How Digital Twin NFTs Create Authenticity for Consumer Brands
Web3 has finally allowed consumer brands to connect with their customers in a decentralized digital arena.
Brands can meet the growing demand for NFTs and web3 experiences, increase sales, and solidify customer loyalty. But they have to start today before customers find alternative solutions as web3 adoption grows.
Customers want web3 so they can enjoy digital assets, loyalty points, and communities. Then, they can take these benefits to a metaverse, marketplace, or decentralized app (DApp).
Thanks to NFT digital twins, the physical and digital world becomes one integrated experience.
We'll define how digital twins fit into your web3 strategy, how they work, and how you can start today.
From the top: Defining NFTs
An NFT or "non-fungible token" is a digital asset recorded on a public decentralized ledger called a blockchain. It can be owned and verified.
These tokens represent art pieces, virtual products, photography, and more. As a result, NFTs have established true digital ownership for the first time in history.
What’s more, brands can utilize NFTs to provide and sell ownership opportunities for customers.
What is an NFT digital twin?
NFT digital twins help connect a digital asset with a physical product.
For example, if someone buys a designer purse, they could receive the physical product as well as an NFT digital art version. They can wear the bag physically and share their NFT on social media and in a metaverse.
Brands like Nike have already jumped in.
With Cryptokicks, Nike's virtual sneakers, customers can embed themselves in the ultimate web3 experience. They can buy virtual sneakers valued by the popularity of the "skins" or designs.
Owners redeem physical shoes after purchasing the NFT. Much of it is still developing as innovation moves fast, but they want users to experience the shoes wherever possible (like how they partnered with EA Sports to incorporate the shoes into games).
In Nike’s case, The Verge reports, “[It] suggested that its virtual apparel could eventually be equipped in video games and ‘other immersive experiences.’” Soon, Nike could add their shoes to EA FC as players play soccer with their NFT merchandise.
None of this is possible without a blockchain connecting physical and digital assets. But as brands unite both realities, they can give customers a fully immersive brand and community experience.
Mojito provides the NFT infrastructure, marketplace, and digital twin technologies required for a successful web3 strategy.
Key NFT digital twin terms
Tokenization vs. digital twin
A token represents assets or utility on the blockchain. It can become non-fungible (NFT) when it is a unique (one-of-a-kind or serialized) item. While tokens help represent a digital twin, this doesn’t necessarily mean tokens will always have a physical component.
Digital twins are a combination of the two (digital and physical). Owners acquire the physical product and the NFT, which is then recorded on the blockchain.
Virtual worlds
Web3 brings virtual space opportunities where online users can interact with others and communities. Your brand can host their own virtual experience, and customers can also feature your digital products in other virtual worlds. Brands have already experimented with virtual experiences in games like Fortnite and Roblox.
In many ways, it's the virtual embodiment of the web3 customer experience. Users can play games, build spaces, and show off their digital assets. Thanks to blockchain technology, they can bring their items into any virtual world.
Digital twin NFTs connect physical and virtual realities so users can join different virtual spaces with their items from anywhere.
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Functionality of NFT digital twins
How exactly could an NFT digital twin process work for consumer brands?
Imagine you're ready for your NFT drop. Your customers know about it, and they're excited to jump in.
But this drop is extraordinary—it's for physical products.
When someone purchases your limited-edition goods, a platform like Mojito facilitates the experience. Customers scan the item at your store after purchase, connect it with their digital wallet, and mint the NFT.
Now, your customer owns the physical item and a unique digital asset tied to it.
Not only do they own these assets, but they also have a verified method to prove their ownership and authenticity. This creates a secure, valuable method that can decrease product forgeries and develop a line of provenance (ownership record).
NFC technology ("near-field communication") allows two devices to communicate within close range. It's used for contactless payments like Apple Pay. Digital twin tags allow customers to scan an item for quick product identification and information and find any appropriate metaverses.
The NFT can also extend the life of your product. If the day comes when the physical product no longer exists, the customer or owner can still enjoy their digital version.
Owners can trade these NFTs in a secondary marketplace or share their collectibles online or in physical settings.
