Here’s our take on simplifying a complicated topic: marketing personalization
Basic definition of personalization:
Using data you have about your audience to deliver tailored marketing.
Question: Why bother with marketing personalization?
Answer 1: Because customers like it. When experiences aren’t personalized, customers find this annoying. Think about the last time you got spam or a really irrelevant ad. Of course, things can go too far in the other direction too, when an experience starts to get a little too personalized. People don’t like being stalked. It’s unnerving. Don’t market like a robot or a stalker, and you’ll hit the sweet spot of brilliant personalization.
Proof that customers like personalization:
74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized. Source: Infosys
Over 78% of consumers will only engage in offers if they have been personalized to their previous engagements with your brand. Source: Marketo
Answer 2: They’ll convert more if you do it right. For the reasons mentioned above.
Proof that customers convert more in response to personalization:
Personalized emails improve conversion rates by 10%. Source: Aberdeen
Personalized website experiences can drive 19% increase in sales. Source: Monetate/eConsultancy
40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize their shopping experience across channels. Source: MyBuys
Question: What kind of data is needed?
Answer: As much customer data as you can get. Behavioral, like what kind of actions they’ve taken on your site or what pages they visited. Demographic, like their location, age, gender. First party: the data you collect. Third party: the data you buy from vendors who know an awful lot about who people are and what they do.
Question: Are customers ok with us using all of that data?
Answer: Yes and no. They want the benefits of personalization, like custom offers and relevant content, but they value their privacy too. They don’t like giving information away and they really don’t like the idea that a profile of data is being collected about them. There’s an interesting summary of a Pew Research Center survey about online privacy as well as an explanation of the contradiction of wanting more personalization and more privacy, over in Marketing Land.
Question: What’s the most important thing to do right?
Answer: Be relevant (not creepy). Strike the right balance in leveraging your data and delivering personalization. The worst sin a marketer can commit is to be irrelevant and annoying. Personalization should help your brand to be very relevant, speaking to people in their own language and offering them just the right solution. The second worst sin a marketer can commit is to be creepy. That’s when your messaging goes from feeling personalized to feeling intrusive. The best personalization is the kind that practically goes unnoticed – because it delivers just the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
Question: What has to be in place for personalized marketing to work?
Answer: Clean, connected data, lots of customized creative and automated delivery of the creative to the audience.
Want to learn more about that? Check out our next personalization post.
