If you work in marketing, you’ve likely seen reports, op-eds and articles telling you that the best way to drive long-term, defensible growth for everyday brands is to harness the power of super-fans.
The idea is enchanting — your mid-market brand could have legions of cheering fans ready to greet your next social post, TVC or piece of branded content. But in reality, the idea is ephemeral. Most consumers simply don’t care enough about any brand to become true fans.
And that’s fine.
As we unpacked previously, loyalty to anything — not just brands — is not determined by a set of rational motivations and explanations. Instead, the causes of what we know as loyalty extend far into the primordial and the ‘Fight or Flight’ instinct that saved lives in the deepest recesses of our history as a species.
Nowadays, that Fight or Flight instinct is used to choose between which phone manufacturer people want to use or the brand of T-shirt they buy. The stakes might not seem as high but they can be life or death for your business.
But when so many marketing ‘experts’ tell you that hardcore brand loyalty is not only desirable but the standard for businesses looking to grow — which we all are, at the end of the day — what can you do to persuade your teams otherwise?
“One theme that unites the most prestigious behavioural scientists — Nobel prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler — is their belief that one of the most influential behavioural nudges is: ‘make it easy.’ Their argument is ‘we overestimate the impact of appeal, we underestimate the impact of friction,’” explained Richard Shotton, author of The Illusion of Choice.
“Often what we call loyalty is more passive. It’s more like habit. It’s people repeating behaviours because that’s what they’ve done in the past or it’s too much of a hassle to switch. It might not be genuine loyalty,” he added.
But you don’t need to simply believe Shotton or, indeed, two Nobel prize winners – you can believe the data., Intuit Mailchimp conducted a panel-sample online survey with Canvas8, its strategic insights partner, between 17–27 February 2024 with 4,000 respondents (1000 from each of Australia, Canada, the US and the UK aged 18 to 65). The margin of error is +/- 5.5 per cent, as reported at a 95 per cent confidence level. You can find the full methodology breakdown in the report.
Together, we’ll unpack this industry-leading research to show you why not all brands need to have K-Pop-level stans to grow.
Turning Apathy Into Opportunity
The idea that inert customers can be a key driver for growth might sound contradictory. However, Mailchimp’s research has revealed they are exactly the customers that marketers need to be targeting to keep the bottom line growing.
In its research, Mailchimp found that 67 per cent of Aussie consumers prefer buying from brands that they feel loyal to. While that stat may be unsurprising, the next one may – nearly a quarter of consumers said they do not feel particularly strongly about the matter either way.
You can spend forever trying to win market share from your competitors with aggressive pricing strategies, media buying sprees or exhaustive (and exhausting) user targeting. Or you could simply target the consumers who aren’t committed to you or your rivals either way.
But there’s more.
When asked whether they preferred brands that fostered a sense of community, while 40 per cent of Aussie consumers said they agreed to some extent, a staggering 45 per cent said that they neither agreed nor disagreed. In contrast to much of the marketing industry talk, creating an excited atmosphere around your brand is not necessarily imperative for growth.
As a caveat, the proportion of younger consumers who care about being part of a brand community is higher than the general population. Some 56 per cent of 18-24-year-olds and 58 per cent of 25-34-year-olds say that they prefer to buy from brands that foster a sense of community. But even so, that does not extend to all categories.
Nearly 40 per cent of buyers want a community feeling when buying from fashion brands. But just 28 per cent of beauty buyers agree. This might seem at odds with the clamour around some brands but it could be possible that these brands simply have lots of very online fans. Most non-fans (i.e. where the growth is) simply aren’t as motivated by the idea of belonging to a parasocial community as we have been led to believe.
“There are blessings and curses for a business when it comes to going down the fandom path – the big challenge is that once you have an in-group it means you have an out-group which you can’t service,” said Bri Williams, a behavioural expert and founder of People Patterns.
However, instead of trying to over-service one set of super-consumers, Williams recommends taking a different approach that demonstrates benefits for everyone.
“The more we can remove friction, the more they’re likely to deal with us. Whether or not they’re loyal, they’re more likely to stay with us if it’s the easiest option,” she said.
Of course, disinterest isn’t exciting. But if activated correctly, consumers that you may have considered uninterested at best or apathetic at worst can lead to significant gains for your business. All you have to do is provide more carrots and fewer sticks.
Remove Seams & Reward Shopping
One of the most important things to remember when it comes to generating customer loyalty is that not every business requires or elicits the same reaction from a customer. And nor does it need to.
“Most purchases are triggered by the category, not by the brand. So, ‘I’m thirsty, I want to buy a drink.’” explained Adam Ferrier, co-founder of Thinkerbell.
“A lot of what we’re talking about when it comes to inspiring loyalty is actually building habits, and that’s [about] us making it easier [for] people to keep on thinking about [the brand] at the time of purchase and to not go to somebody else.”
Kath Pay, the founder of Holistic Email Marketing, agrees.
“We have to understand that the whole customer experience is absolutely crucial to generating loyalty. A large part of the focus should be on optimising the customer journey: the website, the checkout process, the email marketing, and the delivery. That’s how you’re going to create loyal customers,” she said.
Looking at Mailchimp’s data, a picture becomes clear about what customers are willing to put up with when buying from a brand.
For customers who consider themselves to be fandom-level committed to a brand, 42 per cent say that quality issues would make them switch. Meanwhile, more than a quarter said that substantial price increases would make them switch.
However, for inert and habitual customers – the groups key to unlocking sustainable growth – items being out of stock (39 and 44 per cent, respectively) and poor customer service (26 per cent for both categories) rank higher than in the fandom and dedicated categories (38 and 26 per cent; 25 and 21 per cent, respectively).
It is much easier to fix customer service issues than quality issues, price increases or even the amounts of stock on offer. This is something that brands, particularly with email marketing tools, can use to drive growth.
A staggering 58 per cent of inert consumers globally would prefer brands to keep in touch with them via email. Even for fandom-level consumers, email remains their chosen medium for brand communication (59 per cent).
Similarly, discounts are nearly as popular with fandom consumers (32 per cent) as they are with inert consumers (35 per cent). Deals are more popular with inert customers (32 per cent) compared to fandom customers (30 per cent), as are loyalty reward perks (32 per cent versus 27 per cent) and exclusive offers are on a par with both consumer groups (both 19 per cent).
The message, then, is clear. Not everyone needs to be your biggest fan. And that’s fine. Instead, marketers should focus on making engaging with their brands painless, sticking to effective email communications and giving customers intentional deals and rewards for buying and being loyal – not seeking to make them your best friend forever.
