Hyper-Personalization — the Catalyst In Revolutionalizating the Grocery Industry

Even though eGrocery is growing in popularity, 97% of groceries are still purchased in-store.

Still, digital channels allow consumers to research and gather information during the pre-shopping and planning stages. They also offer tremendous opportunities for grocery retailers to attract customers and increase loyalty.

To get the most out of these digital channels, grocery retailers need to become aware of customers’ expectations as they interact with brands.

Consumers are looking for relevance and personalization everywhere. They don’t have the patience for one-size-fits-all messages that don’t speak to their needs or their relationship with the brand.

The trends that are driving the grocery industry, which include the convergence of online and offline channels, the increase use of social media to connect with customers, the focus on customer experience over price, the empowerment of frontline employees, and the increasing availability of big data — all point to the need for providing a highly-personalized shopping experience.

Grocery retail chains, such as Walmart and Albertson, have been implementing personalization strategies to successfully generate growth and revenue.

In order to stay ahead of your competitors, you need to implement a hyper-personalization strategy that delivers personalized content and offers to your customers as part of a omnichannel marketing strategy.

Single Customer View – The Foundation of Omnichannel Marketing

Many grocery chains already have loyalty programs which allow them to collect a large amount of customer data.

The challenge is to integrate this information with other customer data collected from other channels and compile it all into a 360° customer profile that will allow retailers to deliver targeted messaging and relevant offers.

With this single customer view, technologies, such as machine learning, can be further utilized to analyze the data and apply the insights to inform marketing strategies.

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Hyper-Personalization Will Drive Grocery Retailing

Grocery retailers can augment the power of single customer view with hyper-personalization.

Hyper-personalization refers to the use of data to serve up customized content, products, or promotions based on the preferences and shopping behaviors of individual customers. It helps grocery retailers deliver the right message or offers to their customers in the right place, and at the right time.

With hyper-personalization, you can deliver a seamless shopping experience–whether a customer is shopping online or in-store, looking for a particular list of items or hunting for deals–to increase the relevance and timeliness of your marketing message and promotions.

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How Grocery Retailers Can Use Hyper-Personalization

Grocery retailers can now use omnichannel marketing software to tap into the power of hyper-personalization.

Here’s how to get the most out of your customer data:

1. Create Nimble Personalized Campaigns Backed By Analytics

Replace large-scale, one-size-fits-all marketing campaigns with more frequent small-scale ones to deliver a personal touch. You can analyze customer data to optimize the timing of the messages, offers, and product recommendations for each customer segment.

2. Leverage Real-Time Data

Shorter campaigns allow retailers to react faster to real-time information gathered from customers’ responses to the content and promotions.

By using omnichannel marketing software to gather customer information in real-time, you can personalize customers’ experiences to involve multiple platforms and digital channels. For example, you can use customers’ real-time location and response to pricing to determine the best promotion and offer.

3. Target Advertising Message And Track Results

With the help of omnichannel marketing and personalization software, we may be able to retire the famous saying by John Wanamaker, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

You can now tailor marketing messages to mirror the key elements in the acquisition funnel and create advertising messages that speak to individual customers to move them toward purchasing.

In turn, the effectiveness of these offers and messages can be measured so you can determine what’s working for your audience and make improvements to increase sales for your grocery business and increase ROI.

To fully utilize your customer data and deliver a hyper-personalized customer experience, you need an omnichannel marketing software that brings all the pieces together in one centralized location.

Doing so will help you design a 360-degree customer experience and meet customer expectation so you can tap into the opportunity offered by digital channels to collect and collate relevant data, enhance customer relationships, and increase sales.

How 3 Top Brands are Using Personalization

These days, customers want to feel that they’re being heard and understood by their favorite brands. In fact, 73% of consumers want a more personalized shopping experience. Personalization allows brands to create a unique experience for their customers — in turn, demonstrating that they are being heard, and hopefully contribute to increased sales volume.

And, it is working. According to a study done by Infosys, 86% of consumers are influenced by personalization when making shopping decisions. Consumers are motivated to purchase more when they are made to feel relevant.

Thus, personalization has become increasingly important for brands and their success. Let’s take a look at three brands that are succeeding by bringing personalization into the consumer journey.

