Amazon…You’re Doing It Right

amazon shopping

Amazon excels in the area of marketing personalization.  They’ve mastered the art of creating a hyper personalized shopping experience for their customers saving them both time and money. With the data to back it up, they’ve created 360 degree customer profiles. This allows Amazon to connect the customer dots and divide their customers into discerning groups to prevent generic mass emailing. Personalized marketing emails are created based on segmented data that includes social data, website activity, browsing history, areas of interest, past purchase history, etc.

How can Amazon attribute marketing personalization to their success?

1.  Paying attention to big data.  Think about a moment when you’ve had to purchase a gift for someone. Naturally, you put some thought into this. During that thought process, you gather up relevant information about this person. Who is this person? What do they like? What do they enjoy doing? What are their interests?  With that 360 degree view, you’re able to come up with a few gift ideas suitable for that one person.  The same concept applies to marketing personalization and how Amazon uses that to target customers. They integrate social data, customer purchases, browsing history, customer lifecycles, and rich customer profiles to create hyper-personalized communications. Within these communications are offers, products and content that targets each individual customer’s needs and interests.

2.  Hyper-Personalized communications at just the right time.  Once this information is gathered, Amazon uses it to disperse real time communications to their customers that is personable, friendly, and addresses their needs.  Let’s say Jill W. got a new puppy 2 weeks ago.  Amazon determined this through gathering social information, traditional personaization data, and browsing history.  By combining all of this information via marketing personalization, Amazon sends Jill an email with a variety of offers and products that she may need like puppy pads, puppy food, dog beds and pet toys. When Jill purchases a couple of these items, another real time email is sent suggesting other items that may interest her based on recent purchases.

3. Recognizing the little extras drive big results. Through marketing personalization and big data, Amazon targets their customers by throwing in a few of those “little extras.” A few days before the first of the month, Amazon sent Jill and email with a slew of October deals and coupons for puppy supplies. Another little extra is the email they sent Jill letting her know Criminal Minds: Season 8 was now available for purchase.  Over the past couple of years she had purchased seasons 1-7.  Amazon has also determined that Jill is a bargain shopper and will send her emails with deep discounts on products based on her browsing and purchase history. These little extras make a big different and can boost your revenue and sales.

Can your company acquire the same marketing personalization as Amazon?  The answer is yes!  With Nectar Software Products, you can increase revenue and customer engagement by connecting customer dots and creating a thorough 360 degree customer profiles.  Unlock marketing personalization and big data’s full potential by connecting customer data, gaining social insights, hyper-personalizing communications and increasing social media ROI. You can this this quickly and cost-effectively.

Check out Nectar Solutions to find out how!

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos starts his High Orde...
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos starts his High Order Bit presentation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Can Jeff Bezos Turn the Tide at The Washington Post by Introducing Personalization?

 

When I read about Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post, I was surprised and also hopeful. I am a big Bezos fan and if anyone can transform the “newspaper industry,” I think Mr. Bezos can. Will he bring newspapers into the 21st century just as he did retail with Amazon?  Will the Post begin to use personalization to engage readers with their content?  Will they use personalization to deliver the most relevant ads to their readers?  A large part of Amazon’s success is due to their personalization prowess, and Bezos is Amazon.

Think about it:  Amazon wows its customers with their ability to know what you want and/or need, be it on the commerce or the customer service fronts.  I’ve drunk the Amazon kool-aid. I probably spend 80%+ of my non-perishable grocery retail purchases with Amazon and you know why? Because I feel like they know me, like I’m a member of their family.  Personalization works!

And if for some reason, they get me wrong now and again, I go online or pick up the phone and ask for help.  I don’t cringe before contacting Amazon’s customer service center and our interaction never ends with me wanting to scream in frustration.  (We’ve all been there with other companies’ customer service, right?) Amazon performs head-and-shoulders above its competition on both commerce and service because they have all this big data they’ve collected about me.  And they use it wisely, to make my life better.  My life being better > Concern about Amazon collecting my data for personalization.

But…

Can product and customer personalization be transferred to the editorial content world?  That’s the story I’ll be following.  If a newspaper–print or digital–could engage me with extremely relevant editorial content the way Amazon does with goods and services, they would definitely get my loyalty.  And if. while reading the articles, I only (or mostly) see only those ads that are relevant for me, I  would probably also become loyal to those advertisers.  Probably.

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The most recent retail sales figures from February surprised most people. Everyone expected a modest increase because of the expiration of the payroll tax holiday. But, WHOA, they were much better than the future prognosticators’ expectations. And the biggest winner? Amazon, eCommerce. Everything from a-z indeed.

Slate magazine said it best in their tweet: “Retail sales were up in February as Amazon just KILLED department stores.” According to Slate, general merchandisers (including department stores) saw sales declines of 4% while Amazon eCommerce saw 14% sales increases.

So now the question is why?  Why is Amazon eCommerce doing so well while similar brick-and-mortar stores aren’t? Let’s look at what Amazon does well:

  • They have a vast assortment, yet it’s relatively easy to find what you want in a very short amount of time.
  • You get your order when Amazon says you will and in the condition they say.
  • They offer adjunct services to keep you in the Amazon family (and website), like Prime, which not only gives you free shipping but lets you watch shows for free.
  • They allow you to shop on amazon on every device imaginable.
  • Customer service responds to your questions or concerns very quickly.
  • Returns are simple.

In other words, Amazon eCommerce makes the shopping experience easy, consistent and pleasurable.

But other department stores with online stores do this too, right?  Many of them do.

And many argued vociferously, as recently as a few months ago, that the reason Amazon was winning was because of the price advantage related to not having to charge taxes.  Well, guess what?  Amazon has started charging sales taxes and they’re STILL winning.

Could it be that not only do they make it easy, consistent and pleasurable, but they connect with us, the customers, because they seem to KNOW us?  How often have you gone to Amazon.com to browse for one thing and ended up buying more than you expected?  I have. Lots. And I contend that it’s because they always seem to know what I need (okay, it’s want). Regardless, I always buy more than I probably should because I like what Amazon recommends for me.  I like how they personalize my shopping experience.

Well, here at Nectar, not only can we personalize your company’s shopping experience, we can hyper-personalize it!  Want to learn more?  It’s easy. Contact us for a demo!

Want to learn more or just shoot the breeze about hyper-personalization?  Contact me at patricia@nectarom.com.

Patricia Blair

VP Marketing, Nectar Online Media

 

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