3 steps to selecting the right KPIs to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns

is that well-known saying we all keep hearing? What gets measured gets done.

To optimize your marketing personalization campaigns, you need to make sure you’re measuring the effectiveness of your efforts.

Measurements help inform key decisions, align everyone in the organization with a common goal, and indicate that you’re making meaningful progress.

The question is, what should you be measuring?

Gathering and analyzing the wrong metrics is not only a waste of time and resources but it may also paint a wrong picture of the performance of your campaigns, preventing you from making the right adjustments.

Here’s how to make sure you’re gathering and analyzing the right metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs):

How to define personalization KPIs and measure the effectiveness of your campaigns

Step 1: Identify your objectives

Marketing personalization is a powerful strategy that can deliver a lot of benefits to a business.

However, you should limit the number of goals so you can focus your efforts and gather meaningful data.

Your objectives will depend on your industry, your business model, and the stage of growth of the business. Here are some examples:

  • Improve sales performance
  • Increase repeat purchases and brand loyalty (e.g., customer lifetime value)
  • Drive traffic that converts
  • Strengthen brand recognition and engagement
  • Increase the number and quality of generated leads
  • Increase content ROI
  • Increase average order value
  • Increase customer lifetime value

Step 2: Define your KPIs

Based on your marketing objectives, you must define which metrics can best indicate the progress of these goals.

Your metrics need to be quantifiable. In addition, you must also distinguish between leading KPIs and lagging KPIs so that you can extract appropriate insights from the metrics.

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For most marketing personalization campaigns, KPIs often measure the performance of the sales funnels or the effectiveness of the customized content or offers. Some of these include:

  • Conversion rate
  • New vs. returning visitors
  • Customer/visitor loyalty
  • Bounce rate
  • Website traffic to lead ratio
  • Top traffic sources
  • Click-through rate
  • Engagement score
  • Average session duration
  • Average page views per visit
  • Average order value
  • Revenue per visit

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Make sure to select metrics from which you can extract actionable insights. Otherwise, you’ll be crunching a lot of numbers without being able to take impactful actions.

Step 3: Measure and analyze

Before you start any campaign, establish benchmarks so you know whether you’re indeed making improvements. These are your baseline metrics from which to start the personalization efforts.

Make sure you’re integrating metrics from all the systems you use, such as eCommerce and CRM platforms. Whenever possible, send all information to one centralized dashboard so that you can gain a holistic view of your personalization campaign performance.

Last but not least, metrics need to be measured consistently over time and across segments so you can extract accurate and meaningful insights.

I’ve got the insights, now what?

The ability to gather and analyze customer data to extract insights is the first step to running effective personalization campaigns.

Next, you have to put the information into action by applying the insights to improve your personalization strategies.

NectarOm’s Decision Engine helps you identify individual customers who are most likely to respond to a particular strategy or campaign, so you can increase your marketing ROI by matching your content and offers to each customer’s preferences, brand interactions, and habits.

How to improve patient acquisition and retention for your medical practice or healthcare facility.

The healthcare industry has been going through a massive change. With the dramatic shift in health insurance policies and consumer behaviors, patients are stepping up to take better control of their healthcare choices.

In addition to this, as more patients are covering a larger portion of their healthcare bills, providers need to put more efforts into marketing directly to consumers.

Here are the latest healthcare marketing strategies to help you meet the fast-evolving patient expectations while improving patient acquisition and retention.

4 latest marketing trends in the healthcare industry

The key to attracting more patients to your medical practice or healthcare facility is to deliver an outstanding patient experience. Here’s what successful healthcare marketers are doing to succeed:

1. A patient-centric online portal

Consumers are now accustomed to managing their relationships with retailers and service providers via a robust online platform.

You need to offer a sophisticated, secure, and user-friendly patient portal that can handle most of the day-to-day patient interactions, such as paying bills, making appointments, checking test results, ordering prescription renewals, obtaining medical histories, and even conducting virtual consultations.


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2. A search-engine optimized website

Consumers are now more comfortable with using online searches to look for a medical facility or a healthcare provider.

Your website needs to be optimized for local SEO so it’ll show up in the “local pack” at the top of the search result pages when users search for “_________ near me.” You can also build backlinks and drive more traffic by getting online reviews on Google and third-party websites.


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As digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are gaining popularity, more than 50% of searches will be voice-based by 2020 — your website content needs to be optimized for voice search. You can do this by focusing on long-tail key terms, using patients’ language, and providing local information.

3. Real-time patient support and interaction

With the latest customer support technologies, consumers are used to getting their questions answered and problems resolved in real time.

Providing best-in-class support is the key to improving your patient acquisition and retention rate. Make sure patients can contact your team via multiple channels such as email, text, phone, social media, and live chat.

In addition to this, don’t just interact with your patients only when there’s a problem! You can use the same channels to increase their engagement with your brand by sharing valuable content and gathering feedback.

4. Marketing automation and personalization

Consumers expect relevant content, information, and offers from their service providers. You can use marketing automation and segmentation strategies to deliver a highly personalized experience that meets patient expectations, increases engagement, and improves retention.

A robust marketing personalization platform allows you to deliver an omnichannel patient experience through multiple touchpoints, such as email, social media, text messages, printed materials, and so on to provide the most relevant and helpful content so you stay top of mind.

