data Platform
June 13, 2022
The Metaverse is an exciting new development for marketers and brands. Creating immersive experiences and mixed reality experiences on metaverse platforms means a greater opportunity to deliver a personalized experience to customers.
In the short term, the metaverse customer experience will likely require a virtual showroom, a virtual reality headset, and other resources to create a compelling digital realm. Right now, online games are dominating this type of Internet experience but that will change over time. Arena has this great article with tips to set you up for the metaverse.
Before investing significant resources in interactive content and virtual environments, let’s get clear on the business value of the metaverse. This type of virtual space is at an early stage of development but business leaders have already found a few opportunities.
Online games and extended reality - remember the Pokemon Go craze of 2016? - are the first way brands can earn revenue from digital reality. For example, gaming technology companies are already working on creating entertainment experiences for online avatars. Gaming isn’t right for every brand, however.
Creating a highly entertaining consumer experience isn’t your only option. You can also offer digital products like non-fungible tokens (NFTs). For example, imagine creating exclusive NFTs and other virtual products to celebrate a product launch.
Immediate revenue generation may not be your primary focus. Instead, you can use the digital environment to grow customer loyalty or better understand your prospects. Increasingly, concerns over privacy rights mean brands have to work harder to convince brands to share data. Offering a novel experience, even a straightforward virtual mall, is a powerful way to get started.
In the rest of this post, we’ll focus on the third strategy - using the metaverse to boost your marketing strategies - since that approach is relevant to most brands.
There is a lot of hype around metaverse technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, and virtual worlds. Video game and entertainment companies are early adopters of the Metaverse because there is an easy fit with their business model. If you're not in the entertainment business, the metaverse is still relevant as a way to enhance your marketing.
Driving business results from the metaverse becomes far easier when you use a Customer Data Platform (CDP). There is no simple way to track which customers and prospects engage with metaverse content without it.
Integrating a metaverse concept with your customer data platform is the best way to go. In this situation, you can track user activity from your website, the metaverse, and elsewhere. You’re able to measure what kind of people find your metaverse content engaging. Most importantly, you get faster feedback on user behavior. That means you can iterate and optimize your metaverse experiences faster and reach your return on investment goals.
Attaining a profitable metaverse experience starts with creating the proper foundation. Before you purchase virtual reality hardware or consulting, set up your customer data platform foundation first.
Use these tips to get ready for the Metaverse. The first few steps of the plan do not directly involve the Metaverse by design. Jumping into a metaverse experience without first establishing a foundation is a recipe for wasting time and money.
Start with your marketing goals and KPIs in mind before everything else. Your goals will likely include the following:
Once you have your goals in mind, let’s look at how your customer data supports those goals.
There are three dimensions to assess your current customer data: quantity, quality, and utility. By optimizing all of these factors, you can grow faster.
Engaging content and ideas are crucial to achieving success in the Metaverse. You can save time in the content creation process by reviewing your current performance. Use the following techniques to identify high-performing content.
From the above sources, you should be able to come up with at least 5-10 ideas that can inform your approach to the Metaverse.
The next step is to set up a customer data platform on your website. Leveraging Arena Personas makes it easy to create a single customer profile that covers Google Analytics, Facebook, chat, mobile and other platforms. Adding it to your CDP will lay a good foundation for your metaverse marketing program.
Once your customer data platform is fully set up, it is crucial to make your website more interactive. To achieve that goal, consider installing Arena Live Chat. Live Chat is valuable because it makes it easier for customers to ask questions and get answers fast. Most users can install Arena Live Chat in 5-10 minutes.
At this point, you are ready to start your metaverse experience planning process. You have a strong marketing foundation in place. In addition, going through step 3 should have given a few ideas of the kinds of content your customers are most interested in.
Now, start planning a virtual event experience with metaverse technologies. To inspire your approach, seek inspiration from these events in the metaverse.
Now you are ready to start preparing metaverse pilot project ideas. Most companies find it easier to enter the Metaverse on an event basis. That is the approach that we recommend as well. Designing a metaverse experience that runs for a few hours to a few days is much more manageable.
You may already be planning an event or company conference. In that case, look for ways to bring some of your panels or discussions into the metaverse context.
Gaming companies have the most experience in creating metaverse experiences. Therefore, creating a branded game could be a simple way to get started. For example, a homeware company might work with; The Knights of Unity to create a branded experience. The company has created a virtual world where users can buy, build and decorate homes.
Earlier, we mentioned the example of Gucci selling exclusive products through the Metaverse. If your company has a new product release planned, launching the product through a metaverse world might help to generate additional excitement.
Once you have selected your metaverse idea, you can move ahead to launch the event.
Thoroughly planning a metaverse event goes beyond the scope of this post. Instead, we are going to focus on the marketing implications. Before, during, and after the event, users should have multiple opportunities to visit your website, ask for more information and make purchases. All of this activity should be tracked through your customer data platform so that you can follow up afterward.
In addition, your customers may need additional support because the Metaverse is still relatively new. For example, customers may have difficulties using virtual reality hardware. In this case, providing technical support on your website with Arena Live Chat is smart. Otherwise, confused customers may give up and leave your event if they cannot get the support they need.
Finally, take some time to evaluate the metaverse event using your customer data platform. Refer back to the marketing goals and key performance indicators you outlined in step one of this process. If you did not generate new leads or sales, you have achieved other benefits like increased loyalty.
Whether you join the Metaverse today or in a few years, it is vital to act now to prepare for the event. Arena Personas helps you to create data-driven user profiles so that you can fine-tune your CDP towards marketing.
