How to Unlock Customer Loyalty: Is Promptness Your Missing Marketing P?

My husband is the chef in the family. But sometimes on Thursday or Friday, when I know that it has been a long, tough week, I try to give him a break and cook - I mean order take out. I love getting a just-in-time offer from Skip The Dishes Corporation on sushi, Thai, or Persian.

I look over at my son and I swear he grew 2 inches in the last week. None of his pants fit him. Plus, he has graduation photos for Grade 8 next week. He definitely needs new threads. Wouldn't it be amazing to get an offer from Gap Inc. ? Or maybe another retailer that isn't top of mind in my consideration set.

I am an avid customer of 2 customized subscription services: one for my skincare and another for my hair. I would love it if I could press a button when one of the bottles is running low, but the next best thing is to adjust the timing of the next shipment.

"Location, location, location" is the credo of real estate. "Timing is everything" should be the credo of marketing, especially retail marketing.

The 4Ps of marketing of yesteryear (Product, Place, Price, and Promotion) didn't consider all the tools that we now have readily available. I propose we add a 5th P (You may be surprised that it's not personalization 😜). How do we turn "timing" into a 5th P? Claude.ai suggested "Promptness" because

"Promptness" captures the concept of delivering marketing promotions at exactly the right moment when consumers are most receptive or in need of your solution. This includes:

• Launching campaigns when consumer pain points are most acute
• Timing promotions to align with purchase decision windows
• Responding quickly to market shifts or competitor actions
• Delivering promotional messages when consumers are most likely to be receptive

The concept emphasizes not just being on time, but being precisely timed to maximize impact. Effective "Promptness" requires understanding customer journey touchpoints and knowing exactly when your target audience is most likely to convert.

For example, a snow removal service that sends promotional materials just before the first major snowfall of the season demonstrates excellent "Promptness" in their marketing approach."

Personalization has always been defined as

Getting the right product to the right customer at the right price at the right time

I would argue that we have made definite progress on the Right Customer and even the Right Product. A few brands that use advanced analytics (hello surge pricing at Uber ) provide the Right Price (though admittedly some call that particular strategy "price gouging").

However, we certainly have room to grow in the field of Right Time.

It is definitely easier to blast your entire audience with a newsletter set for exactly the same time each week than to find the right time and cadence for each customer or even micro-segment. Look, I am guilty of this myself: I email my newsletter and post it on LinkedIn once a week, regularly.

When we put our consumer hats on, however, we know that is not when decisions are made. We are creatures of habit:

• We go grocery shopping at roughly the same time every week and we make decisions of what to buy at a regular cadence (some the day before, some right before they leave, and others while they are shopping)
• We decide which credit card to use when we get to the checkout (both physically and online)
• Our apparel, travel, gas, restaurant purchases also have distinct pattern

Now, let's put our marketer's hat back on. We have information on when and how frequently each customer shops. We can surprise them with

• Just-in-time reminders and offers: when are they planning their shopping
• The right frequency: if a customer shops every week, a weekly email is great, but daily is overkill. If a customer shops once a year, they definitely do not need or want a weekly email. More impressions doesn't equal more customer engagement or better sales results.

In 2022, Burger King ran a wildly successful promotion called the Whopper Detour. Customers had to download the new Burger King app and could buy a whopper for $0.01. The clincher was that they had to be in "enemy territory" i.e. within 1km of a McDonald's . Talk about impeccable timing. You want a burger? A McDonald's burger? How about an essentially free whopper that Burger King could track. The campaign lasted 9 days, drove 1.5M app downloads with an ROI of 37:1 and $15M in whopper sales through the app that year (200% lift in sales that persisted beyond the campaign period).

Other marketing and personalization heavy weights customize promptness/timing for each customer:

• SEPHORA sends timely replenishment emails (did you know that you're supposed to replace your mascara every 2 months - I certainly don't follow that rule). This drives lifetime value and repurchase rates
• Netflix sends out friendly nudges when a new season of your favourite show just dropped. This drives retention
• Alaska Airlines sends out real-time communications related to customers' status and frequency, such as “It’s been 6 months since your last trip — let’s plan your next getaway." or “You’re only 500 miles away from MVP status!”. As a result, Alaska sees above-industry average repeat booking rates
• Nike sends individual motivational messages such as "“You usually train on Wednesdays — don’t stop now.” Nike reported a 54% increase in app engagement among users receiving personalized nudges vs. non-personalized prompts (per their own internal case study shared at CES and in marketing trade press).

These are very convincing case studies into why timing matters.

Let me know if you are on board with adding "promptness" as another P into the marketing Ps and get the timing and frequency of our communications right for each customer! If you want to chat about this, please reach out to Lia Grimberg, CLMP™, MBA .

#MarketingMoments #PerfectTiming #PersonalizationStrategy