How to Connect With Conscious Consumers This Holiday Season

It's that time of year again, our feeds and newsletters are inundated with seemingly endless ways for brands to maximize sales this holiday season. From special discount offers, to making the most of that hero spot on your homepage, to targeted campaigns and the retargeting campaigns that follow, it can feel exhausting to keep up - and it is.

It also begs the question, if you as a business owner feel exhausted by the hamster wheel of holiday campaign planning, how do you think your customers feel? In order to conquer the beast of your business this holiday season (and beyond) let's look at some ways to help you breathe and focus on real, impactful, growth.

This holiday season, do more with less

How Brands Can Do More With Less This Holiday Season

As the holidays approach, brands are preparing their annual marketing campaigns. But this year, there's a new twist: consumers are becoming more conscious about the impact of their purchase intentions, and they're demanding that brands do more with less.

 Zero party data is a key part of this trend. Consumers are increasingly aware of the value of their personal data & purchase intentions, and they're no longer willing to spend with brands that infer information about them based on third party or second party data. Brands that want to tap into zero party data will need to find new ways to collect and use it while providing a genuine value exchange to their consumers.

Another aspect of this trend is the rise of conscious consumers. These shoppers are interested in buying products that help the planet, and they're willing to pay more for brands that align with their values.

So how can brands meet these demands? By being more strategic with their marketing strategy, and using zero party data to target consumers more effectively. This holiday season, brands have an opportunity use this meaningful data to connect with consumers in a whole new way.

What Does Doing More With Less Mean For Your Business and The Planet?

In today's business climate, "doing more with less" has become the new normal. Companies are under pressure to cut costs and increase efficiency, which often means finding ways to do more with fewer resources. 

For e-commerce businesses, this can mean using zero party data to better understand and serve customers, or adopting sustainable practices to help the planet and appeal to conscious consumers. 

Whatever the approach, the goal is the same: to do more with less in order to save the planet.

By doing more with less, businesses would use fewer resources and create less waste. They would also save money, which could be reinvested in sustainable practices. In addition, businesses would have to find innovative ways to operate, which could lead to breakthroughs in efficiency and waste reduction. As a result, the concept of businesses doing more with less could help to save the planet.

How Can You Do More With Less Beyond The Holiday Season?

However, what if businesses took this opportunity to do more with less on a regular basis? This could lead to a more sustainable business model that can withstand the challenges of the holiday season and beyond. By doing more with less, businesses can avoid the need for last-minute scrambling and instead focus on long-term planning and growth. In the end, doing more with less may be the best way for businesses to thrive in the holiday season and beyond.

The Savvy Consumer is Also a Conscious Consumer

What exactly does ‘conscious consumer’ mean?

In a world of ever-expanding choices, it can be hard to know what to purchase and how to spend our money. With each purchase, we are voting with our dollars and supporting the companies and industries that we value. 

For many of us, the term "conscious consumer" has become a buzzword that is used to describe those who are aware of the impact of their spending. But what does it really mean to be a conscious consumer? To some, it may mean only buying organic produce or fair trade coffee. For others, it may mean supporting local businesses or investing in sustainable companies. 

The bottom line is that there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Everyone has different values, and we each need to decide for ourselves what being a conscious consumer means. By taking the time to reflect on our spending habits, we can ensure that our dollars are aligning with our values and supporting the causes that are important to us.

How Do Conscious Consumers Shop in Comparison to Other Consumers?

Conscious consumers, take a more thoughtful approach to shopping. They take the time to research brands and compare prices. They read labels carefully to ensure that they are getting what they want. And, perhaps most importantly, they think about the long-term impact of their purchases. 

In today's increasingly consumer-driven society, it is more important than ever to be a conscious shopper. With so many choices and so much information available at our fingertips, it can be hard to know where to start. 

This is where brands and business owners can help. By utilizing a zero party data strategy and taking the time to ASK your consumers about their interests and intents + taking the time to educate your consumers about the products you offer, you will be able to create personalized content for your consumers to show how they can make a difference in the world - one purchase at a time.

How Should Brands Approach Connecting With Conscious Consumers?

In today's increasingly socially-conscious world, more and more consumers are looking for brands that share their values. But what does it take to connect with these conscious consumers and how can brands understand their buying signals?

For starters, brands need to be transparent about their practices and ensure that they are operating in a way that is consistent with their stated values. This means being honest about where products are sourced, how they are made, and what impact they have on the environment. Additionally, brands should make an effort to educate consumers about the issues that they care about. This can be done through digital interactive experiences (think quizzes & trivia), blogs, social media posts, and in-person events that are powered by zero party data collection.

Finally, brands need to be prepared to listen to feedback from conscious consumers and make changes accordingly. This includes being open to criticism and taking steps to address any concerns that are raised. By doing these things, brands can show that they are truly committed to making a positive impact – which is something that conscious consumers will really appreciate.

How Does a Zero Party Data Strategy Help Brands Connect to Conscious Consumers?