Burberry

This 156-year-old brand has pioneered a different kind of personalization for customers. Partnering up with Pinterest, Burberry has given customers a way to build personalized boards with product content provided by Burberry.

The “Cat Lashes” promo initiative offers a personalized experience for customers based on their makeup preferences. Users take a quick questionnaire and get personalized makeup looks and tips through a personalized Pinterest board. Burberry promotes their Cat Lashes Mascara through the Pinterest boards. The personalized boards also offer tips on how to create relevant looks for each customer while also using the Cat Lashes Mascara.

According to an internal study, 42% of consumers have bought products based on promoted pins they saw on Pinterest. Burberry’s “Cat Lashes” initiative is, therefore, capitalizing on Pinterest’s broad consumer base. The personalized boards serve as a promotional hub for the Cat Lashes Mascara, as well as related and relevant Burberry products.

GILT

Gilt.com was listed in Fast Company’s Top 25 Innovative Companies in 2010and ranked first in fashion that year. How did a company, which launched in 2007, garner so much success in just five years? The reason is that the online retailer personalizes sales and promotions for each customer and app user.

The luxury flash sales site has installed a personalized user page online and on the mobile app. This personalization feature is called “Your Personal Sale,” and goes beyond the daily e-mails a shopper receives. The personalized sales, generated by an algorithm, takes into consideration a customer’s entire shopping experience. Based on factors such as purchase history, geographic location, browsing behavior, and personal preferences, “Your Personal Sale” finds fresh items and deals daily. Personalization goes one step further, with Gilt.com also considering size, categories, and brands that customers frequently engage with. Each personalized sale lasts 24 hours, after which a new set of deals and sales are presented. According to CIO Steve Jacobs, personalized sales are “the next phase of the flash sale model.” The company leverages the sense of discovery the app provides, “tailoring [the] shopping experience just for them.”

Gilt.com brings personalization to the online fashion and retail platform and makes a conscious effort to tailor products to its customers. According to  Jacobs, “people are coming back more frequently, and they’re excited to see what’s in their sale tomorrow.” Personalized sales pushed the online retailer to be valued at roughly $1 billion just after five years of launching. Gilt’s personalization strategy has propelled the e-commerce company to enormous success.

Spotify

The online music platform Spotify is the leading music streaming host, despite competitors like iTunes and Google Play.

The introduction of personalized playlists has distinguished Spotify from other streaming sources.

One of these personalized playlist functions is “Discover Weekly.” Discover Weekly is a service which personalizes to each listener’s taste across a variety of genres. A personal playlist of 30 songs is curated and released each Monday based on listening habits. The music streaming service has also launched the “Release Radar” feature. Every Friday, the two-hour playlist is updated with newly released music from artists and bands a listener frequents. In addition, listeners who curate their playlists receive personalized suggestions on their playlists as well. The streaming service learns from personal preferences, songs skipped and replayed, and even looks at micro-genre music preferences to curate the best suggestions for each listener.

Spotify’s lead engineer and algorithm creator Edward Newett says, “we’re trying to show that Spotify understands users better than anyone else.” Within the first 10 months of launching, Discover Weekly saw 5 billion song plays. Senior product owner Matt Ogle says Discover Weekly’s success has “completely changed” the way Spotify interacts with consumers. The great success with user personalization has also increased consumer loyalty. Spotify boasts 40 million paid subscribers, compared to Apple Music’s 20 million paid subscribers.

Personalization is key to a brand’s success and transforms the customer experience. The focus on personalization allows many of these companies to grow as customers engage with brands more and more. With personalization on the rise, it will be interesting to see how industries implement various personalization tactics into their customers’ experiences.

Combining the Art and Science of Retail: JC Penney’s Digital Evolution

Omnichannel Evolution: From Magazine Catalog to Online Catalog

JCPenney was once one of the most influential catalog retailers and an original omnichannel retailer. JCPenney’s efforts to evolve the brick and mortar business has the company advancing omnichannel execution.The introduction of the digital age has provided JCPenney an incentive to create a more sophisticated and modern view of this catalog.  The evolution of the catalog is connecting with customers on how, when, and where they prefer to shop.  

