Let’s Get Personal: The Importance of Personalization in Marketing

What is worse than a fortune cookie with no fortune? A fortune cookie with an
advertisement for a fortune. I was so pleased to know 10% off for something I
don’t need was in my future, thanks.

The marketing cookie monster may have reached me in an unforgettable way, but it
took a personal joy of mine and turned it into a buzz kill. Marketing experts
estimate that most Americans are exposed to about 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements
per day. Advertisements we see everyday such as: ads, billboards, emails and other
common marketing strategies focus on the quantity of a message rather than the
relevance of a message. With brands constantly competing for a customer’s
attention, there is a growing importance of personalization in digital marketing.
Personalized marketing is the art of using data to create and deliver brand
messages targeted at an individual customer. This strategy uses data points to
collect insights on who a customer is and what they want in order to increase an
advertisement’s relevancy.

Customers want to feel important and valued. The goal is to engage customers with
a message that speaks to an individual prospect.

Think about a time where you went to a department store and people gladly
welcomed you and helped you find the exact item you were looking for. You were
acknowledged as a human being and your needs were important to the associate.
You were in and out in 10 minutes, spoken to in a friendly manner, and thanked for
entering the store.
Now, imagine walking into a department store and nobody greeted you, asked if
you needed help or thanked you for coming in. While it doesn’t seem like a big
deal if you’re not a people person, it does have an effect on your experience and
your likelihood to come back to that store. This helpful approach has the same
effect on online shoppers.

With the increase of online purchases, this personalized experience becomes harder
to achieve. It’s no secret that customers choose brands that align with their beliefs,
values and lifestyle. Personalized marketing can make a customer’s choice much
easier by presenting them with their exact needs. Forbes reported a survey by
Infosys (2018) that shows 86% of consumers say that personalization has some
impact on what they purchase and one quarter admit personalization significantly
influences their buying decisions.

Personalization marketing has moved far beyond addressing customers by name.

The goal is to engage customers with a message that speaks to an individual
prospect. This means you have to know your audience. This requires data. Lots of
it. Collecting data is essential to finding out the vital pieces of information
necessary to send the right message and build a stronger customer.

It’s time to get creepy.

There are a list of key insights needed to reach a customer in an effective way.

- Figure out your target audience demographics to determine what your

target audience is doing and thinking. Once enough data is compiled,
 the audience can be categorized by several factors: age, gender,
income, location, interests, shopping habits and more.

- Use data to determine the frequency customers purchase and what

incentives they’ll respond to and even what incentives they respond to
in order to make a decision.

- From the data, compile a list of personas and create content that
speaks to these different personas.

- Now, it’s time to create content that is relevant and beneficial to the
customer.
Timing is everything. That’s why it’s essential to provide the right
message to the right customer at the correct time on the correct
platform in order for the message to resonate.

What are the benefits of personalized marketing?

There are so many options available to a customer it can often be overwhelming.

Personalized marketing can help narrow the field choices and speak to the exact
needs of a customer. Personalized marketing can save your prospect time and effort
which leads to:

1. Improved customer experience

2. Increased brand loyalty

 3. Creates consistency across channels

4. Drives revenue
- By identifying and responding to the preferred channel for each customer,
companies can increase ROI.

Personalization tactics in digital marketing can be executed in a number of ways as

there are many avenues that can be personalized in a customer’s online experience.
Here are some innovative examples of companies using personalization tactics in
their marketing efforts (and seeing great results).

Netflix
Deciding what to watch can be a tough decision. With a variety of categories one
could spend hours going through movies and shows. That is why Netflix’s
algorithm for its personalized viewing recommendations is a prime example of
using personalization to deliver convenience to its users.

Netflix uses data on your previous choices and generates an individualized list of
picks that speak to each user. Netflix’s recommendation list is a perfect example of
using data to evolve a user’s experience.

Coca-Cola

Who can forget Coca Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign in 2012 when they replaced
their logo with consumer names. This tactic took personalization to the next level
and made the personalized experience a shareable phenomenon using the hashtag
#shareacoke.
This campaign created a personal experience for customers and shared it with a
wide audience that led to the company’s first rise in sales in the past decade.

Spotify

Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly’ feature is a personalized playlist that is curated of

tracks based on the music a user interacts with. This feature presents new tracks
that an individual would like based on current playlists and liked songs created by
the user. Who doesn’t like being shown new music?

Spotify also made its personalization efforts shareable with ‘Your top songs of the
year’ playlist. Spotify utilized consumer data by showing its users the data they
were using with the ‘2020 Wrapped’ feature. Users could see a playlist compiled of
their most listened to song of the year and data on top tracks and artists they
listened to for that year. Spotify took this personalized information a step further
and made the feature shareable producing multi millions of shares and shaping
streaming trends.