These digital tokens can be used with token gating to access exclusive first-party and third-party experiences. For example, NFT holders can visit virtual spaces, exclusive brand website experiences, or in-person events.
NFT digital twin advantages for brands
Luxury brands are one of the best-positioned industries to utilize NFT digital twins. Customers can enjoy their high-quality goods, own a digital version, and experience it within digital settings.
Below are some advantages of adopting digital twin technology:
1. Enhancing product authentication and reducing counterfeits
As mentioned, brands have an immediate use case for NFT digital twins. Digital twins can help authenticate goods and lower counterfeits through the public blockchain record.
Not only does this provide more control in the market, but it also gives brands more assurance for customers. When they buy products on the secondary market, they can verify the good, establishing stronger trust in the brand name altogether—no matter where they get it or when it was sold.
2. Strengthening brand loyalty
NFT digital twins also help fuel community engagement and loyalty. Customers become part of an exclusive group when they own digital assets. They ride the passionate wave that comes with web3 innovations, with your brand at the center.
Brands can then create loyalty points and programs after the purchase. The more they get involved, the more they experience.
Through token gating (when only specific token owners get access), customers can join exclusive communities after their initial product purchase.
Additionally, twin owners could get an "airdrop"—a surprise NFT reward for current owners.
For example, imagine a customer owning a digital twin of a luxury car. Six months later, they’re surprised with a gold-colored version to add to their collection. Chances are, the minute they win it, they'll spread the news—and word of the luxury brand—everywhere.
Consumer engagement platforms like Mojito facilitate and build white-label marketplaces so that brands can create web3 brand loyalty with NFT digital twins and more.
3. Improving inventory management and reducing waste
Blockchain provides incredible opportunities for the supply chain. And NFT digital twins help track those physical assets.
As customers purchase a good and mint it on the chain, brands can track the data and improve strategies for inventory. If they see trending growth for a particular product, they can use chain activity to decide how to meet demand.
Better tracking also helps reduce waste and create more sustainable solutions. Brands get real-time data for their products, which gives them more time and control over production.
4. Risk assessment and product tests with digital twins
Brands can run various tests to increase their chances for success, especially with new designs and product launches.
Companies can start a limited sample release for a product. They can track purchases through first-party and third-party retailers in real time through onchain activity. As consumers mint the products, brands can measure how much engagement and excitement there is through onchain data and offchain sources like social platforms.
5. Ecommerce community for customers
Digital twin owners can easily trade their NFTs. Brands can place parameters on smart contracts to help define the process.
Typically, someone may choose to trade the product. With the NFT, there is provenance and authenticity to maintain the highest sale value.
The easy ecommerce options through web3 payments and the blockchain add more utility and value to your products.
6. Fast transactions
Digital twins incorporate smart contracts, so brands can set the terms for the purchase and make it immediate when customers pay with credit cards or cryptocurrency through a digital wallet.
Web3 cuts out the intermediaries through direct peer-to-peer public recording, saving time and unnecessary delays with processing.
7. Proof of attendance for events
Brands can hold exclusive events for customers. Customers can use the NFT they purchase as a digital twin for access (like scanning at the entrance).
This gives companies the most accurate, real-time data on who shows up. Also, brands can track customer engagement as they use their NFTs for discounts, perks, and daily purchases. Brands can use that data to make better decisions and assess the health of their products and community.
Why brands should leverage digital twin technology
Brands can benefit right now. However, digital twin technology will continue to grow as their target audiences fully adopt the web3 ecosystem.
The opportunity to lead the way is knocking on your door. Brands can’t afford to catch on too late. By acting now, they can define the luxury experience and provide community, digital ownership, privacy, and the experience customers want in the here and now.
The brands that jump on this moving train will grow and solidify their name, making it synonymous with innovation, high-class digital assets, community, and the potential for endless value.
Innovations are bound to pop up in the web3 space, and the brands that have built their foundation will be ready to incorporate new benefits and opportunities quickly. If brands don’t get started now, they’ll miss out on major sales opportunities (and someone else will step up to the plate instead).
