Personalized Marketing: Take It Personally

Consumers are getting pickier day-by-day, but personalized marketing could make all the difference. They are a lot more sophisticated and expect more than ever. And the reason for this is simple—supply. Today more businesses sell the same or similar products at similar prices. However, research shows that consumers get annoyed with their shopping experience. Moreover, they want brands to understand them better and recommend rather than use a one size fits all approach.

Here are some stats based on some survey results:

71% of consumers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal. – Segment
70% of millennials get annoyed with brands sending irrelevant emails. – SmarterHQ
91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that give offers and recommendations. – Accenture
80% of consumers are more likely to purchase a brand that offers personalized experiences. – Epsilon

So, what can organizations do to provide a more satisfying experience to consumers? The answer is simple, but not always easy. Personalization. Personalization uses consumer data to your advantage. It shows your visitors individualized deals and recommendations for items. And it offers other content based on past transactions, data, demographics.

Personalized Marketing

Personalized marketing is the technique of building direct contact with your customers using consumer data. Often known as ‘1-to-1 marketing’ because it targets specific consumer needs. Mass marketing caters to a large audience or broad demographics. Alternatively, personalized marketing focuses on the individual customer.

Forbes says that 2020 is the year of personalized marketing. Personalized marketing is all about creating a unique experience for an individual. Marketers who focus on creating experiences for users now go a level deeper and target individual customers. Personalized marketing is a strategy that shows your visitors different landing pages. But, it also shows customized ads and emails. All of it depends on how and where they interact with your company.

Feeling left out? Think you missed the bus? It is never too late. There are multiple ways to personalize, and some are more obvious than others. The technological advancement and how data gets collected and analyzed make personalization easy.

3 Steps to Get You Started on Your Personalization Journey.

The first thing you need to understand is that you need to access the correct data. Furthermore, you have to spend time analyzing it. So use technology to gather all the data information you need. In other words, data needs to become a diplomat at your executive table. Further, you have to study your clients. Meaning, you need to understand what they want, how they behave, and so on. Once you collect and analyze data, you could then start profiling and segmenting users. Remember, your users vary. They buy different things, and their behaviors differ. So, your strategies should be different too.

Emails are probably the easiest place to start your personalization journey. To do email personalization right, marketers must think beyond just addressing customers with their first name. Personalization does not mean sending a unique message to every person. It means using data to inform what you send to whom. One-way to do it is to customize emails segmenting consumers into lists. Those groups depend on buyers’ profiles, location, past transactions, or history of browsing. But segmentation is only the first step in personalization. True email personalization should include birthday offers, interest-based offerings, product recommendations, and unique offers based on the customers’ search and browsing history.

The next step towards personalization is to offer a customer-specific experience on your website and mobile app. Besides customizing single elements of an experience, the contents and layout of a whole page can get personalized to match visitors’ needs and intentions. One of the critical success factors is to engage with the customer when they are in the shopping mode.

Its a Journey and Ongoing Effort

Based on their browsing behavior, offering help, or recommending a product while the customer is browsing your website can help drive them to make purchases. Think of it the same way if the customer was in your shop physically. What are the chances that the customer would buy a product when he is in the shop compared to when he has gone back home?

Personalized marketing is a journey and an ongoing effort, which could start with something as simple as a blog to everything you do to make customers feel special. Consumer behaviors change frequently, and you need to keep analyzing the data you get. But the good news is that once you make a start and speak to your customers on a one on one basis. In turn, their loyalty to you starts to build, and a relationship has the potential to flourish. Our world today is all about the experiences we have and the connections we make along the way. So, if you can achieve even some of that in your day to day interactions, you are on your way toward personalization.

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