In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to corporations, legally establishing what is referred to as corporate personhood.
While this decision was based strictly on legal reasons, nowhere does the personhood of a corporation ring truer than in its brand. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll look at three famous quotes about the importance of personal authenticity and apply them to brand authenticity.

There’s an invisible battle waging in the background of the internet. The prize? Your attention. Brand websites, social media apps, and search engines are all vying for your attention by applying algorithms that facilitate showing you content based on the probability that you’ll want to see it. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll explore where digital targeting is evolving and how to utilize invited personalization.

Have you ever been to a webpage that wasn’t optimized for your phone properly, and the ads blocked the content? How about waiting so long for an ad to disappear that you clicked on the ad, then clicked the back arrow just to see if it would end sooner? Well, you’re not alone; 90% of those surveyed find digital ads annoying. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll look at problems with programmatic advertising and the damage targeting top-of-funnel metrics, like impressions and clicks using broad ad networks, can have on your brand.

At the foundation of any successful customer experience strategy is a clear understanding of the various ways prospects and customers interact with your brand, how they prefer to interact with your brand, and how you can ensure a smooth path to purchase and a competitive advantage. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll approach the best way to improve your business performance through enhanced customer experience, beginning with a CX audit.

It’s a question that we as consumers get asked several times a day: “Would you like to sign up for our rewards program?” In fact, it’s become a key part of the customer checkout experience. Rewards and loyalty programs have long been a way for companies to connect with their customers in a unique and engaging way while generating compelling reasons to buy more or more often. These types of programs have evolved over the years to address proposed customer needs and wants, but companies are now looking for ways to predict what their customers will want and/or expect next in this ever-evolving, immediate-satisfaction business world. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll noodle the current state and future of customer loyalty programs and how your business can adapt.

By the end of 2021 we had witnessed a decade of digital engagement innovation, crammed into just two years. A revolution of necessity. And for the most part, people seem to love it. So what changes to customer engagement will continue to play an important role in 2022? In this edition of Plain Talk, we will list our top five picks for effective consumer engagement tools you should consider this year.

When we consult with our clients and evaluate their lead generation and other marketing practices, we often find that follow-through is their biggest challenge. Much like a great golfer takes a video of their swing and self-evaluates to improve their game, a company needs to frequently take an honest look at its marketing practices—the whole customer journey—and assess if the follow-through is lacking. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll give you a step-by-step guide to performing a customer journey analysis for your business.

The country is emerging from a generation-defining disaster in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of December 2020, the U.S. had 10 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic. According to Yelp, by September 2020, over 97,000 businesses had indicated they closed their doors permanently. Plus, the global media attention to the virus has led to a sharp increase in public fear about germ safety. While all that seems gloomy, U.S. consumer confidence remains solid, gross domestic product (GDP) is heading in the right direction, and America seems on the way to a sound recovery. While we don’t expect a rash of saltshaker thefts, we do think it’s likely that some behavioral changes sprouting from the past year may remain long after the pandemic is history. In today’s Plain Talk, we’ll dig into some of the long-term implications of consumer behavioral changes during the pandemic and how to adjust to meet them head-on.

When it comes to overused phrases, “the possibilities are endless” ranks pretty high. However, for anyone talking about digital engagement for financial services the phrase isn’t hyperbole. If you’re aiming to deliver an end-to-end digital experience for your customers, then you know that it means not only thinking of everything, but also continuously analyzing and optimizing those things as well. Which is why a great end-to-end digital engagement strategy includes basically everything except for one thing: an end. In this edition of our Compound Interest series, we’ll dig into managing that seemingly endless cycle.

In 2021, it’s safe to say that a big chunk of our days are spent online, whether thumbing through social media, shopping, researching a project or big purchase, or gathering information about current events. Of those daily website visits, how many of them stand out to you as being really great personal experiences? In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll walk through some of the business-critical reasons you should focus on your website CX. We’ll explore ways you can deliver a personable website experience to your customers.