Personalized Marketing
Online marketing speak for:
“Creating a Seamless Custom Customer Experience”.
“Salesforce data shows that 66% of customers are willing to pay more for a great experience and 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its product or service.”
On this page
- Creating a Seamless Customer Experience
- Personalized Marketing Defined
- First Thing First, Let’s Set A Goal.
- Budget
- 4 Steps in Personalized Marketing
- 1. Choose the right Personalization Software and Services.
- 2. Identify Your Customers
- 3. Follow Through.
- 4. Update, update, and update.
Creating a Seamless Customer Experience
Have you ever wondered why you see your dream bag or your favorite book appear by just clicking on the “Your Recommendations” link on Amazon.com?
Did you know that just by a few clicks, Amazon is putting items on one page that you are likely to view, to learn more or eventually, to purchase?
According to fortune.com “Judging by Amazon’s success, the recommendation system works. The company reported a 29% sales increase to $12.83 billion during its second fiscal quarter, up from $9.9 billion during the same time last year. A lot of that growth arguably has to do with the way Amazon has integrated recommendations into nearly every part of the purchasing process…”
Amazing! How did they do that?
Amazon creates a seamless customer experience through the whole buying journey.
Gone were the days when companies relied mostly on the quality of their product and service alone.
An annual survey conducted with B2B sales companies states that customer experience or CX (short for customer experience) is the single most exciting opportunity for 2020. Companies can expect to earn more if they invest in enhancing their customers’ experience.
As an example, SaaS companies can expect to double their revenues within 36 months if they invest in Customer Experience or CX initiatives.
Where did the revenue growth come from?
It’s from the customer’s wallet of course. Salesforce data shows that 66% of customers are willing to pay more for a great experience and 84% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its product or service.
And here comes the question: “How can I enhance my customers’ experience?”
The answer is simple, Personalized Marketing.
To better understand what Personalized Marketing is we should start with its definition.
Personalized Marketing Defined
“a marketing strategy by which companies leverage data analysis and digital technology to deliver individualized messages and product offerings to current or prospective customers.”
- Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personalized_marketing
“is the implementation of a strategy by which companies deliver individualized content to recipients through data collection, analysis, and the use of automation technology.” - emarsys.com
In simple terms, Personalized Marketing is the practice of using customers’ data to help create a seamless customer experience through the whole buying journey with the aid of automation technology. (By the way, automation technology makes complicated tasks simple.)
First Thing First, Let’s Set A Goal.
Goals help drive your method and approach in solving a problem. Goals are also a crucial factor in measuring success with online marketing.
The reason you’re reading this article is that you want to know more about personalized marketing. You might have a goal in mind already. That goal propels you to search for more information on how you can achieve it. So keep reading and we will show you how to use personalized marketing for your business.
You should set your goals first before planning your strategies.
If you do not already have goals set for your marketing efforts, here are some simple steps. Ask yourself - What are my main goals for the quarter or the next year?
Goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based)
For example, your goal is to increase revenue by 10% at the end of 2020.
- Specific - 10% increase in revenue
- Measurable - you can measure the 10% increase
- Attainable - previous data suggests that it’s achievable
- Relevant - it’s directly tied to your goals
- Time-based - you indicated by the end of 2020
I will not bore you with goals, goals, and more goals. Just remember to make your goals SMART. Practice creating goals on a regular basis. Ok, let’s move on to the next topic.
Budget
This is just a quick rundown on budgeting. Budget is very important to achieve your Personalization Goals. Without a budget, our marketing plans are useless.
What is a marketing budget you ask? A budget is a projection based on the available data of what you can earn and the expenses that can be incurred over a specified period of time.
How much should I allocate for my Personalized Marketing campaign?
This is a great question. As a general rule of thumb, companies should allocate at least 5% of their total revenue to marketing to maintain their current status and 10% if they want to increase their market share. That alone is a broad guide to follow. You should also consider other factors affecting budget-making decisions like your tenure in the market, your industry and if you’re launching new products or services.
4 Steps in Personalized Marketing
There are four main steps to follow. Here’s the first one
1. Choose the right Personalization Software and Services.
How can you enhance your customers’ experience if you don’t have the right tools?
Personalized marketing is difficult without the help of automation technology. Automation reduces time spent in performing repetitive tasks thereby increases productivity. It also helps distribute your product or service faster with less human error.
Machines are a lot faster and more efficient than humans when it comes to repetitive tasks.
Nowadays, a lot of businesses (even start-ups) are automating their processes to cope with the changing demands of their customers and most of all to increase their market share.
So, it is very important to choose the right software and services that fit your needs to be successful in your personalization goals.
There are numerous personalization software and services in the market today and choosing the right one for your business and personalization goal is highly critical.