Choosing Mojito for NFT digital twin collections
Brands need web3 partners to utilize the full power of web3, offer it securely, and create experiences that represent their companies well.
Third-party destinations and apps won't cut it. Brands need a platform built for them, offering an elegant experience with complete control.
Mojito, a Merchant of Record, and web3 super SaaS takes care of everything—from your marketplace and NFT collections to wallets and secure checkouts.
Not only do we facilitate web3 experiences, but we also implement a "Web 2.5" strategy. That means we offer the tools for web2-only users to easily use the apps and payment methods they’re comfortable with. This eases the customer transition—they’ll experience web3 in a familiar, encouraging way.
Every customer is happy, from the beginner to the web3-savvy user. This is key—we want the focus on you, your brand, and the web3 experience customers love.
It's an exciting time, and you can try it out right now.
Learn more, try our demo to make a splash in web3, and build the best community engagement experience online.
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Adopting the Avatar: the Core of Consumer Customization
A brief playbook for brands building for the digitally-native generation.
According to McKinsey, fashion companies are expected to double their investment in technology by 2023. This statistic was one of many released during 2021's digital assets boom, revealing an important truth: consumers — and especially Gen Z — care deeply about owning their digital identities. In the two years since "NFT Summer," we've learned a lot about the evolution of consumer habits in digitally-native spaces. These insights can help guide the future of how brands operate and consumers engage in virtual environments.
As a short follow-up to our last blog post on how web3 is driving a return to the internet's golden age of customization, we're sharing some additional thoughts on how you can build for the next wave of consumer adoption. This evolution is already showing signs of incredible value for forward-thinking brands like Gucci, Valentino, L'Oréal, Adidas, Nike, and many more.
Web3 Returns the Internet to the Golden Age of Customization
This is what it feels like when the future enables what so many users loved most about the past.
MySpace, StumbleUpon, GeoCities, LiveJournal, Tumblr — the early internet thrived on user-driven, customizable experiences that, while rudimentary in design, clunky in function, and altogether useless for major brands (i.e., not monetizable or targettable), offered humans some of the earliest opportunities for representing themselves online.
Two decades later, across multiple transformational eras of the internet (more on this below), what can we learn from these now archaic — and predominantly extinct — platforms? To start, let's set the stage of the golden age of the web and the subsequent erosion of online customization that followed.
These early platforms referenced above were among the first to offer users a customizable digital sandbox that lacked the restrictions — and intrusive, expensive, increasingly ineffective advertising practices — that is now commonplace across tech. These were platforms on which people created, not platforms on which products were sold.
FAANG companies undoubtedly standardized the internet user experience. These companies built easier ways for people to create and disseminate information while creating the ability for the world's biggest brands to reach these new, content-craving audiences through new experiences and digitally-native business models. However, FAANG-style companies have also contributed to the flattening of the once-loved, now-nostalgic digital aesthetic, eliminating (or narrowing) users' ability to find customization online.
Example: go to StumbleUpon right now, and you'll just get dragged between identical Pinterest boards.
Implementing Web3 CRM: Wallets Are the New Email Address
How to Implement Web3 CRM for Consumers
Your customer relationship management system is your business's beating heart. It’s how you nurture customers, track vital information, and make strategic decisions.
Now that web3 has entered the fold, traditional CRMs can be augmented. So the question is this: Is your brand prepared for it? And what does the future look like?
Brands can expand upon their CRM data with wallets and token interactions to build loyalty in the changing digital economy.
If your CRM is the heart, what happens if it can't support your entire customer base along with their actions and interests? Consumers are adopting web3, and you want to be there from the start.
And with increasingly more limitations on what consumer data brands can collect, store, and use, along with apps and systems that don't talk to each other, brands miss out on data everywhere.
You need web3 CRM capability to connect wallets and token usage to your web2 data to accurately paint a picture of your customers.
Enhancing your CRM with web3, you can track and reward engagement across virtually any physical or digital touchpoint and connect it all in one place to analyze and manage.