Hyper-personalization will drive the future of healthcare marketing. Request a demo to see how you can use our robust customer data management system to unlock the power of this marketing strategy.

4 keys to increasing patient acquisition and retention with personalized content and offers.

Personalization has become one of the most effective marketing strategies for any business to improve customer acquisition and retention by increasing audience engagement and building relationships

It’s no different in the healthcare industry. In fact, with an overwhelming amount of health-related information available, it is now more important than ever to deliver content and services that are helpful and relevant to your patients.

Here are some essential steps to designing a personalization marketing strategy for your healthcare practice:

1. Create personas and map out the buyer’s journey

The first step to successful personalized marketing is understanding your audience by creating a series of buyer personas

These personas help you identify your patients’ priorities, the questions they have, the language they use, and their main concerns so you can design communications that speak to them. You can leverage this information for creating your content, designing your offers, and setting up your promotional strategies.

You also need to understand where your patients are in their decision-making process; for instance  they could be researching a medical condition, looking for a provider, or ready to schedule a visit. You can deliver the most relevant content and offer at the right time.

2.  Design targeted content and offers

When you have gained a clear understanding of your patients, identified where they get their information, and segmented your audience according to a variety of criteria, such as health conditions, you can then design targeted content and offers to deliver an individualized experience in the right place and at the right time.

Distribute the information and offers through multiple channels, such as personalized website content, emails, phone, printed materials, and social media, based on the patients’ preferences and past interactions with your content to maximize engagement and conversion.

3. Communicate the privacy policy

In a survey, 49% of consumers don’t mind businesses having a certain amount of their information so they can receive content and offers that are more relevant.

However, healthcare services involve more private and personal information than a typical retail business so there’s a fine line to tread when you use patient information to deliver personalized content.

To reinforce trust and patient relationships while distributing targeted content, you need to clearly communicate your privacy policy and how you utilize patient information before adding your patients’ information to your CRM system.

4. Analyze the data to understand user behaviors

There’s no one-size-fits-all personalization strategy and there’s only one way to find out what really works for your market and your practice, and that’s by analyzing the data to understand how your patients interact with your content and respond to your offers.

To effectively implement a marketing personalization strategy, collect patient information, and analyze the data to fine-tune your marketing communications, you need a robust customer data management system that provides you with a single customer view and offers content recommendations.

Request a demo to talk to our personalization expert and see how Nectarom can help you deliver a personalized patient experience.

How to increase the quality of your customer data for effective personalized marketing

Marketing personalization has become an indispensable strategy for retailers who aim to increase sales and improve customer loyalty through the use of targeted content and offers.

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While having the right technology is important, the foundation for implementing an effective personalization strategy is the quality of your customer data.

Without accurate information, you won’t be able to deliver targeted content in the right place at the right time to the right audience.

How to clean up your customer database for effective personalized marketing

It’s important that you regularly clean up your database and audit the sources from which you collect the information to ensure that the customer data is supporting your marketing personalization strategy:

Review web forms

If you’re generating leads by using web forms, ensure that you’re collecting relevant information that helps in targeting your audience effectively.

Consider whether you’re asking for the right kind of data at the right level of detail. Gathering too few details doesn’t allow you to effectively segment your audience while requesting too much information can cause form abandonment.

Audit data fields

Duplicate fields or repetitive information in your customer database can cause errors and confusion.

Ensure that the fields in your customer data management system are set up correctly so that data from web forms, lead generation mechanisms (from your website, social media, or messaging apps), and eCommerce platform is categorized and collated correctly to support your personalized marketing campaigns.

Refine segmentation

Audience segmentation isn’t “set it and forget it.”

Revisit the way you’re segmenting your audience periodically to ensure that it’s supporting your overall marketing strategy.

You can also enhance audience segmentation with the information you gather during the user-interaction sessions with your brand. This includes the products they’re interested in based on their browsing behavior and the questions they ask during a live chat session.

Set up single customer view

To effectively collect and utilize all the available customer data, you need to create a 360-degree customer profile so that the information can be stored in and accessed from a centralized location.

A single customer view allows you to gather relevant customer data and effectively leverage the information to deliver a customer-centric experience through personalization.

Review analytics

There are many different ways to deliver personalized content and offers. Are you leveraging the right customer data to form your strategy?

The best way to find out is to review your analytics and see if your personalization strategy has been effective in driving traffic and generating sales.

If the metrics aren’t meeting your expectations, you’ll have to adjust and test your personalization rules to ensure that you’re using your customer data in a way that helps deliver the most effective content and offers.

Build a solid foundation with a robust customer data management system

After you put in the work to clean up your customer data, ensure that it’s managed and utilized in a way that will help you implement personalization marketing effectively.

A robust customer data management system has become indispensable for marketers who want to use personalization to increase the effectiveness of their omnichannel marketing initiatives.

Request a demo to see how our customer data management system can help you derive customer intelligence and actionable insights so you can make data-driven business decisions and achieve your marketing goals.

