All You Need to Know About Marketing Personalization
Data has changed the marketing game completely. Now companies can not expect to serve everyone the same ad: it is all about personal recommendations and tailored messages to cater to every user out there. Marketing has become more than just making clients buy the product. It is about building long-lasting, trusting relationships with customers, making their decision-making easier, solving their problems rather than yours, very soft preparation for sales, and earning their trust so that they come back and, hopefully, with friends.
It is not just that companies do it to attract more clients. We have entered a phase where users demand personalization: 72% of customers engage only with messages tailored to their specific preferences. So even if you did not want to dive deep into personalization, you need to do it now to survive the cut-throat competition and remain relevant. So if you want to build meaningful relationships with clients and respect the needs of a modern user, we have got you.
So, what is personalized content? What are the main personalized marketing trends you need to be aware of? How to implement personalized marketing into your product promotion? Find the answers to these questions and lots of other useful information in our article!
What is personalization in business?
Personalization is a marketing strategy that considers the user’s personal preferences and interests and delivers them a customer journey based on it. People are so tired of a constant flow of useless information, and they just want to see what matters. Marketers are like good friends who gently eliminate the background noises and just tell the interesting parts.
Marketing personalization includes emails, product and content recommendations, and targeted ads related to customer searches or previous purchases. You may have experienced it yourself multiple times, such as Spotify algorithms, Amazon recommendations, coupons on Facebook for stores you wanted to buy from, or content pieces about your travel destination from airlines.
Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature offers personalized content chosen based on user’s preferences Source: Medium
Types of personalization
Personalization comes in different forms, and the approach you choose depends on your preference and abilities. There are such types as:
- Prescriptive personalization — you put customers in different groups and deliver content and recommendations based on their type. Marketers do everything manually.
- Recommender engines — marketers set up automated personalization tools.
- Collaborative filtering — personalization tools define what other customers with similar tastes bought or looked at.
- Content filtering — serves content and recommendations based on customer behavior patterns.
- Hybrid systems —combining a couple of personalization tips.
- Real-time personalization — personalization tools quickly scan an individual’s recent browser history while the page is loading and serve content based on their latest interests.
Business benefits of personalization
Gathering and analyzing the data seems like a lot of work, though. However, personalization benefits dramatically surpass the effort it takes.
More conversions with less effort
Personalization is a great way to work smarter, not harder. You do not need to reach thousands of people to get 10 customers, you can reach hundreds and get even better results since the message is personalized and, consequently, more appealing.
Better customer satisfaction
You do not throw useless emails at people but provide information that is interesting and valuable for them. As a result, they will wait for your emails to learn something new rather than unsubscribe from your newsletter immediately.
Improved customer loyalty
Personalization makes customers feel like they are special and that they are treated as actual human beings rather than bags with money. Show a little bit of interest in customers and they will love you back.
A better understanding of your audience
With all the data that you have gathered, you can learn more about customers’ habits, patterns, preferences, interests and tailor your products and sales funnel for them. For example, you may discover that customers who are interested in bikes also like hiking and add a new product line to close their needs in one store.
Increased time on the website
If people get only relevant product and content recommendations, they are more likely to stay and they will genuinely want to explore more. So you will have more time to convince them to buy from you and boost your SEO as well.
As you can see, personalization provides numerous business benefits. However, it takes some skills and knowledge to personalize in the way that matters. Thus, let’s discover all the details you need to know in order to reap all the benefits of marketing personalization.
Elements that can be personalized
We have come to the point where you can personalize pretty much everything. Personalization marketing trends include customizing website colors for every user based on what their favorite ones are. There is also hyper-personalized marketing that includes custom videos: address customers by name and offer different scenarios without even asking them any information first.
However, these are expert, borderline extreme examples. More traditionally, businesses personalize.
Product recommendations
Offer specific items based on what they searched and liked before. For example, recommend makeup brushes and cosmetics to those who just watched YouTube videos with make-up tutorials. You can also hide products that are not available in that area or send messages if the product that the customer was looking for is back in stock.
The image down below illustrates the personalized marketing achieved by the collaborative filtering approach during which the recommendation engine displays the products purchased by other customers with similar interests.
Product recommendation is one of the elements that can be personalized. Source: Barilliance
Website content
Website content personalization means serving different kinds of content to different users based on their individual interests.
For example, if a visitor browses your eCommerce store for the first time looking for a specific product category, you can display the article about top products in this niche. For those visitors, who’ve spent most of their time reviewing 2-3 particular products you can display the comparison article on those products.
One of the best examples of website content personalization is Netflix. The streaming service thoroughly analyzes your previous search history, the behavior of users with similar preferences, and your ratings for different shows and offers, and then selects top picks for you.
