Personalization is a key part of the human experience. We're constantly finding ways to express ourselves and make our surroundings unique to us. And while this tendency manifests in many forms, new technology has presented marketers with exciting opportunities to connect with customers by capitalizing on our innate desire for personalization.
Marketing Personalization Range
Personalization can mean many things in everyday life, and the same is true in the marketing world. Broadly speaking, marketing personalization refers to the tailoring of messages or offers to individuals based on something that's unique to them. That can be something as broad as their interests on Facebook or something as specific as their individual browsing history. There are ways to personalize your marketing message, and while the thought of so many options could be overwhelming, marketers can decide what approach they want to take by going back to basics.
Starting Off
A visual representation of your ideal customer's journey from brand exposure to conversion can be a great starting point if you're figuring out how marketing personalization can work for you. Take a look at the core demographics for your ideal customer. Where does your typical buyer come from? What are they interested in? Using that as a jumping-off point, try thinking about how you can make your message personal to them.
With that in mind, consider what appeals to this person and how a marketing message could be tailored to them. But to achieve the greatest degree of success, you must go further.
Data Matters
Once you've nailed down what your ideal customer looks like, marketing professionals can identify personalization options using technology, tracking things such as the number of visits to your company's landing page, time spent browsing various pages on Facebook or even visits to a competitor's site. This helps deliver highly relevant ads to potential customers.
Using an example of a coffee shop, if you find that a customer is spending time looking at posts related to a new specialty coffee drink, combine your own knowledge of your ideal customer with data provided by a marketing professional about a customer's affinity for limited-time drinks. Then, you can craft a personalized, sponsored post on Facebook that encourages this hypothetical customer to come to your location and try a similar frozen coffee drink.
Personalization Helps
Figuring out your ideal customer and mining for data with a marketing expert is an investment in both time and resources, but it's an investment that's well worth it. Here's why.
According to Adobe, 94 percent of customer insight experts and marketing professionals felt that personalization is important for meeting marketing objectives — and for good reason. Another report from Infosys explained that 59 percent of customers felt that personalization influences their shopping decisions.
Personalization isn't just a current trend, it's the wave of the future, and the faster you can get on board, the more successful your campaigns will be. Furthermore, looking to the future, Gartner predicted that by 2020, smart personalization engines will help digital businesses increase profits by 15 percent.
Continue Adapting
While crafting an initial personalization strategy takes some work, the process must continue far beyond the initial research and creation process if you want to get maximum value from your investment. Once you have a good idea of where you want to go with marketing personalization, you'll need to set up a number of split tests to ensure that your strategy is heading in the right direction and you can evaluate your results effectively. If you find that one personalization strategy works better than another, it'll be time to recalibrate.
Personalization may be the driving force behind much of the innovation today in the marketing world, but it's not widespread. Janrain reported that while the majority of brands have at least a basic personalization in place, few are able to bring their broad personalization goals to life with their current capabilities. With this in mind, it's easy to see why choosing the right partner with the technical expertise to guide you through this complex process is so important.