 

Welcome to 2018. Personalization rules the world and nearly every business you can nav to on Google Maps has a method of harvesting customer data. Of course, these days it takes more than just downloading some basic CRM (customer relationship management) software onto your POS system to differentiate yourself. Since nearly every company has some method of pulling customer data, analytics alone aren’t effective until that data is cleansed, streamlined and put to work by personalizing your company’s customer experience in measurable ways. Maybe that’s why most of the conversation about data this year is focused more on cleansing your existing customer data than on blindly accumulating info just to stash it away in siloes.

While it may be tempting to take the “more is more” approach when it comes to accumulating customer information, data security is a hot-button issue right now, so it’s important to get your technology up to code. Especially in light of the new GDPR regulations which will require companies doing business within EU countries to revamp their data security measures by May of ’18. In addition to the soon-to-be-implemented GDPR regulations, most companies straight up don’t have time to waste on CRM systems that are lagging due to useless data hoarding.

With this said, here are actionable tips on how you can cleanse your company’s data systems to implement safer and more effective personalization strategies in the new year.

Build a Master Data Strategy

A master data strategy, or MDM, is essential to making sure that the right people in your organization can access the data they need at the right time. Building a MDM also helps ensure that your information is safe from piracy, and the data presented to each individual at your company is whittled down to suit their specific needs. This helps prevent shrinkage, while empowering both you and your employees to make better decisions for your business in a fraction of the time.

CMO by Adobe suggests 5 steps to building an effective MDM: 1) Establish data governance policies (or set of procedures by which to implement your data strategy), 2) identify an owner (someone responsible for the data and how it’s dispensed), 3) define the data (choose universal terms and data conventions to use across your organization) 4) map it out (identify who will be using the data and how), and 5) start small and scale (be patient – it is a process to implement a change of this magnitude).

Assess Relevance with Regular Reviews  

Of course, before you implement a MDM within your organization, you’ll need to determine which data remains pertinent to your company’s needs… and what you can do without. Conducting a regular data review and eliminating unnecessary and/or dated customer information can help to increase your business’s connection speeds, as well as help your employees better locate and utilize relevant information. According to Campaign Live, two-thirds of organizations do not regularly review their data, which means that 75 percent of marketing data within the UK will be rendered obsolete once GDPR restrictions go into effect in May ’18.

It’s essential to conduct reviews regularly for your data to remain relevant, usable, and compliant with all of the evolving privacy laws pertaining to countries where your company does business. Set an internal precedent for, at minimum, an annual data review across all branches of your organization to empower your employees to easily access the information they need.

Use a Single Data Management Platform

So, what do you do with data once it’s cleansed and processed? It’s time to put that data to work to help you gain a better understanding of each customers and tailor your marketing campaigns to suit their specific needs. This sounds more complex than it is, since the right data management platform (DMP) will do most of the work for you. In fact, Nectarom’s DMP creates a centralized channel for all of your data across platforms, while also providing you with a 360-degree profile of each unique customer. In other words, it simplifies your marketing efforts by segmenting customer information and automatically updating customer profiles based on both their recent activity and their phase in the customer lifecycle.

Although it may feel like it sometimes, creating an effective personalization strategy really isn’t rocket science. Put cleansing and streamlining your company’s data at the forefront of your omni-channel efforts for 2018, so that all of the branches of your organization can come together to operate at maximum efficiency!

Are you ready to harness the power of big data in your marketing?

“Big Data” is everywhere and corporations are taking advantage of it to improve different aspects of their businesses and operations.

This includes extracting insights from a large amount of consumer data to drive marketing initiatives in the relatively new discipline of “data-driven marketing,” which is becoming increasingly popular among businesses because of its effectiveness.

What’s data-driven marketing

Data-driven marketers extract marketing insights to analyze customer data and make decisions. They use consumer information to target media purchases and refine creative messaging which can further optimize the effects of their campaigns.

Such practice is made possible by the increasing the quality and quantity of the marketing data available through a variety of digital touch points and marketing channels and the personalization, distribution, and automation technologies that can help lower cost and increase efficiency.

The use of consumer data helps marketers deliver the right message to the right audience at the right stage of their buyer’s journey through the right channel to maximize the ROI of their marketing budget.

The collection of data from these marketing campaigns also allows marketers to understand what works and what doesn’t – creating a virtuous cycle so they can further refine their strategies to optimize results.

The benefits of data-driven marketing

The initial effort of collecting data and setting up the technologies can seem daunting if you’re new to data-driven marketing.

However, once the systems are set up, you will be able to reap the myriad advantages of data-driven marketing in no time:

1. Deliver the relevant marketing message

If you’re delivering irrelevant marketing messages to your customers, you could be doing more harm than good. 74% of online consumers get frustrated with websites when the content doesn’t reflect their interests.

In addition, email campaigns with personalized content tailored to the recipients’ preferences and habits result in 6 times higher transaction rate, 29% higher unique open rates, and 41% higher unique click rates.

Being relevant is the key to standing out in today’s cluttered market because it allows you to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time to maximize engagement and conversion.

2. Monitor campaign performance

John Wanamaker once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

With data-driven marketing, this quote will become a thing of the past.

Technologies that make data-driven marketing feasible also allow you to collect detailed metrics on the performance of your campaigns and measure them against key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure that your marketing strategies are meeting your business objectives.

Data-driven marketers can track their marketing dollars along the customer journey “all the way to the bank.” This information can help them quantify the effectiveness of their strategies and get leadership support for their initiatives.