According to JCPenney CEO Marvin Ellison, the company has “developed true omnichannel capabilities” by advancing the brick and mortar store. JCPenney’s omnichannel strategy focuses around the creation of a successful mobile app and the implementation of a buy-online-pick-up-in-store method. Let’s look at each part of JCPenney’s strategy and how these elements are helping JCPenney’s digital expansion.

Mobile App

As part of JCPenney’s evolution, the company has focused largely on created a user-friendly mobile application, taking advantage of the massive growth of mobile channels. The JCPenney app features a sleek design and easy to navigate interface which connects to each shopper’s personal account. The JCPenney app is designed to connect the digital and in-store experience, as seen in the image above. Consequently, the user base rates the app at 4.5 stars, with over one million users. 

The app is a single mobile hub, facilitating online shopping at the customers’ fingertips. As a result, JCPenney creation of a mobile app has allowed them to connect with digitally savvy customers. JCPenney’s app helps shoppers locate items in stores, apply coupons, and also access their JCPenney Rewards. The app customizes to each shopper’s account, personalizing the app based on browsing history, purchase history, and even location. Customers can also make purchases based on what is available in nearby store locations and can even check available inventory.   Consequently, the user base rates the app at 4.5 stars, with over one million users. The evolution of the brick and mortar store to include a mobile platform maintains a personalized omnichannel experience. 

Buy Online pick up in store

JCPenney is also powering their omnichannel experience with the introduction of buy-online-pick-up-in-store option, also known as BOPUS. BOPUS allows shoppers to complete online and mobile purchases with a variety of pick-up options. BOPUS is available in all 1,000 physical locations and synchronizes with the location capability on the mobile app and online platform. Shoppers can make purchases based on the online catalog or available inventory in select locations. The shoppers can even choose which kind of pick up option they would like.

The shipping options include shipping to any location, same day pickup, and fast home delivery. JCPenney has a history of operating through catalog service desks. The direction towards digital catalog enhancement makes JCPenney is one of the biggest retailers to offer online orders to be shipped to any of its 1,000 locations. JCPenney’s successful blend of online retail and in-store pick up has evolved the purpose and functionality of the brick and mortar store.

The BOPUS option that JCPenney provides has also expanded the consumer market. Shoppers who come in to pick up orders have a higher attachment rate. A high attachment rate means shoppers are more likely to buy an additional item in-store when picking up an online order. Because of the integration of the digital and physical market through omnichannel, JCPenney is seeing greater returns .

JCPenney has implemented new omnichannel tactics to bring their catalog into the digital age. By marrying the physical and online experience, they have successfully rejuvenated their customer journey. JCPenney plans to continue their evolution through next year with the replacement of point-of-sale units with mobile devices. It will be exciting to see how JCPenney further develops through 2017.

 

How Personal Is Your Personalized Marketing?

Discover how automation can put the “personal” back in personalization

Is your personalized marketing really that personal?

The overwhelming majority of consumers prefer personalized experiences when engaging with their favorite brands (more than 70% of consumers in the US and UK!). Personalized experiences are not only very gratifying, but they satisfy two very important, and absolutely necessary, digital age value points: the consumer need for control, and information overload prevention.

The personalization trend has picked up steam in recent years as marketers and brands now recognize the great benefits of providing consumers a personalized experience, including: faster response times, improved engagement rates, and higher conversion rates. Yet, as the digital age has continued to advance, a troubling trend has developed… personalization no longer appears to be personal.

Contrary to what appears to be popular opinion, “Hello, <Insert Name>, we have a special offer!” is not personalization. Remember, today’s consumers are tech savvy, and well versed in the methods of digital marketing. They understand that the more times their name and contact information appears on a promotion or ad, the more likely it is that the engagement was anything but personal.

There are two pertinent questions that we must ask:

  1. How does this affect consumers?
  2. How have marketers arrived to this point?

Answering the first question is easy – they don’t like it.

While advances in data mining and analysis have granted marketers the ability to track consumer behaviors and preferences like never before, personalization doesn’t necessary equate to relevancy. For example, using a consumer’s name 10 times in the two paragraphs of a welcome email does not demonstrate that you know anything about them… it in fact conveys the opposite. Another important point to remember: digital age consumers want to know that brands and marketers understand them.

Moving on the to second question, in order to understand the current state of personalized marketing, and how marketers can develop a more “personal” relationship with consumers, we need to take a more indepth look at how our digital age reliance on technology has detrimentally influenced our creative ability to market.

