The Power of Emotional Decision-Making

95% of Decision-Making is Emotional – Daniel Kahneman, Psychologist

Harnessing the power of emotions within marketing can significantly impact a customer’s decision-making process, and differentiate a brand from its competitors. In a world where personalisation, authenticity, relatability and trust are rewarded by customers, making sure you connect with them emotionally is crucial.

The psychology of emotional decision-making reveals the WHY behind people’s purchasing behaviour, which tends to be based on what they love, care about and value. So, the question is, how can we reveal this transformative information using data? 

THE DATA EVOLUTION 

Emotional data from behavioural sources is a recent data phenomenon. 

If we look back to when advertising started in the 1950s, most creative and media planning was driven by gut instinct and segmented on socio-demographics, i.e. based on income, working status and lifestage. Think Don Draper in MadMen selling whiskey to hard-working businessmen or dishwashers to time-poor housewives. 

That all changed in the 1980s when for the first time there was a data set on the whole of the UK – the census data. Direct marketing was born because we could segment the entire country by geodemographics and for the first time, send marketing that was targeted at scale. That’s where our legacy started, and where Clive Humby and Edwina Dunn met building ACORN at CACI.

They then went on to pioneer customer data science with Dunnhumby and in the 1990s, started working with Tesco and launching Clubcard to segment customers based on what they buy to create lifestyles – such as cook-from-fresh, health-conscious and family-meals. This technique transformed retailers globally, driving billions in incremental value. However, grocery data is uniquely rich – with customers shopping frequently, and buying a lot of items, therefore enabling you to paint a rich picture of what matters to them. 

But for most businesses, first-party data alone is not enough. Customers shop infrequently and buy one or two items, meaning you need to look outside of your own customer data to understand what matters to them and how they live their lives.  This is entirely possible in the 2020s, with the rich data sources on what people care about from social media, search, mobile and online behaviours.  

Traditionally, to understand WHY customers buy, brands turn to survey data. But the truth is that survey data cannot be matched and activated against – and this is what Starcount aims to solve. 

SO HOW DO WE DO IT? 

The truth is that behavioural data consists of two elements. WHAT consumers do and WHY they do it:

• The WHAT data reveals consumers’ behaviours through transactions, banking records, purchase history and retail and conversion metrics. 
• The WHY data reveals the motivations and intent behind a consumer’s behaviour, using interests, online search patterns, psychographics and attitudinal information.

Behaviours are WHAT we do, whilst emotions drive WHY we do it.

Starcount are experts in combining data sources to reveal the signals that show the motivations and mindsets behind customer behaviour. 

For Example: 

The Behaviour: You choose to eat vegetarian (whether in your grocery shop or at a restaurant).

The Why: Is it for sustainability and saving the environment reasons? Is it for animal welfare reasons? Perhaps your religion? Is it for diet or health reasons? Or is it about affordability?

The behaviour is the same,  choosing vegetarian, however, the emotions behind the choice can be different. By championing a message that taps into the emotional driver, you are more likely to resonate with the customer and become their brand of choice.

When marketers change messaging to connect emotionally with customers, they become the brand of choice amongst the abundance of competitors.  

Sustainability and saving the environment: saving the planet isn’t boring, so why should your food options be?

Versus 

Diet and healthy lifestyle: The best plant-based fuel to give you the best results for your health.

THE CHALLENGE FOR MARKETERS

The drivers of emotional decision-making are not always evident, and it’s easy to get caught up in the rational reasonings for a consumer purchase. Rational messaging focuses closely on behavioural data that reveals the WHAT, which includes past behaviours of consumers, benefits of the product/ service and its features. This approach oversimplifies the decision-making process and fails to identify the WHY, losing the ability to truly connect with the consumer, increase engagement and strengthen loyalty, thus affecting the ROI of marketing efforts.

The ability to execute emotional messaging will truly transform the way consumers interact with your brand. Emotional messaging focuses on WHY consumers were motivated to make a purchase and are usually based on selling a feeling, and identifying how best a brand can resonate and relate with consumers’ experiences and interests. Telling a story that evokes emotions and meaning.

This is important because…

1. Your messaging and creatives need to resonate with your customers to get the best results. How can you create an advert in a data-driven format that resonates with what people value and how will my product help them?
2. From a media planning perspective: Where will you find these people? What media channels are your customers most likely to consume and how much are they consuming? 

And this drives results. It has consistently been proven, emotionally relevant campaigns are 5x more effective when creative and targeting come together. 

Brands that have nailed it