3. Optimize marketing strategy

By collecting real-time data from multiple customer touch points, marketers can easily point out what works and what doesn’t and make adjustments to respond quickly to the audience reaction and sentiment.

Data analysis allows marketers to fine-tune their messaging, distribution channels, or offers while a campaign is in progress to optimize results.

The foundation of data-driven marketing

Data-driven marketing strategies are only as good as your ability to collect and utilize your customer data.

A robust customer data management platform (DMP) allows you to gather customer information from a variety of touch points and manage all the data in one centralized location.

From there, you can create highly targeted marketing campaigns based on each individual customers’ preferences and collect the necessary data to further hone your strategies.

Benefits of Email Marketing

In a world where social media, blogging, and SEO take precedence, email seems like it would be on its way out the door. However, with the business world obsessed with acquiring consumer data, email marketing is not only useful but essential to companies.

Email marketing is one of the most effective and reliable channels for marketers to interact with customers. Here are three reasons why email marketing really works.

1.Easy Way to Reach Mobile Customers

Email marketing is an easy way to reach consumers on mobile without investing in new technology or software. Email channels already exist and are a traditional medium of connection, making it simple to reach consumers. According to a report by Pew Research Center, 52% of cellphone users in the U.S. access their emails via mobile phones. With many consumers constantly on the go, email marketing offers companies a way to send a greater volume of content to consumers in a quick and efficient manner.

Email is also accessible on devices other than mobile phones. According to a study done by Forrester Research, consumers opened 42% of retailers’ emails on smartphones and 17% on tablets. Essentially, nearly 60% of email marketing messages also double as mobile marketing messages. This versatility puts email at an advantage in comparison to text messages and SMS messaging. Consumers are more inclined to open email messages because emails are more accessible. Texting, on the other hand, is only available on mobile devices. Email is also free for the consumer and company while texting risks the chance of an incurred charge on the customer’s end. This diminishes the satisfaction of customer experience and can drive customers away. Also, email marketing is an easier access point for consumers and conveys more content that is useful to consumers.

2. Email is a Transactional Medium

Consumers see emails as a way to get offers, coupons, promotions, and in-stores sales. Email marketing deals drive in-store sales, making product emails key to getting consumers to engage with a product. A study performed by Nielsen found that 27% of online shoppers subscribe to emails in order to save money. 64% of consumers have printed out coupons found on email marketing campaigns.

Since customers expect to see offers and promotions in product emails, they are more likely to be in a buying state of mind. In turn, this can turn into increased revenue opportunity for companies. E-coupons are becoming a huge business with the growth of online sales, and email marketing is at the heart of it. Email marketing reaches out to online bargain hunters and provides consumers with a way to save online and in store. The transactional framework that email marketing provides also allows companies to personalize more toward consumers, engaging them more and further increasing sales opportunities.  

3. Tells You What Works

Email marketing allows companies to see what works and what doesn’t. The data obtained from email marketing provides metrics to see how emails are performing and what companies can do to improve email strategies. These insights allow companies to market their products smarter and better. Learning what works because of email marketing also gives companies a better understanding of the needs, interests, and desires of the consumer base. Companies can see the clickthrough rate of an email, which can then provide data as to how shoppers interact with the online shopping platform. Companies use the information provided by email marketing to not only cater to what consumers are looking for, but to better improve the interaction between consumer and company. By using email marketing, companies can track customer activity and better serve their interests.

Some say email marketing is dead. However, email marketing works. It keeps customers engaged and opens channels of communication between the company and its customers. With email marketing, companies can be in the right place at the right time.

Big box stores, supercenters, megastores. It doesn’t matter what you call them, the massive size of these retail giants is enough to send people into awe.

Their space isn’t limited to storefronts and warehouses either, which is good since foot traffic is constantly getting lower. To their benefit, the ever expanding digital marketplace has allowed these businesses to grow on another level, leading to new opportunities for marketing and personalization.

McKinsey found that 17% of consumers value the customer experience compared to 24% who care most about the prices. With competition increasing steadily as companies find new ways to increase brand loyalty and strengthen the customer experience, personalization has become more important than ever.

 

Personalization Incorporated

The techniques for personalization in retail chains don’t differ significantly from other markets. Companies will find ways to increase subscriptions, social media activity, and web page interaction in order to raise brand awareness, collect information, and personalize the experience.

There are two trains of thought when it comes to personalization for these retailers. Both are acceptable focuses, but when prices are as low as they can get, the company that offers the better customer experience is the one that can integrate the two.

The first is the use of variables. Businesses will study marketing trends to see which ways they can capitalize. These can include purchase history, shopper behavior, and interests. Businesses can guess at what customers will buy next and tailor advertisements and deals towards that.

The second are the constants. Rather than focusing on the marketing trends, this style focuses on the guaranteed information collected from customers. This is personalization based off name, age, location, and other unchanging facts. They’re simple, but give a different insight into a customer’s potential purchases. This information lets companies highlight deals and events at specific locations that would meet their needs. A sixteen year old girl could get an email about a back to school sale at her local store.

Companies that correctly use the omni-channel personalization strategies are able to pull all of this information from different places and organize them into one cohesive plan.