Onboarding customers to create web3 wallets is the first step to getting started. The good news is that, with Mojito, the process is seamless for new users. They can set it up and manage it with an email address. In many ways, wallets have become the new email address, offering more benefits for customers and providing brands with the holistic data and CRM capabilities they need.
Mojito's web3 CRM collects and pulls all these moving pieces from different parts of the web together to create one remarkably effortless customer experience.
In this article, we’ll compare the differences between a web2 and web3 CRM, the benefits of using a web3 CRM, and how Mojito might be the right fit.
What’s the difference between web2 and web3 CRM?
The CRMs most brands use do not facilitate the needs that web3 has—the biggest one being connecting offchain and onchain data and creating an integrated portrait of customers across all physical and online interactions.
Web2 CRMs provide essential data and communication tools to manage emails, SMS lists, social media followers, eCommerce buyers, event attendees, and more.
But it's difficult to connect every data source you'd like to trigger into your web2 CRM, let alone add new data sources in web3.
Brands can instead use a web3 solution to augment their CRM by connecting data sources in a different way that brings everything together. Companies can create the most connected, data-rich CRM they've ever had.
Brands require CRM solutions to capture the entire customer data picture across both the internet and real-life experiences. In turn, they create a community-driven customer base, increase sales, and use their CRM for better connections, communication, and data.
Wallets are the new email addresses
It's no secret that brands are losing data through their traditional channels. Big Tech companies are reigning in how much data you have access to, like Apple limiting cookies, and how brands now get an incomplete picture of their customers.
Additionally, as customers interact with web3, your brand is in the dark until you establish web3 CRM capability.
Web3 wallet addresses are unique identifiers for users on the blockchain. Their address is recorded when they purchase an asset or trigger activity on the chain. With Mojito, onchain and real-life interactions join together in one familiar experience.
As your customers interact with your brand and create or log in with their wallets, you can associate that with their customer profile.
When a customer logs in on your profile manager, they can add their web3 address, resulting in a holistic view of your customer.
This is a huge opportunity for first-party data. Your brand can get direct analytics from your activities through a verified, authentic process supported by onchain and offchain interactions.
Wallet addresses offer a more reliable and extensive way to gather data on customer behavior, help drive engagement, and make better growth decisions.
Cookies are the new NFTs
While traditional solutions suffer from increasingly limited access to cookies, web3 offers brands a bright and better future.
NFTs are non-fungible tokens. A non-fungible token is a digital asset recorded on a public decentralized ledger called a blockchain. It can be verifiably owned and impossible to forge.
NFTs make it possible for someone to digitally own an asset, which has changed the future of technology. But it also provides a unique opportunity for web3 CRMs, engagement, and data.
"NFTs: your ticket into a brand's action." — Michael Litman
Dynamic NFTs utilize live metadata to gather customer information and drive engagement.
Before solutions like Mojito's Dynamic NFT, non-fungible tokens didn't change. And why should they? People wanted a unique digital asset that would last forever and retain or grow in long-term value.
But as web3 matured, so did the perspective on NFTs.
What if the value of an NFT was change?
For example, artists began to experiment as they created NFTs. They would explain that the NFT would change and evolve. This in itself made it valuable and rose in popularity.
Brands would learn how to use it for data and supercharge engagement only a short time later. Traditionally, metadata remained static, but now Dynamic NFTs update metadata based on consumer behavior.
Brands can leverage metadata in many use cases:
Loyalty programs: Customers can join membership communities when they purchase a digital pass with Mojito's traditional, familiar checkout experience. Every time they interact with your brand across any first-party or third-party platform, like redeeming rewards or visiting an event, their token metadata is updated and fed back into your CRM.
Exclusive access: Brands can implement token gating, limiting access to your brand's NFT or memberships. Gate websites, apps, events, games, and more. When customers check in, their activity becomes trackable.
Enhanced membership and subscriptions: Dynamic NFTs allow brands to sell time-access passes with expiration dates. While owners can always retain the NFT, their subscription must be maintained for full access to benefits. Brands use the metadata to identify subscription holders and analyze their activity (while adding a new revenue stream).