Let’s quickly review!

Digital Age Tech & The “Personalization” Problem

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Across the entire spectrum of the diverse digital age, products and services are being infused with cutting edge tech to streamline the purchasing process. Consumers have become dependent on tech to fuel their need for convenience, and marketers have come to rely heavily on tech-infused processes for delivering content and value to consumers. Some of the most recent marketing advancements owed to technology include:

  • Mobile Technology: The consumer value paradigm has shifted towards small screen optimization and responsiveness. Today’s consumers research, purchase and connect all via mobile devices. Tech-infused omni channel solutions now provide consumers the ability to move between mobile applications and websites with fast loading times and responsive content. The next step in omni channel mobile solutions, and one that is on the cusp of being fully adopted, is that of wearable technology. In the future, mobile will mean wearable, and the omni channel will become a fully integrated part of the consumer and their experience.
  • Big Data: Data collection for marketing in the digital age means producers have the ability to optimize content and marketing solutions based on consumer information. Data in the digital age has allowed marketers to share relevant  content with customers, and has provided the ability to adapt to consumer demand in real time. In turn, this data responsiveness has improved the overall consumer perception of brand value, because consumers receive a more personalized experience.
  • Global Reach: The digital world is a global world, and perhaps the most important contribution of technology from the last 20 years is its ability to connect diverse consumers from diverse cultures. As today’s technology has brought fast and affordable internet to most of the world, omni channel marketing strategies must now accommodate a global audience and implement methods for the global transfer of value.

As we can see, the technology of today has provided both consumers and marketers alike with a wealth of advancements. Yet, for all it has given, it has also dulled one very important aspect of digital marketing:

Our ability to deliver consumer intimacy and personalize.

Consumers have become lost in an endless sea of technological noise, wandering between a multitude of similar brands that provide similar products, services, and first name “personalization.” Digital marketers have fallen into a predictable marketing pattern, and as a result, they are losing their ability to transfer value.

Remember, the goal of any omni channel marketing campaign is to provide consumers with value. Value is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as:

“The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.”

As Forrester details in its 2015 study, “The Power of Personalization,” not only do consumers find importance, worth, and usefulness in receiving personalized and practical information, but it has come to define their digital age relationships with brands. Omni channel marketing meets this consumer need through a mutually beneficial exchange of value. Consumers receive a personalized experience with quality goods and services, and producers receive consumer loyalty and business. If we no longer have the ability to build intimate relationships, it is hard to satisfy consumers.

Recognizing that successful brands provide their consumers intuitive and personalized experiences, the natural solution to meet the needs of those consumers expecting “The Internet of Me” is nothing more than a new take on an old trick – automated personalization.

Let’s take a look!

The Solution – Automated Personalization

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The digital age focus of marketers when it comes to automated personalization should the efficient extraction of consumer insight from data.

It is the key to putting the “personal” back in personalization, as automation technology can seamlessly adapt to changes in consumer behavior and preferences. It is important to remember that the notion of personalized marketing in the digital age was founded upon email marketing. Back in the early beginnings of the digital age (2006/2007), marketers discovered that the clickthrough rates for emails significantly increased when a potential consumer’s first name was placed in the subject line. With this new weapon of marketing warfare the email was brought back from the dead, and the modern digital age developed.

There was just one problem – consumers caught on.

Consumers quickly realized that the “Hello, <Insert Name>” email subject lines were not true personalization, and that brands didn’t know them any better than they originally thought. It was gimmick marketing at its worst. Recalling this lesson from the past, it is easy to understand the importance of marketing automation technology today. Automated personalization leaves the heavy lifting to technology. It adapts to consumer preferences, provides relevance, and allows marketing teams to focus on understanding the consumer experience. By studying the path that digital age consumers take, and creating targeted messages for each phase, automation software can then decide when, where and how to best apply personalized consumer experiences.

Yet, many digital marketers are often overwhelmed by the immense volume of data that is involved with automated marketing. According to a recent study by Monetate, even though 94% of marketers understand how valuable personalization is to digital age success, and 91% of marketers believe successful brands market with data, the study found 95% of all data remained “untapped,” while 26% of organizations do not use real-time on-site behavior to personalize experiences.