 

Omni-channel Issues

Big box retailers have a lot of struggles when it comes to personalization. It’s difficult to track the purchases and preferences of individuals who enter the store. There’s no data that can be held. Compared to a mom and pop shop where the staff knows your name, it’s more harder to direct Jerry to the products he always buys.

Because in-store personalization is all but impossible, retailers focus on the digital side of marketing. Unfortunately, attempts at predicting recommended products falls short due to troublesome programming. The Harvard Business Review reports that predictions for products are becoming so absurd that companies are creating more generalized algorithms in order to reach customers.

When a customer purchases a sleeping bag through Amazon, they’re more likely to be recommended another sleeping bag rather than camping accessories. The algorithms can’t take into account that a person generally only purchases one at time.

Also, the data held isn’t used to it’s fullest. If a customer buys large t-shirts every month, he’s still getting recommendations for tank tops and sweatshirts, rather than capitalizing on the purchase he’s going to make. The customer doesn’t get a better experience through the purchase, he gets the same as everyone else.

Lastly, the Harvard Business Review also found that shoppers would appreciate the ability to customize rather than have the business personalize the experience for them. This is largely due to the failed attempts at personalization by big box retailers.

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Their poll showed that 42% of online shoppers claimed to have seen no benefits from site personalization. Nearly all claimed they would prefer to customize the experience themselves than let the business do it for them.

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Against these facts, personalization is still a vital piece to creating a better user experience. The issue is that it needs to be done correctly, especially by businesses that are focused outside of the digital realm. For most of these companies, it means going mobile.

All of these companies have had their own issues but continue to provide better experiences due to personalization. By using omni-channel strategies, they can pull information seamlessly to engage customers. They all use social media and they all have websites that offer accounts. The piece that separates them is how else they get information and how well they can put it into play.

 

Walmart

In 2013, Walmart identified the need for a more personalized shopping experience. It took two years of development, but in 2015, they launched a new app, specifically designed for tablets and phones to surf through Walmart.com.

Bao, Nguyen, a spokesman for Walmart claimed, “During Black Friday we sold about 1,000 tablets a minute.”

Trusting that customers purchasing through them would do so again, Walmart focused on those users to create a personalized shopping experience.

On the application, customers are given recommendations based off their purchase history. They’re given discounts and notifications for deals, as well as advertisements that meet their interests.

Walmart also took the opportunity to integrate their actual stores by sharing local rollback deals and discounts. This benefited Walmart as a whole, but also helped the individuals stores maintain customers.

Walmart is also changing their focus to smaller stores. With Walmart Express, and Neighborhood Market Units, the shopping experience will be tailored more towards the customer’s requirements, personalizing the experience on a more general level.

 

Target

Target was also fast to jump on the mobile track in order to better their customers’ experience. In 2014, they acquired Powered Analytics, a start-up, in order to provide a more personalized manner of shopping.

With the app, customers can search for an items and get instant information on where to find it inside the store. It creates a faster way to shop and reduces the amount of time employees need to assist shoppers.

The app also offers personalized discounts and deals based off the items they’re searching for. This not only gives the customer more options before buying, but it lets Target push stock that isn’t moving as fast.

Target also has the option of customers using a loyalty card. The RedCard offers a 5% discount on all Target purchases and is directly tied to a debit card of the customer’s choosing.

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Customers who use the card are required to sign up on their website, providing their information for access and management of the card. Having them on the site, with the information, allows Target to personalize online shopping. Because purchases are made with the RedCard, they’re tracked through the transactions, giving insights to types of products and rate of activity.

Different from others, however, is the 5% discount that attracts more users of the card. Loyalty programs are offered by nearly every major business today, but very few offer such strong discounts.

Target is using the same tactic as Walmart, aiming at smaller niched stores.

 

Nordstrom

In 2011, Nordstrom purchased HauteLook, a website that centers on flash sales. With it, they were able to develop new techniques of getting people into the store. Customers could buy what they wanted off HauteLook and, should the product not be to their liking, they could return it to Nordstrom stores.

At the stores, the employees, who are all selected based off their ability to nurture relationships, take note of the item. They help the customer with the return and then recommend what items they think might interest them. If the customer shows interest, the employee will walk them directly to the item, giving them a personalized experience they’ll remember.

On the application side of the house, Nordstrom uses Beacon’s location based technology, to promote their products. Customers’ location is tracked, and when they near a store, the application sends recommendations and deals to the user.

Furthermore, the app lets customers shop on their phone and see exactly which products are in local stores, down to the size and color. This grants customers the ability to go into the store, try on the clothes, and potentially buy other items they weren’t planning on. It’s all possible because collection of their location.

The app also sends custom advertisements that are personalized to their interests. More impressive, though, is what they intend to do.

If the stars align, Nordstrom hopes that, through RFID, employees can be transmitted the interests and digital shopping cart of their customers. This would allow them to assist the customer on a truly personal level.

Nordstrom dives further into the application marketing trend with TextStyle. Customers can get recommendations from live representatives or personal shoppers that are sent to their phone. If they like the item, they return the word ‘buy’ and enter a code specific to them. The transaction is processed through their online account with Nordstrom and the product is delivered. This one-on-one personalization is another reason why Nordstrom is one of the market leaders in big box retail.