In order to connect with conscious consumers, brands need to think beyond using consumer data that's been collected without the consumer's knowledge or consent - so-called "third party data." Zero party data, which is data that the company directly collects and the customer intentionally shares, is much more valuable for building a relationship with a conscious consumer. 

Here are three reasons why:

First, zero party data is higher quality data. Because it comes directly from the source - the consumer - zero party data is less likely to be outdated or inaccurate.

Second, zero party data allows brands to create more personalized experiences for their customers. When you have a better understanding of who your customer is and what they want, you can create experiences that are tailored to them - and that will resonate more deeply than generic messages that are aimed at everyone.

Finally, zero party data builds trust between brands and consumers. In an era where concerns about data privacy are at an all-time high, consumers are much more likely to trust a brand that respects their privacy and only asks for information that they're comfortable sharing.

So if you want to connect with conscious consumers, focus on collecting zero party data. It's not only more useful than third party data - it's also the right thing to do.

How Jebbit Can Help You Connect With Conscious Consumers This Holiday Season and Beyond

Jebbit can help you connect to the consumers that are going to power that impactful and long term growth - and it starts by giving your customers the gift of knowing that you care about more than just profits and finding ways to do more with less.

Jebbit provides the technology that helps brands meet consumers where they want to be engaged—on their own terms, and without being intrusive. Jebbit’s interactive experiences enable brands to collect data about their customers' preferences and behaviors, so they can make informed decisions about what products to sell, how to market them, and even how to reduce their environmental impact.

By using Jebbit to collect data about your customers' preferences, you can show them that you're committed to sustainable practices and make conscious decisions about your business.

Let's look at a real life example with Heifer International. Heifer's mission is to end hunger and poverty in partnership with the communities they serve. Their programs support entrepreneurs around the world, creating lasting change from the ground up. 

With their Jebbit Trivia quiz, they are raising money that will be used to train small scale farmers around the world on bee-keeping methods. The trivia quiz provides:

• A value exchange to Hiefer’s consumers by teaching them about the importance of bees and our environment
• Helps move the needle on Heifer’s fundraising goals 
• Gets awareness out about Heifer’s mission

A win - win - win!

Tactical Ways to Ensure Your Business Leads Responsibly This Holiday Season

What are some ways we can take the key idea of doing more with less to help your business thrive this holiday season? After all, it's not lost on us that you are a business and businesses need to make money to survive. Here are some tactical ways that businesses can ensure they are driving responsible growth this holiday season and beyond.

Reduce the Amount of Customer Returns

Returns currently cost retailers around € 70 billion a year. However, the cost for our planet is even greater: 15 million tons of CO2e and 2 million tons of landfill waste are created every year from US returns alone.

Strategies that implement digital experiences such as product match quizzes help consumers find exactly what they are looking for by taking the guesswork out of shopping and reducing the amount of returns. For example, Jebbit helped ‘climate-smart’ Pour Moi, receive a less than 1% return rate through their onsite quiz experience.

Use Personalization to Do More With Less

Picture this scenario: Every single winter, your dad won’t stop complaining about how cold it is every time he walks the dogs and you can’t take it anymore. So, you head over to patagonia.com and after poking around, you find the perfect coat. An upgrade to his style and one that melts away his winter woes. Add to cart. Click. Purchase. Done.

Then it begins. You hop on Instagram three weeks later and see an ad for the same coat you just bought. The “Check out these perfect boots to compliment your new coat” emails keep coming. The onslaught of banner ads across every website you visit begins to haunt you.

The punchline here is don't infer with third party data; ASK and form a relationship with your customer based on first party data! Just because the imaginary customer above bought a coat, don’t assume it was for them. Give them the chance to tell you it was for their dad and then use that information to send more relevant content like Father’s Day offers!

By understanding the needs, wants, and limitations of your audience, you can enhance your personalization efforts that will engage them throughout the holiday season and beyond.

Brands can do their part for the planet by sending out less emails, less promotional materials, less sell-all sales, if they have personalization as part of their strategy. A personalized experience allows us to do more, with less because we are talking to the right people, at the right time, with the right message.

Meet Your Customers Where They Want to Be Engaged

Meeting consumers where they want to be engaged with you means more than just discount codes and special offers. It requires a tailored approach based on understanding their needs, wants, and limitations.

You can do this by focusing on communication when it will have the greatest impact or by utilizing educational content to tailor your marketing efforts and show how your brand values align with theirs.

A conscious strategy with a gift finder or product match quiz takes less than 10 minutes to implement.

Putting these strategies into practice to leverage zero party data can be done in under 10 minutes further saving your team time and energy. In fact, you can give it a try today! Sign up for Jebbit and build a holiday gift finder quiz in under 10 minutes.

Here's a video of Jebbit’s Director of Customer Marketing, Matt Derda, showing you how it's done. Plus if you get stuck, we have an expert workshop on October 4th where you can speak to Jebbit's zero party data experts to get help achieving exactly what you need to fuel long term growth this holiday season. Register for the workshop here.

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