The reality of automated personalization is that it unlocks new visitor data, efficiently uses pre-existing data, and consistently improves to make sure that content is put in the best possible position to be seen! Combined with omni channel solutions, marketers can leverage consumer interactions and create personalized and intimate experiences across multiple channels of consumer communication.

What are some digital age examples of putting the “personal” back in personalization?

Let’s take a look.

Automation Example #1 – ZURB (Welcome Emails)

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Silicon Valley based design company ZURB is creatively using email automation to connect with their subscribers by transferring a mixture of design knowledge and intimacy.

According to Daniel Codella, a marketer at ZURB, the company has a variety of newsletter templates that can be modified and personalized for different segmented consumers and target audiences. ZURB has implemented a variety of different email templates that will automatically send subscribers a highly unique welcome email that includes reading suggestions based on previously noted interests. According to the company, these emails now have around a 70-75% open rate and a 40-45% click through rate.

In the words of Codella himself:

“ZURB’s mantra as a company is “design for people.” People are at the center of everything we do. We think about who the user is, and what they need. The emails we send are going out to thousands of people. We don’t think of the members of our lists as numbers — we think of our users as people, and constantly consider what value we can provide them.”

In an age where consumers question how well their favorite brands know them, this type of automation and personalization creates a competitive edge. While ZURB is not going to win any awards for their email design (see picture above), this type of personalized automation is highly effective in transferring value. This basic approach can, and should, be implemented and improved upon through personalized creativity.

Potential strategies for improvement include:

  • Sending product recommendations based on purchase history
  • Inviting interaction via social media buzz campaigns
  • Offering promotions and discounts based on interests
  • Providing access to valuable information via webinars/tutorial videos

All of these options offer a degree of personalized value; how much so will depend on the consumer/potential consumer and their prior interactions.

Automation Example #2 – BuzzFeed (Subscriber Engagement)

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Typically recognized for its “top ten” lists focusing on need to know Game of Thrones facts, digital media/news master BuzzFeed does a lot more than set the agenda for Millennial pop culture. Recently, the company has put together a growing email marketing campaign focused on delivering valuable content to its readers via automated processes.

BuzzFeed has created more than 20 unique email newsletters that are specifically designed to meet the personalization needs of readers. From politics, to health, to sports, BuzzFeed has studied what their readers want, and they have engineered their emails to deliver value. In fact, one of the top five referrers to their website is email, with each visitor spending three minutes or longer on their website!

The picture above is an example of a knowledge course that BuzzFeed automatically personalizes and sends to subscribers via email. By leveraging browsing history and other data, BuzzFeed is able to send along multi-lesson courses that deliver value to their readers. These courses not only provide knowledge, but they automatically keep readers engaged over a number of weeks. BuzzFeed segments their actual and target audiences by interest, as consumers are more likely to opt out of emails when the content they receive is irrelevant. As a mass media publisher, BuzzFeed recognizes the need to send their dedicated readers content that is unique to their interests, and at strategic intervals.

BuzzFeed is a great digital age example that even the largest media sites can use automation to drive engagement and keep readers engaged.

Example #3 – Caribou Coffee (Organic Customization)

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Caribou Coffee is the nation’s second largest specialty coffee company, with close to 500 coffeehouses. The company is a great example of the digital age balance needed to successfully provide an automated and personalized consumer experience. Caribou takes the “wait and see” approach of allowing their consumers to shop without overwhelming opt-in noise, while simultaneously (and subtly) encouraging consumer / brand interaction.

By implementing a mix of standard and creative capture points, Caribou is able to take note of consumer preferences without altering the organic nature of the consumer experience. While the website does include the standard registration and email opt-in form, ecommerce customization is where Caribou’s personalization truly shines. From roast varieties to syrup flavors, Caribou is able to capture consumer preferences, and in turn, use this data to provide homepage suggestions for the consumer’s next visit.

Take note of the homepage pictured above… it does not exaggerate the need for email opt-ins and gimmicky subscriptions. What the homepage is actually doing is providing unique coffee suggestions based on the previous search, customization, and purchase history of the consumer. The suggestions by their very nature are organic, and not at all overwhelming. Through personalized content, imagery, and promotions, Caribou can continuously update individual user content for a fresh look, and a more intimate consumer relationship. With richer options, deeper content, and organic personalization, Caribou is a great example of automated personalization in the digital age.

