We found this interesting survey on brand trust recently.

Here is an edited version:

Brand perception and trust has a major impact on digital campaigns. Recently, Intuit Mailchimp released the new international report “Brand Trust in the Age of Information Overload,” a critical set of marketing insights based on the results of a global survey that explores consumer connection, convenience, and communication preferences in today's digital-first ecosystem.

The release shares survey results from 10,000 consumers in Australia, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK, drawing from interviews conducted online by Sapio Research on behalf of Intuit Mailchimp. 
The survey found that brand perception and trust can have a significant impact on campaigns. Most consumers decide whether to read or click links in an email based on who it’s from (31%) versus preview text (18%) or subject line (18%). And even for those lucky loved brands, there’s a limit to consumers’ attention: Six emails per week is the average number respondents say they will receive from a brand before unsubscribing.

However, sensitivity to individual preferences can help brands retain their subscribers. More than half (52%) of consumers appreciate thoughtful marketing initiatives such as opt-out campaigns around Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. And when it comes to engaging with customers via email specifically, personalised content is most popular (56%), followed by limited and exclusive collections (42%).

In fact, consumer demand for personalised marketing emerged as a major theme in the findings, with nearly half (45%) of consumers believing that the future of personalisation will mean they won’t need to search for products and services—rather, that their desired purchases will be coming to them. Consumers broadly indicated they are happy to receive targeted brand recommendations based on personal data and behaviour, including shopping in person (59%), via search engine (57%) or on a website (57%). But as personalisation becomes more important for marketers, so does data—and, in turn, consumer trust around how and by whom that data is leveraged.

48% of Kiwis gain confidence from excellent customer service.  But consumer confidence hinges on different factors depending on which population you poll: a proven track record of excellent customer service, for example, is key in Australia (45%) and New Zealand (48%) but is less important in the Netherlands (28%) and Sweden (23%).

There remains a strong affinity for the human touch. Nearly half (48%) of consumers crave entirely human-made brand communications, with higher demand from those aged 55-to-64 (50%) and over-65s (53%). In the vital work of personalising brand communications for large audiences, these findings suggest marketers may benefit most from a new kind of balancing act: embracing the empathy, creativity, and instinct of a human perspective and deploying it with the speed, precision, and scale AI can make possible.

All in all, marketers have both a challenge and an opportunity ahead of them as they seek to build trust with today's consumers. Appealing to sceptical buyers may require more nuance than the one-size-fits-all campaigns of the past. But once a customer connects with a brand's identity on a deeper level, that trust can unlock higher engagement, more purchasing confidence, and a lasting connection.

You can access the entire Australia/New Zealand data here.

Source: Mail Chimp, 11 August 2024