How Consumer Behaviors Are Evolving

COVID-19 has impacted all facets of everyday life; from grocery shopping and dining out, to how we work and socialize. Banking is no different.

We recently completed a study through Pittsburgh Speaks, our proprietary consumer panel, to learn how banking behaviors have changed since COVID-19.

Insights include how consumers are engaging with their banks, making payments and how advisors are reaching out to consumers to address any concerns they have with how their finances are being handled during this time.

Customer’s Emotional Connection Driving Your Brand’s Success

Glowing customer reviews can make your business’s online presence shine even brighter—and critical reviews can dim it faster than a solar eclipse. So how can you plan for as much positivity as possible? Our research suggests that you start with the understanding that customer satisfaction is not the only factor informing a review, positive or negative. Also at work is a quality that permeates every level of customer engagement, a powerful force that often matters even more than satisfaction: emotional connection.

Branding, after all, is psychological.

Customers make hundreds of conscious and unconscious decisions around the brands they support, based on unique value propositions and distinctive associations. The customer-brand relationship is just that: a relationship. And as in any relationship, the more emotional investment, the more fulfillment.

Customers who are “fully connected” emotionally are found to be 52% more valuable to brands than customers who are “highly satisfied.”^[1] They’re more likely to buy and recommend your products and services and to engage with your communications. But myriad nuanced motivators drive customer behavior, from wanting to belong to wanting to stand out, and customers often aren’t aware of what’s informing their emotional connections^[2]. So how can you predict you predict those connections? How can you find and influence the most emotionally connected customers, the ones who will provide those five-star reviews?

We wondered the same thing.

We wanted a simple method for measuring emotional connection that offered meaningful insights for brand outcomes. The metric we developed—EC5—is exactly that.

EC5 is based on a simple, five-attribute rating question, made up of attributes that are concrete enough to be actionable. And we learn a lot from that simple question: EC5 is predictive of business outcomes from positive reviews to opening branded credit cards, and it surpasses traditional metrics when it comes to predicting responses to brand disruptions – particularly when your brand is perceived to have taken actions that are inconsistent with customers’ values.

How can EC5 help your brand reach its goals? Get in touch to find out.

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^[1] Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2016/08/an-emotional-connection-matters-more-than-customer-satisfaction

^[2] Ibid

Pittsburgh Pirates: Using a Fan Community to Improve the Game Day Experience

A sports fan’s emotional bond with their team is what makes a winning day at the ballpark feel so amazing—and a losing day feel so lousy. But rocky streaks come with the territory and crossing your fingers for a win is not a marketing strategy. Fortunately, there are practical, research-based ways to keep fans coming in and create positive fan experiences even when the season is tough.

Schmidt Market Research recently won a Vision Critical Visionary Award.

This award was achieved by helping the Pittsburgh Pirates create a more rich fan experience, one that goes way beyond the scoreboard, through an Insight Community called the Pirates Fan Council.

Using advanced analytics, we have segmented the 4,000 members of the Fan Council based on specific drivers of attendance and engagement. These have provided a wealth of insight about media and purchasing habits, entertainment, food preferences, and more.

These segment profiles are constantly enhanced by each Insight Community interaction with Fan Council members, as well as with information from the Pirates’ CRM and purchase data. With this turbo-boosted understanding of what gets fans into their seats, the Pirates front office can create relevant, customized programs—then pre-test them with the Council before launching and tracking in-market.

Key to the Fan Council’s ongoing success is keeping stakeholders and council members engaged. We encourage the use of Council members’ feedback throughout the Pirates organization, including among top-level executives. We also connect Council members to the front office with features like “Ask the Executives a Question” and offer frequent “share backs” so members can see how their feedback is used. Simple, consistent engagements like a video welcome message from the Pirates president, votes on new T-shirt designs, and “meet the member” stories increase buy-in.

Engaged Insight Community members have helped the Pirates make better, faster decisions.

The Fan Council gives feedback on everything from field signage to season ticket packages, reducing risk when making changes and providing a preliminary sounding board for ideas and messaging. With the Sparq customer insights platform, Schmidt can get feedback ready in 48 hours!

In addition, the Pirates are currently exploring tailored season ticket packages, based on the Council’s feedback… And because the Fan Council is an extension of the Pirates brand, its members now have a stronger and more meaningful investment in their team, win or lose.

Let’s talk about how we can help improve your brand’s user experience. Contact us to learn more.