Customer interactions: Brands use NFC-enabled spaces to connect customers with their Dynamic NFTs and events, physical checkout experiences, and more, intertwining digital and physical customer engagement. When someone redeems a reward by scanning a code or object, your brand can track that activity.
Web3 solutions like Mojito use webhooks to send data from third parties back into your CRM. Every time a user takes an action, Mojito sends that data to your CRM and vital tools. Your data is collected, verified, and authenticated in one place, on or offchain.
Mojito offers a cohesive relationship management infrastructure. You can leverage a complete picture of your customers through thousands of interactions involving physical triggers, third-party apps, web2 tools, and web3 activity. Customer actions across the web or in real life can be configured to work with your CRM.
You’ll be able to understand your customers better than ever and reward them for their engagement at a level that was impossible before.
Benefits of using a web3 CRM
You don’t have to worry about a bumpy or complex ride when you adopt a true web3 CRM.
You’ll have all the tools, resources, and tech stack integrations needed to make an enterprise solution for your customers that meets the standards of your brand.
Below are several benefits you can expect when you connect your web2 CRM to a web3 solution.
1. Bring web2 and web3 data together
Mojito facilitates web2.5, meaning instead of "switching" web experiences, brands and customers can use web2 and web3 with no learning curve or friction at all. All is encompassed in one familiar internet experience.
Users can pay with a credit card or crypto and interact with the online apps they've used all these years (as well as easily using web3 apps).
Mojito enables brands to collect and pull necessary data to understand their customers through all web iterations and experiences—all in one CRM solution.
They can use the full power of this web2 and web3 data for events, NFT collections, token gating (exclusive access based on ownership), and other digital ownership experiences.
2. Actionable data for better customer relationships
Every brand wants to improve its customer relationships. Still, as the internet becomes more fragmented, especially with the introduction of web3, improving service and keeping up with expectations will be much more difficult.
Web2 CRMs are not capable of putting all these actions and platforms together.
However, web3 CRM platforms improve customer relationships by incorporating off and onchain activities through a centralized database.
If brands adopt an enterprise web3 CRM, they can meet changing consumer needs and stand out in the market with better and improved relationships thanks to the tools and possibilities web3 offers.
3. Improved sales and marketing strategies
Now, more than ever, your sales, marketing, and customer service teams will have access to the most accurate and transparent data within multiple channels and communities, all in one place. Your CRM can include customer history, preferences, community management details, and more data points within web3.
You can use accurate and more abundant data to analyze customer behavior for improved decision-making. A suitable CRM can also help sales and marketing teams provide personalized messages based on their data, increasing conversions and other KPIs.
4. Next-level customer service
Not only does better, more current information help improve customer relationships but so does the level of service you can provide.
Your team can proactively resolve issues with real-time data collection (for example, tracking customer engagement and pinpointing areas of opportunity), which increases customer satisfaction.
Brands can go beyond positive experiences and create the best problem-solving processes and community-building opportunities for your customers.
5. Greater ROI potential
Web3 CRMs connect your stack, improving overall sales, marketing, and customer service and building long-term loyalty.
These critical benefits offer bigger ROI potential and future growth. By analyzing blockchain activity, brands can track the popularity of certain products, use blockchain-verified data to track inventory and invest in the areas customers are most interested in.
Web3 CRMs also open new revenue streams, like selling digital assets with NFTs. Brands can even test the reception of new physical products by selling limited sample releases with “NFT digital twins” (when a physical good comes with an NFT representation at purchase).
6. Strategic positioning
You can better position your company for the economic shift to the decentralized web with a web3 CRM.
For example, Mojito's web3 CRM also includes "web2.5" features for the transition.
Some customers won’t know how to navigate web3—they’ll want simplicity. Others will want every tool available to them. Web2.5 serves everyone. New users can pay with a credit card and have a user-friendly experience. At the same time, web3 adopters can take full advantage of innovation and opportunities with cryptocurrency payments and more.
Brands will serve web2 and web3 users for the internet's evolution, and they'll have a robust CRM foundation for the new economy.