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J.C. Penney

While J.C. Penney may not be able to live up to Nordstrom’s application personalization, they do add their own fixes.

The apps allow for wedding and baby registrations to link with their online account. Users will receive emails with other recommendations based off the products in the registry and, since they’re not paying for them, are more likely to add them to the list.

Through their location based services, J.C. Penney offers discounts for in-store check ins.  Along with their store finder for over 1,100 locations, they’re offering a way to tailor discounts and recommendation to the customer.

These companies have found some different ways to capitalize on personalization and continue their growth. The usual marketing trends aren’t enough for these corporate giants and they’re forced to continue to develop new methods to gain and keep customers.

These are the companies leading the marketing world and their personalization of your shopping experience is going to continue to become better as they branch deeper into the field.

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Personalization has hit the mainstream as the best marketing strategy for growing your business. It’s used by niche companies and conglomerates alike in order to create an experience that entices customers to buy. There’s no denying it’s power.

Have you ever found yourself shopping for a new shirt online, only to be bombarded with matching ads later in the day. The ads may even be the exact products your were looking at from the same sites. They’re remarketing based off information you provided. Someone else who shopped for pants will see a completely different set of ads.

The idea is to use a one-on-one marketing strategy to develop a closer relationship with your customer. Omni-channel personalization, with a focus on these data points, can create a thorough approach to tailoring your recommendations based on what you know about the individual. Levels of use will vary, but the goal is clear:

Marketing is no longer about whose ad is seen the most. It’s about who can be more personal.

 

1. Name

Names have been called the ‘customer’s favorite word’ and for good reason. Would you rather I address you as “Appreciated Customer”, or can we take it to a more personal level? Well Greg, we’ve got a deal for you.

Businesses have been using customer names since people started peddling wares in Mesopotamian markets. When Greg bought that suit, the owner had already learned his name. The next time he walked in, he was welcomed with it. It made Greg feel more appreciated than when he visited other shops. It created a brand loyalty and he’s significantly less likely to take his business elsewhere.

Knowing your customer’s name is easy when you’re talking face to face with her, but how can you do it when thousands of people are browsing your digital store?

Web developers solved this problem long ago. Membership and e-mail sign ups require a name. Even websites that only share your username have begun using your real first name rather than the word ‘profile’ on your browser. It creates a more personalized experience when the web page displays your name in the corner, even if you know it’s an automated system.

By e-mail lists having this information, subject lines can be constructed to appear like personal messages. Seeing their own name elicits a reaction from the brain, forcing them to slow down and read the text. Campaign Monitor found that working personalization into an e-mail subject line increased open rates by 14.68%. With a list of 1,000, that translates to nearly 150 more people opening your message. That’s 150 more potential sales just because you directed the letter at Greg. Talk about a great ROI on personalization.

 

2. Location

Where using a name is great, MailChimp would argue that city names are even better.

Locations can be used to expose customers to events in a given area. Is there an expo or event that you want to share with your fans. Directed messages at their location can be the quickest way to do it.

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6 Types of Data to Collect from Customers and How to Grow Your Marketing Strategy With It nectarom

Sending e-mails about a race in Seattle to people who live in New York City will cause your open rate to drop drastically. Meanwhile, your audience in the greater Seattle area may now attend, increasing engagement with your brand.

Gathering this information can be done through two key methods. You can have customers provide their location when signing up for different features, or you can have them grant permission using a geo-location enabled app.

Marketing Land claims mobile brand ads are seeing a 20% increase in conversions when coupled with location data. Need more reasons? They also found that “69% of Google searches  include a specific location.” That’s more data you can use in your marketing strategy.

A study by White Horse Productions, Inc. showed that 8% of the users of social apps running geo-location systems believe “savings in discounts and merchant rewards” are the most important benefit. Though this number seems low, given the sheer volume of traffic that social media receives on a daily basis, this number is astounding. Since 60% of that poll thinks the social aspects are most important, it could be argued that discounts and deals would play a larger secondary role for most.

Businesses like Yelp allow their customers to ‘check-in’ to different establishments. Later, they’re reminded to review the places they visited. This creates more interaction with their site and app, as well as customer pride because they’ve contributed to the product. The ‘check-in’ strategy also brings more engagement on social media, showing up on the newsfeeds for everyone to see.

The largest battle with tracking a customer’s location is the concern for privacy. Many smartphone users will disable the GPS feature because of a fear that the information will be used inappropriately. Unfortunately for the honorable business, this leaves the ability to track location to user sign ups and invoices. Still, it’s better than comprising your integrity.

 

3. Gender

The purple elephant in the room, gender, has become a touchy subject in today’s social climate. Still, for a business, knowing someone’s gender can translate into better targeting and profit.

A study by G+ proved that targeting genders can be more than efficient. They found that females make more of the buying decisions, including everything home furnishings to cars. They also saw that women are more likely to use a specific brand if it supports a cause.

Using this information alone, you could develop a strategy to target your female customers with ads. Select the cause you’re most affiliated with, expressing a cause, and have better luck at winning them over. Even better is that if it’s a large purchase, you know to focus more attention on that gender.

