For today’s marketers, personalization is no longer a fancy buzzword. It’s a necessary part of a robust marketing strategy.
Consumers expect custom, one-to-one content – regardless of the device or platform they choose to use at a particular moment. They’re looking to feel a real relationship with the companies and brands they engage with and they aren’t satisfied feeling like just a number. They demand to be treated as a valued individual.
Just how important is personalization? According to a report from Econsultancy, 48% of marketers strongly agree that their growth depends on personalizing the consumer’s experience. On the other hand, only 35% of consumers say that communications from their companies are usually relevant. Therefore, opportunities are plentiful for those marketers looking to bridge that gap.
The best marketers are constantly searching for new and innovative ways to engage their audiences, which ultimately results in conversions and expansions to their bottom lines. Personalization provides not only a way for marketers to improve the overall consumer journey and experience, but to truly add value in the process. All the while these strategies are building the ever-important strong, lasting relationships with each customer.
This personal touch must remain at the heart of almost everything marketers do. As readers of this blog know, consumer experience is considered the next new market differentiator. For a brand to provide the best of the best experience, customized engagement needs to be a key player in the game plan. While personalizing emails is still one of the strongest strategies, there are quite a few others. To start, here are three ways personalized marketing efforts can improve the overall customer journey.
1. Personalized Marketing Based on Geography and Behavioral Data
The digital world is bringing people closer and closer each day. That provides an extremely large amount of data that marketers can analyze and utilize. By simply keeping each individual network at the forefront when developing tactics, marketers can easily reach targeted audience groups. By segmenting according to time zones or by individual behaviors, marketers can better provide content at a time when consumers are going to see it.
For example, one consumer may continuously check email on the train en route to work in the morning; another may check social media on the way home, as a way to unwind. By tracking this data, marketers can tailor their efforts to the time zone and geographical location of each recipient. They then can create and issue more relevant material. That will in turn direct content through a more personalized approach, allowing marketers to show they are not only paying attention to their customers’ locations and preferences, but are also willing to work to improve the consumer experience.
2. Providing Personalized Product Recommendations
Finding ways to further personalize content can be challenging. However, new marketing technology tracks what and when the consumer is purchasing, as well as where they are browsing. These statistics can allow marketers to determine, based on historical data, what products are the most relevant to the consumer, as well as indicate which products, services, or other offers or information will bring about a higher conversion rate.
More importantly, when a consumer opens an email or a social media account and is served with information that resonates with them, they feel increasingly connected to the company. That creates a warmer, more one-to-one consumer experience that they will likely want to have again.
3. Working within the Consumer’s Preferred Channel and Device
Some consumers favor email. Others are more inclined to be social media savvy. And still others like to be targeted via SMS. Today’s customers also use a variety of devices. By paying attention to what people best engage with, marketers know which channels and devices to target.
If a consumer is a mobile-first or mobile-only user, marketers should naturally tailor their marketing tactics toward mobile. By paying attention to where consumers are, companies can better personalize their messaging and reach people where they prefer, creating a better overall consumer experience.
Ready for Advanced Personalized Marketing?
Marketers are inundated with new, highly innovative technology each and every day. It has certainly allowed for greater personalization and a better consumer experience through the data tracking it provides. But only those marketers willing to engage with it can reap the benefits.
Certainly such target-specific labor can be challenging, but it’s also well worth the effort. In today’s competitive landscape, marketers must work to not only differentiate, but also to meet the expectations of consumers who now both want and expect to be treated as unique individuals.
Knowing how personalized marketing can help boost brands is only half the battle. The next step is learning how to implement targeted strategies. Luckily, Act-On has that covered, too.