Personalization as a Marketing Strategy

Despite the increasing change in global marketing, marketing conversion is still very low. 95% of your campaign visitors are probably not converting into sales. This is not because your marketing sucks or your visitors are unqualified. It is simply because your message is not adapted to the individual needs of all your visitors. Your message does not fit all your visitors. This is where personalization comes in, through personalization, you are able to meet the unique and individual needs of each visitor with the hope of converting them into a customer.

Think of Amazon, when you visit their website, they know your patterns and what you typically buy so they show you what they think you would like to see in order to boost their conversions. And it works very well. When you log into Amazon, I see tons of books because that is what I buy the most often. I never buy cat food so I’ll never see ads for cat food.

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According to McKinsey, personalization can reduce your acquisition costs by as much as 50 percent, lift revenues by 5-15 percent and increase your marketing spend efficiency by 10-30 percent. And the addition of machine learning and AI will enable “smart personalization engines” to increase revenues another 15 percent by 2020, according to Gartner.

Let’s be clear with what personalization is not. Personalization and segmentation are often used interchangeably, and are arguably similar in lots of ways. They both use information gathered about the marketing prospect to customize their experience.  While segmentation attempts to bucket prospects into similar aggregate groups, personalization represents the ultimate goal of customizing the person’s experience to their individual needs and desires based on in-depth information and insights about them.

Personalization begins with understanding your customer but it does not end there. Here are 3 ways to use personalization effectively as a marketing strategy this year.

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1. Keep Data, Read Data, Breath Data. It is impossible to personalize an experience you have no insight into. Personalization requires keeping data on your prospects or customers. Be obsessed about keeping progressive data on your customers/prospects in order to improve their personalization experience. Location, demographics and other psychographic details can provide opportunities for personalized experiences with customers.
2. Segmentation is key. Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market of potential customers into groups, or segments, based on different characteristics. The segments created are composed of consumers who will respond similarly to marketing strategies and who share traits such as similar interests, needs, or locations. Segmenting allows you to slice and dice your lists based on the data you’ve collected so that each group gets messaging that is relevant to them. It is difficult to personalize an experience to a customer you have not segmented well enough. Personalized triggered messaging, such as emails, are “triggered” when a visitor takes a specific action on your website or other content. They are personalized, using the information you’ve already collected about them. And they are sent in near real-time, so they are relevant when your visitor is already engaged.
3. Invest in the right technology. The internet is replete with all kinds of marketing tools that augment the personalization process from website plugins to customer relationship management apps. Given the desire intimacy and personal touch brands would like to give their customers/prospects, it is important for them to invest in the right technology to deliver these.

If you are reading this, and you need assistance in creating engaging, informing, thought provoking marketing tools for your brand, Talk to Us!

Cherubim Mawuli Amenyedor

Account Manager, Digital Media & Innovations

Global Media Alliance

Linked In: Cherubim Mawuli Amenyedor