How To Choose The Best Tool For Personalized Marketing.
Back when the idea of personalized marketing was first introduced, web personalization services/tools were only available to the largest enterprise businesses as part of an expensive analytics solution or CRM.
Thanks to the new players who entered the field. All businesses can benefit from the many web personalization services/tools available in the market. The players constantly improve and innovate their software/tools to suit the demands of their customers and stay in competition. They widen their market by making it affordable for small businesses as well.
There are companies (e.g., SaaS companies) that host an application and make it available to customers over the Internet. Choosing the right one is instrumental in achieving your business goals. But before approaching any company that offers web personalization software and services, you should first ask yourself these questions.
What do you want to achieve by investing in personalization software?
Go back to your SMART personalization goals. This will be your guide in the process of choosing the right tools for your specific business.
What are the features you want to incorporate?
Do you want to use Dynamic Text on your website or marketing funnel based on your user’s name? How about pages that are customized to the customer’s journey based on their choices? Maybe collect emails for future use? Do you want to send and track SMS messages and emails?
Define what features matter most to you.
Is it compatible with your existing stack?
You should also consider the compatibility aspect with your existing stack so that you will save precious resources during the implementation of your chosen tools.
This is basic planning 101. Before purchasing any software licenses, make sure the new platform is compatible with your existing technologies and work processes.
Is it aligned with your web personalization budget?
You should also consider your budget when choosing. You can’t just include all the features you want without consulting your personalization budget. Find ways on how you can stretch your budget to get the right personalization tools.
What are the categories of personalization?
There are five categories of web personalization software and services available. Namely:
- Personalization integrated with web analytics.
- Personalization software as a service ( SaaS ) for e-commerce.
- Personalization integrated with CMS/commerce management systems.
- B2B, marketing automation and publisher website personalization tools.
- Personalization code libraries and modules.
I have purchased the software, what now?
After knowing and understanding the aspects and categories of web personalization software/tools, you are now ready to start your search.
If you already have the right personalization software and services installed for your business, you’re 3 steps away from achieving your personalization goals.
2. Identify Your Customers
After choosing the right software you can start collecting customers’ data during his/her buying journey. For example, what are the products that were viewed, what are the products in the shopping cart and what are the products that were eventually purchased. Do customers click links of your email recommendations or do they prefer on-site recommendations? What platforms are they using when browsing or ordering? Are they using omnichannel? And so many other metrics you installed in your personalization software.
Once you collect this data you can segment it to different customer profiles. Customer profiles will be your basis in creating highly targeted content. Collecting huge amounts of data and segregating it is a lot simpler with the help of automation technology. This data will also be helpful not only in your present marketing campaigns but also in your future marketing plans and offers.
“Remember: Correctly identifying customers’ preferences is important in providing overall customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. And always bear in mind that every customer has distinctive needs and wants.”
3. Follow Through.
Begin executing your personalized marketing campaigns. You can start creating highly targeted content and broadcasting it to your preferred platforms (e.g., social media, email, third-party ads).
Next, your customers start seeing products or services they need or want in the platforms that they prefer, sometimes without consciously knowing that they were individually targeted to see the content. This can lead to the user adding products to their cart. However, don’t be too complacent about it, this is not the end of the buying journey.
According to Emarsys .. ” 70% of website visitors progress to the cart stage but end up leaving the item behind.”
I’m disheartened, Is it over?
Hey, cheer up the fight is not yet over. You can still do many things to persuade your customer to come back and click that “inviting” check-out button on your website.
Don’t forget you need to follow through with your clients. People get distracted easily, you need to focus on getting that client to reengage with your brand.
Really? How?
Here’s what you can do. When customers do not complete the checkout stage, you can still pursue them by sending reminder emails about the products they’ve left in the cart. You can include in your email similar products that they might like and eventually buy. You can also stimulate their interest by suggesting products that other customers have bought (provided that they have similar customer profiles).
The goal is to pursue prospective customers to buy your products and in due course become repeat buyers (brand loyalty).
4. Update, update, and update.
Are you still with me? If Yes, here’s the last (fourth) and equally important step. It seems like a silly question but, is it important to stay up to date with current technologies and methods? Of course, it’s very important. If you’re not updated you will be left behind. You can’t afford to just stick to your present personalization strategy forever. The trends of today will not be the trends of tomorrow.
You should take a look at how your personalization strategies are performing and compare past results. Take note of the following:
- What platforms most customers prefer?
- What platforms provide the most conversion?
- What content receives the most traffic?
- What content has the highest engagement?
When you have a solid grasp of what is working well for you, then you can create slight modifications based on your collected data and further improve your results.
Thanks for reading this article on personalized marketing. This is a basic outline of the topic. If you are interested in more information on digital marketing please check out the rest of our Blog here.
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