As Mike Tattersfield, president and CEO, recently told Forbes:

“Our guests are extremely loyal and passionate about our product offerings, and so we are thrilled to be able to reward them for simply being our fans.”

In Conclusion….

Marketers can no longer survive by focusing on single channels and single solutions… the consumer journey will not support it. Today’s marketers must creatively integrate multiple channels while simultaneously providing an intimate, personal, and relevant consumer experience. In other words, marketers must put the “personal” back in personalization. For this task, there is no better solution than automation.

Exclusive Bonus: Download this Free Guide on personalization best practices for beginners!

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common?

These 4 Billion-Dollar Companies Are Leaving the Competition In the Dust…

The customer is always right, right? Well, it all depends on what kind of experience customers have with your brand. Their experience will not only dictate how often they’ll complain, but how successful your company will be. Think of some of the biggest new brands – ones like Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon. All started within 15-20 years, but all have seen incredible success. Want to know why? Because they spent a lot of time and money making the customer experience the best it can be.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of tactics big brands use to create a personal experience, and software to do it on a budget.

Recently, taking the customer experience to the next level is possible through personalizing the content. It’s been an important cornerstone of successful marketing for some time now.

Think back to how this got done before the web. Companies were talking to customers, giving them surveys to try and find out as much as they could about them.

These days companies have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, and are embracing data to make it work for them. This article will explore how four companies (Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Best Buy) adapted over the past five years to see amazing growth, largely because of personalization.

 

Google

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

This company needs no introduction, and I bet you can already start to connect the dots on how they’ve managed to leverage personalization to great success. First, we need to take a step back and understand how Google makes its money. 89% of it comes from ad revenues, so for all intents and purposes, we’re only going to focus on that. So the question is, how do they leverage personalization to see the 66-billion-dollar revenue they pulled in last year.

 

Personalized Search

Google works best as a profile-based service, which means that to get the most out of it, you’ll need to sign into an account. From Gmail to YouTube, Google accounts work with a lot of services that people use regularly. Sure, you can still use it without signing in, but that is where the real personalization begins. This first point is pretty obvious. Depending on what you search for, and what your browsing history is, Google will serve you different sites.

Despite this fact, most people still don’t mind using it. By knowing what you’re searching for, they can offer products they think you’ll want to see. Yes, they are skewing the data. If you want a completely unbiased web search, consider using something like duckduckgo.com. Google is banking on a complex algorithm that takes sites you’ve visited and continues to show similar ones. If they know the type of sites you enjoy, why not show you more of the same?

 

Personalized Ads

This takes the first point to the next level and is made obviously clear after searching for a specific topic that you wouldn’t usually search. As an interesting experiment to illustrate this, I changed up my searches for a week. I love cars and do a lot of car-related searches. Understandably, most of my ads (when ad blocker was turned off) were for car-related products. I tried searching for something completely unrelated to cars: bird watching. Google noticed and then started showing me tranquil ads for bird watching equipment. Anyone can run this experiment, and it’s interesting to see how your search affects everything around you.

Though this may come off as creepy to some, it makes sense. If I am genuinely interested in all this bird watching stuff, maybe a company is offering a sale on those killer binoculars that I was looking for; so, I’ll click an ad, Google will get paid, and I’ll have some nice binoculars. Thanks, Google!

 

Personalized Videos

This last example is the natural progression from search and ad personalization. Since Google owns YouTube, it’s already happening. Depending on what you usually watch, it will curate your content to show you related videos.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of tactics big brands use to create a personal experience, and software to do it on a budget.

Though most, or all, of us, hate video ads, they know it’s a numbers game. Sure, you may close an ad every time, but 1 in 100 people might click it, and 1 in 1,000 might go on to buy the product. With these ads being served to millions of people every day, there is a lot of money to be made.

Google has mastered personalization to try and give you what you’re looking for before you even look, and the numbers speak for themselves. If this approach weren’t working, they wouldn’t be doing it.

Next, let’s look at everyone’s favorite streaming site: Netflix.

