Can personalization enhance the customer experience? Ask anyone that’s ever been marketed to, and they will unequivocally say “Yes!” As marketers, we’ve all heard the buzz around one-to-one marketing and the need to have “human conversations” with people. But it’s not always easy to take these insights and immediately shift your strategy. How do you add a human touch to your communications and provide your customers with an engaging experience? The answer is personalization.
Regardless of whether it is a business product or a consumer product, we, as customers, expect companies to know who we are and what our interests are, and to create messages accordingly. When done correctly, personalized content can elevate your brand in the eye of the customer and inspire loyalty. Modern technology has provided us with data and visibility into who our ideal customers are and how they are engaging with our brand.
Gone are the days when “Dear [First Name]” gave the illusion that the company was sending their customers something personal. Today we need to do more than add the customer’s first name at the beginning of an email.
So how else can you personalize your communications and content? There are two key areas from which you can draw insight to incorporate personalization: customer profile attributes and engagement activity.
When it comes to profile based personalization for business customers, you can create messages specific to attributes such as:
- Job role or title
- Industry
- Company size
- Whether they are an existing customer or not
For those that market to consumers, you can personalize on attributes such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Average income
- Marital status
- Geography
With engagement based personalization, there are so many possibilities. You can personalize your content and communications based on activities like:
- The web pages they look at
- The content they download
- The links they click
- The purchases they make
- The events they attend
- The time they spend on particular pages
- The ads they respond to
With both profile and engagement you can also personalize the send frequency, the content they see, and the channel they engage with.
The data available to you is powerful and right at your fingertips, so start taking action on it today. Personalization can be really exciting, so get creative and have fun with it! Remember the time and effort it takes to create a personalization strategy will translate to increased relevancy, more engagement, a great customer experience, and ultimately more purchases.
If you are just getting started with personalization, or want to develop it further, request to have the Personalizing Campaigns Facilitated Discussion with a marketing advisor today! Also, see our full menu of Facilitated Discussions that are available at no cost to Marketing Cloud customers.