Learning your customer’s gender also gives you the ability to tailor recommendations on page. If you’re a clothing company that sells to everyone, ads offering skirts will be better directed at women, while men’s products are better with them. This technique would still require a Facebook pixel or local account, but it could pay dividends in the long run.

 

4. Previous Purchases

Along with the gender focused advertising, many sites will tap your previous purchases to target you. Amazon is excellent at this strategy.

When you’re comparing items, say a sleeping bag, you can go through dozens of pages without making a purchase. Don’t worry, when you open your Facebook later, you’ll find that Amazon has a kindly reminder waiting for you. They’ll use sponsored posts to keep your mental shopping cart alive and even offer recommendations for some of the sleeping bags you were looking at earlier.

nectarom

You can follow this same approach, or target on a finer scale. When a customer purchases a sleeping bag from your site, launch an automated email chain that offers them related products, like lamps or walking sticks. The odds of a customer buying from you again are higher than the chances of that initial purchase. It’s marketing done easy.

On the other side of the spectrum is the abandoned shopping cart. Maybe a customer became distracted. Maybe they found your prices too steep. By knowing that they didn’t make a purchase, but had intended to, you can attempt to reengage the customer. Remind them of the cart or make new offers. There are a lot of possibilities just by identifying their cart status and it can all be crafted into an automated system.

In the same sense, send emails when discounts appear on items they’ve expressed interest in, be it from a wishlist or deleted cart items. Study everything about a customer’s purchase history and you can learn some specific ways to target the individual.

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5. Interests

If interests aren’t part of your personalization marketing strategy, you’re doing it wrong. They can tell us everything we need to know in order to interact with customers.

Interest marketing is especially effective on social media platforms. Sites like Facebook and Twitter build profiles on all of their users, including everything they like. These likes translate into marketing channels.

By applying ads to social media, you can automatically engage those who prefer the niche you’re addressing without having to sort them out. A billboard is a shot in the dark. Social media advertising, thanks to the ability to target interests, is a point blank shot.

 

6. Web Behavior

A customer’s behavior on the web can lead to a lot of profitable information. Everything from web content to e-mail interaction can be tracked in order to improve your marketing strategy. Using omni-channel personalization with knowledge of their trends can be even better.

To start, figure out what the most popular key words for your business are. Once you have them, develop landing pages for each. Highlight those keywords as many times as you can in the page to be sure that’s the one they find and let the personalized experience begin. Depending on how many keywords you want, you can continue to develop new pages, offering a deeper connection to your audience.

Those keywords can say a lot in themselves by defining where the customer is in the purchasing stages. If they’re searching for a specific knife review, odds are that they’re looking to purchase that knife. If they’re looking for the 7 best survival knives, they may be a little further away. Through personalization, you can recommend products and advertisements based off where they are in that process.

Tracking behavior is where your content marketing can pay off. Everyone who has run a business with an online presence understands that cookies can be pivotal in your marketing strategy. By tracking which pages your customers are viewing, you can tailor content specifically to their interest. This can be a recommendation to other articles and products based off the category or focused bonus material.

Content upgrades that are directly related to the topic of the page can provide a great window for opportunity. If a customer is reading about repairing chainsaws, a guide to felling trees with one may be enough to get his e-mail. From there, he’s entered your sales funnel, leaving him open to more e-mails and potentially other personalization tactics from you.

Along with getting those messages out, you need to pay attention to how your customers interact with your e-mails. Spot which links are getting the most use and place the customers into a segmented list. Send them more emails that focus on the topic they’re interested in. Reduce the size of your segments if you can, creating various targeted sub-lists while still sending them e-mails from the main subscription.

Collecting data to grow your marketing strategy is as simple as opening a few analytics accounts and paying attention to customer behavior. Run as many tests as you can to learn what works and what doesn’t to maximize your potential.

The information you gather can be the difference between a year of growth or another twelve months of your peers passing you by. Develop a strategy for personalization and take the lead.

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What Kind Of Data Do You Need To Be Tracking To Meet Your Conversion Goals?

Who are the best kind of customers? The ones that never complain and keep buying from you and tell everyone they love you. You know the type.

They’re the loyal ones.

If you’re trying to grow a solid brand, loyalty should be on your radar. There are multiple definitions of what loyalty means to businesses. While loyalty programs, such as points, miles, coupons, are great, the type of loyalty you want from your customers is blind devotion, and refusal to look elsewhere. The problem is: loyalty is hard to obtain. It takes a lot of work and effort to gain trust, and along the way one slip-up could negatively impact all that hard work. It’s a very delicate process, there’s no question about it, but if done right the benefits far outweigh the drawback.

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Take Apple fanboys for example. There weren’t nearly as many of them around 20 years ago, but now there are tons, and Apple is the most profitable company in the world.

Coincidence?

I don’t think so. They are the best kind of loyal customers, willing to pay a premium for products and line up for days before they’re even out. These aren’t exclusive models either, and, on paper, they’re comparable to ones can be bought for nearly half the price. But people continue to buy from them. Why? These are customers that are loyal because they like the entire process, from the lineup to unboxing.

Gaining this type of loyalty is hard, but with businesses having the ability to capture more data, personalizing content is an easy way to start fostering a loyal customer. Let’s explore three aspects of personalization that you shouldn’t ignore.

