Meet the New Masters: The Changing Face of Digital Engagement in the UK

Quadrangle’s latest webinar, Meet the New Masters: The Changing Face of Digital Engagement in the UK, explored how customers can be segmented into four distinct digital engagement cohorts, each with distinct opportunities and implications for brands.

The session, hosted by Alison Camps, Chairman at Quadrangle, featured contributions from:

• Ben Skelton, CEO at Quadrangle
• Simon Brady, Head of Marketing, Insight & Brand Experience at London Gatwick Airport
• Lindsay Forster, CEO at Shepper, data collection agency

Mapping the modern digital customer

Society is now in the ‘third wave’ of digital. Whilst the first two waves focussed on hardware and software build, the current era of ‘internet ubiquity’ means customers are now more comfortable with digital and the role it can play in their lives.

Or does it?

Quadrangle’s eight year research study into customers’ digital attitudes and behaviours aims to answer this question; to highlight the shifts that are happening over time, and spell out what this means for brands.

The project, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, identified four key determinants of customers’ different digital engagement preferences: mobile dependency; attitudes to technology; willingness to share data with brands; and perceived ‘power’ in customers’ relationships with brands. Depending on where you ‘sit’ on each dimension (‘high’ or ‘low’) puts you into one of 16 ‘buckets’.

By looking across these 16 typologies – and to make the insight more accessible – Quadrangle grouped them into 4 ‘post-digital’ customer cohorts:

• Digital Masters
• Mobile Masters
• Power Masters
• Digital Doubters

These cohorts are very helpful for brands trying to understand how best to deepen their relationships with customers and reach prospects. The classification helps them develop better empathy with audiences, and gives them important insights into how their propositions and communications will be received.

Delving deeper into the cohorts

Back in 2016, the Digital Doubters were the largest group in the UK population, emphasising the gulf in understanding that existed then between brands and customers…no wonder digital communications and propositions fell flat.

But fast forward to 2024 and Digital Doubters are now just 17% of the population. This male-dominated group has the lowest expectation of brands’ ability to deliver digital excellence, and typically show a reluctance to share data or engage with new technological trends.

The shifts in digital engagement over the past eight years have put the Digital Masters at the top of the pile, now representing 43% of the country. This cohort embraces technology enthusiastically, having integrated it into their daily lives. But despite it being the youngest-skewing cohort, brands can’t take it as gospel that all Gen Z and Millennials fall into this category. Case-in-point, one-in-eight Gen Z-ers in fact remain Digital Doubters.

Intriguingly, it’s the Mobile Masters who are by some way the fastest growing cohort, having grown from 15% in 2016 to 27% in 2024. But as Ben pointed out, “they’re not automatically a soft target; just because they’ve got their mobile in their hand doesn’t mean they want to engage with a brand, either through mobile or digital.”

Finally we have the Power Masters. Not just the oldest cohort (which may explain their lower reliance on mobile), at 13% they are also the smallest. They are similar to the Digital Masters in as much as they share high levels of perceived power in their relationships with brands. This group has actually remained static across the eight year period, aside from a small spike in 2019; whilst they started to adopt more digital behaviours, they did so grudgingly.

So why does understanding these cohorts matter? As Alison Camps put it, “understanding the tensions and subtleties between different digital preferences enable brands to build their Customer Emotional Intelligence, never mind AI. It’s all about having better empathy with the different customer mindsets and thinking in more nuanced ways about creating customer strategies.”

To aid in this process, Quadrangle has identified five trends to consider during the strategising process:

• Levelling up: the emergence of digital customer class system
• The hype myth: the tensions between ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ preferences’
• Harder than you think: the challenge of creating brand opportunity from mobile dependency
• Friend or foe: generational differences in attitudes towards technology
• Era of uncertainty: how brands still hold the key to building trust

Practise what you preach

The second half of the webinar saw our expert panellists elaborate on how their brands engage with customers and the role that data plays in influencing their strategies.

Simon Brady explained that London Gatwick Airport, despite lacking a direct relationship with customers, has to strive to deliver to all customers – regardless of where they are in terms of digital adoption.

“There’s still a sizable cohort that are Digital Doubters, and as an airport we can never forget that. Our repositioning work with Quadrangle found that everybody has a unique expectation, so our challenge was to deliver a tailored experience to a varied audience. The key to unlocking these additional propositions requires customers sharing a lot of data.”

Lindsay Forster then spoke on the ramifications of Quadrangle’s research for retailers and financial services brands in particular – specifically, the impact on omnichannel experiences.

“[They] need to get much better at understanding the end-to-end journey and finding innovative ways to start measuring and driving insights on what happens the moment you leave the digital world.”

With loyalty still very much the end-game for brands, both panellists touched on the importance of trust and the opportunities that digital creates for deepening relationships. Using London Gatwick as a case in point, Simon agreed that data is pivotal to delivering the desired personalisation – but highlighted that this manifests in different ways.

“This can be at a basic level, such as a family wanting to know where the baby changing facilities are when using digital wayfinding. At the extreme end, it could be wanting to share biometrics to accelerate their journey through painful touchpoints. But that’s very high order data, which requires ultimate trust. In order to convince them, you have to deliver an elevated customer experience.”

Lindsay argued that customers’ relationships with brands aren’t hugely different to their relationships with people – in both cases, trust is earned over time.

“I think there are new hygiene factors that customers expect brands to achieve just to get on the cart of consideration, and therefore loyalty and trust. Transparency is absolutely key; people value honesty. And if you’re asking customers to share data which is personal and sensitive, they want to know a) you’re going to look after it and b) you’re going to use it for mutual benefit.”

Key takeaways

At the end of the day, whatever the mix of Digital Masters, Mobile Masters, Power Masters or Digital Doubters in your base, if you want to connect effectively with customers, you have to be capable of engaging with them on their terms, and of delivering value that resonates with them on a personal level.

That starts by abandoning a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and thinking ‘and, not or’. It’s the brands that bring Customer Emotional Intelligence to their strategies that will be in the best position to create, develop and keep profitable relationships with different types of digital customers.

Want to learn more about how your brand can successfully embrace these post-digital customer cohorts? Get in touch with us at alison.camps@quadrangle.com – the Quadrangle team would love to discuss the evolving digital landscape and what it means for you. Alternatively, you can watch the webinar in full below.