Netflix offering users personalized content from their movie inventory. Source: Addthis
Sales and discounts
Have your customers been looking at the product but dipped because of its price? Offer them a personal discount. Down below you can see the example of a personalized discount for products that a customer was interested in.
Sales and discounts are some of the elements that can be personalized. Source: Nosto
Email newsletter
82% report that email personalization increases an open rate. There are lots of elements to personalize in email marketing:
- Include the customer’s name into the greeting to establish a personal connection
- Personalize the “sent from” field so the letter comes not from the auto sending tool but from a real person
- Send newsletters with products similar to those already reviewed by customs
- Personalized content based on their purchasing journey stage. If a customer abandoned the cart, offer them a discount on the chosen product or free shipping
Adidas did a great job in one of its email marketing campaigns. They sent newsletters with dynamic content that changes according to a recipient’s gender. So the letter displayed menswear to males and womenswear to women.
Adidas newsletter with dynamic content. Source: Campaignmonitor
Social media marketing
Facebook or Instagram ads are often used for reminding potential leads about their interest in certain products and motivating them to complete a purchase. You can
retarget customers that have already interacted with your website in a certain way by showing them personalized ads on social media.
Here’s a retargeting Facebook ad by Expedia that is aimed at people who’ve been reviewing rooms in a certain hotel but didn’t complete the purchase.
Personalized retargeting Facebook ad by Expedia. Source: Socialpilot
How to create your marketing personalization strategy?
It all sounds both wonderful and extremely complicated, doesn’t it? Well, there is not a lot of complexity here, to be honest. You just need to know where to start.
- Collect data. It is the core of your personalization strategy that you will be working with all the time. You can use customer surveys, website analytics, or third-party data companies. However, make sure that it is a reliable one if you opt for the third option.
- Create customer profiles. Based on the available data, you will be able to group customers into different segments, with similar behaviors, interests, and preferences. It will help you to understand what content each group might need, how they prefer to be contacted, and what tone of voice they find the most agreeable.
- Create content to most needs. Engines will hit just the right spot automatically but what should they serve if you have content for one customer profile or one particular stage of the customer journey? Personalization will need some preparation in the content area. Otherwise, users might get irrelevant pieces because it is all you have.
If you have all three, you can choose your personalization tools and get started!
What data do you need for personalization?
So personalization is more about the user so you will need to understand them rather than your ROI and revenues. You will have to learn about their location, age, gender, income levels, occupation, interests and hobbies, behaviors, their preferred contact channels and social media platforms, and what other products they are mostly looking for. In other words — use segmentation. Follow our updates to learn more about this marketing tactic!
What tools should you use for automated marketing personalization?
If you want the machines to do the work (which is a smarter decision), there are a variety of eCommerce personalization tools available for all types of budgets and businesses. Our top picks include:
- HubSpot — works for all sizes of businesses, has a great feature set and knowledge base
- MailChimp — works for small and mid-sized companies, is fitting for email personalization only
- Marketo — works for mid-sized companies and enterprises, a trusted tool from Adobe
- Google Optimize 360 — works for all kinds of businesses, has the most data and, consequently, more accurate personalization
- Segment — works for B2B businesses, analyzes customer interactions
- 13Chats — works for small- and mid-sized businesses allowing them to personalize their chatbot marketing campaign
Personalize with 13Chats!
13Chats gives you multiple options to tailor your offers to your audience’s needs. Not sure how? Ask us in a demo!
How to Measure Your Personalization Marketing Success?
Measuring your success and continuously adapting are major signs of a healthy business. It is not enough to just launch your personalization strategy once and never look at it again. You should see how well you perform and change something in case your predictions or data were not accurate. Moreover, customers change and their preferences as well. You can also gain new customers and, consequently, new buyer profiles. As a result, your personalization strategy may become irrelevant within a year or two.
So how do you measure your success and notice things that need a change? Use these metrics:
- Revenue per visit – how much money customers spend per visit. If the rate goes up, your personalization is working
- Conversion rate – personalized campaigns usually engage more customers. If your numbers did not go up or drop, this is not the best sign
- Customer lifetime value – personalization is about building long-lasting relationships. If your customer lifetime value did not go up, there may be something wrong
- Time spent on the website – personalized content and recommendation is engaging. If the time spent on the website decreased, you may offer irrelevant content
- Lead costs – personalization is about reaching fewer customers but making more customers. If it is still too costly to attract a lead, it may be an indication that something went wrong
Conclusion
Personalization nowadays is a must rather than an option. It is not that hard to set up but it drives great results like better relationships with customers, more conversions with less effort, and better customer understanding. Just make sure that you collect all the needed data on customers in order to serve them personalized content.
13Chats is a great tool that helps businesses create personalized chatbots and pop-ups. Show your website visitors that you deeply understand their needs in order to turn them into loyal customers and drive sales.
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