1 – Profiles & Behaviors

Data can reveal a lot about someone: where they are, what browser they’re using, what links they clicked and what kind of device they’re on. It’s a marketer’s dream, and this information can, and should be used to help you increase your conversion.

In general, there are two types of data: explicit or implicit.

Explicit signals are hard facts: This user was on an iPhone in Canada, and clicked three links and visited the site four times.

Implicit signals are what you can deduce from the hard facts: It looks like this user was browsing items. Since he’s from Canada, he’s less likely to purchase than an American; but, since he’s clicked three links and been to the site four times, he has a high chance of buying.

Turning implicit signals, which come in the form of data, into explicit signals and determining how you can initiate the sale can be a daunting task. NectarOM can simplify things and help automate this process in real time.

 

Customer profile

Once you have begun tracking your data, your next goal should be to create virtual profiles of your customers by combining data from multiple sources.

A profile describes a particular segment of customers with as much information as possible. This should include info like:

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These are just a few examples of points you can use to build your own persona. When you have a clearer picture of your ideal customer, the next step is to describe them and turn them into real people. Only once you have a profile of your customer can you start creating a plan to market to them. There’s no point wasting your time on strategies that might work.

How somebody is interacting with your content can tell you a lot about who they are and how they will interact with your brand. Generally speaking, mobile use accounts for a lot of search traffic as well as browsing, while computer/laptop traffic accounts for the majority of purchases.

 

2 – Test & Learn Strategies

What a simple world it would be if all leads came from the same place. You could focus all your marketing efforts on one thing and then clean up! But this is real life, and people are complicated. Different people hang out on various sites and can experience a brand in a variety of ways. One may prefer your Twitter feed, and another may frequent your site. Where they access your brand influences what they buy.

You can use this knowledge to your advantage by sending unique channel offers. For example, we all know Instagram is ideal for sharing images, so depending on what kind of images your audience’s feed is filled with, you could make something that blends in and barely looks like an ad. In this example from Qaloring, it’s not clear that they’re selling anything, and all you see is a woman in exercise clothes.

loyalty in marketing imagePeople on Twitter are usually looking for some interesting news, delivered in the iconic 140 characters or less and is a great place to promote your product with a catchy headline that gets people curious. Looking at the example from Ideapod; they play to people’s egos and drum up a bit of intrigue.
indeapod imageAm I smart? Heck yes! *click*

It can also be used to easily tag influencers in the industry to try and drum up some buzz for your product.

Facebook is a mix of the two, allowing more headlines but also a lot of space for an image. This ad from Jetsetter gets right to the point with a clear offer and beautiful picture.
facebook post image

Giving messages that relate to how people like to interact with a brand is the key to success. Make sure you’re not only thinking about the marketing campaign but how people will interact with your campaign over all sorts of channels and devices that you’re choosing to run it on. The more specific and targeted your campaign is, the better it will perform.

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3 – Automated Activation

Knowing all of this information is great, and any business owner should be doing everything they can to leverage this wealth of data that is at their disposal, but if you aren’t using or tracking this information, then you’re wasting your time. We here at NectarOM have an orientation toward action and apply marketing automation, predictive analytics and trigger based communications. Our system allows you to put this data to work. That way you can create detailed user profiles and implement laser precision campaigns.

No matter what your business model is, trigger based messages can help foster loyalty and increase your ROI. Making each customer feel special by delivering content based on their actions is a surefire way to keep them coming back.

With e-commerce, you’re always in the trenches, so to speak, looking forward to that sale and email notification coming through. Automated personalization has been proven to help with cart abandonment, by sending a follow-up email a day or so later. This can help bring people back to the state of mind where they were about to purchase, and could seal the deal.

As a corporate marketer, you’re more concerned with activating users because it’s necessary for continued subscription and a long term relationship. Sending a series of tips during a trial period, and capping it off with a ‘last chance, the trial is expiring’ email is a great place to start, and sure to get a conversation going with customers looking for an extension.

In a brick-and-mortar setting, clienteling, or providing a personal touch to shoppers can go a long way to building loyalty. This is usually achieved by using software to learn about customers preferences, behaviors, and purchases, and then having sales reps connect with customers in meaningful ways.

 

The Loyalty Effect In Action

At the highest level, getting all these systems in place can create machine-learning recommendations, which, if you can attain, mean a constant stream of business. Just look at what Netflix is up to:

“A study from Wharton cited that Netflix reported 60% of its sales came from machine-learning recommendations, and 35% of Amazon sales came from system-generated suggestions. Regarding increasing engagement, Venture Beat reports that personalized email subject lines can increase open rates by up to 41%.”

With industry leaders like Netflix heavily pursuing customization and machine-learning, it needs to be on your radar of things to implement. By keeping your messages relevant and personalize, you’ll be able to not only see the benefits in the form of increased revenue but will be able to keep your customers loyal – and more importantly, coming back.

This stuff can get complicated, and there are a lot of plates spinning in the air. But by focusing on your ideal customers and giving them personal attention, you’ll be able to keep them around. For businesses looking to deliver automated personalized omni channel experience book a free consultation with us here at NectarOM to discuss a strategy for your business.

Exclusive Bonus: Download NowThe Personalization Checklist To Increase Customer Loyalty