 

Netflix

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

“Netflix and chill,” may be a popular saying, but they are not chill about their dedication to providing you with shows you want to watch. Unlike Google, Netflix doesn’t make their money through ads, but through subscriptions, so their main focus is retention and keeping existing customers happy. They do this by filtering through their sea of available content to give you only what you want to watch.

Let’s look at how they’ve managed to leverage personalization to create a unique experience for all of their 81.5 million subscribers.

 

Recommendations

The “Recommended Shows” sections of Netflix aren’t new. In fact, they were working on improving their recommendation algorithm when they were still mailing out DVDs. Way back in 2006, they announced a $1 million prize to any team who could help improve their recommendation algorithm by just 10%. It’s clear they’re serious about constantly improving recommendations, and things have only gotten better for them since they made the jump to streaming in 2007.

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

Compared to a DVD watch list, instantly streaming content gave them a lot more data about people’s viewing habits. While they only had a list to work with in the past, now they can see what shows you watch, how much of each show you watch, what time you watch, and a lot more. This knowledge about your viewing habits helps them keep you engaged by ensuring you always have something new to watch.

 

Multiple Devices

Once Netflix made the jump to streaming, it opened up a whole new platform to reach new potential users. The thing is, not everyone’s the same, and different people prefer to watch movies or TV on different media. Netflix quickly understood this dilemma and saw the potential to have their service on different platforms. Rather than just being available through their site on a PC, they opened it up to Roku, Xbox, Apple TV and many others.

Netflix has one thing down: they are available to personalize content wherever and however their customers want it. From laptops, to phones, and even gaming consoles, Netflix is available wherever you want to use it.

 

Breaking The 4th Wall

The last piece of personalization that helps Netflix deliver a seamless customer experience is by now bringing recommendations right to your inbox. They knew people spent a lot of time just browsing for something to new watch, so now they help out by emailing suggestions directly to you. By using all of the data from your account, if a new show or movie that they think you’ll like comes out, they’ll let you know. You can even add it to your list from your phone!

Delivering useful content and recommendations is the type of omni channel personalization that has separated Netflix from the competition. They’re able to deliver a seamless experience from start to finish.

 

Amazon

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

You may have heard of this company. They used to sell books online, but are now the largest marketplace in the world, and are a perfect e-commerce example for how personalization helped them dominate the marketplace. As an e-commerce site, they make their money by selling products, and make even more money by recommending other items.

The motivation for recommendation is getting you to purchase more items. As the web grew, and more data points became available about their users, they were able to track more and more information, and make appropriate recommendations.

 

Frequently Bought Together

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

If you’ve ever used Amazon, you’ve seen this section, and it’s an ingenious piece of personalization. These recommendations are not serendipitous or a fluke. They are cold and calculated. Fortune describes it pretty well:

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 from product discovery to checkout.

Not only does this work, but they have multiple areas, each offering different suggestions: frequently bought together, customers who bought this item also bought, sponsored products relating to this item, and what other items do customers buy after viewing this item.

Those are four other suggestions to upsell and get you to buy more products. It’s no wonder why Amazon is the leader in the marketplace. This alone shows their understanding and value of customer data.

 

Follow Up Emails

If you’re running an e-commerce business, then you know that it’s a fact that a certain percentage of people will abandon their carts before purchasing. It doesn’t mean that they hate your brand or don’t want the product; life is complicated, and lots of things are vying for our attention.

With nearly 44% of cart abandonment emails being opened, a good percentage of those result in sales. This kind of personalization and customer experience isn’t hard to achieve, and any e-commerce business should be doing it. All it takes is a simple email with the items they left in the cart to try and rekindle the relationship and emotion felt in the first place.

 

Amazon Dash

This last product of Amazon’s takes personalization from the digital into the real world. If you’ve been following along, then you understand that people like to interact with brands on their terms, and that repeat business is key for a successful brand.

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

Amazon took their one-click checkout feature and made it into a real button. They realized that certain people would buy the same staples like Tide, Gatorade, or razors, so they made it even easier for you to buy them with one touch. Going from multiple steps to one press of a button is the next step in personalization and takes the customer experience to the next level. I’m excited to see what else they have up their sleeves.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of tactics big brands use to create a personal experience, and software to do it on a budget.

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

Not mentioned in the title, but equally as interesting is Best Buy, and they’re the last example of how a brick-and-mortar company can also adapt to the online data revolution and go toe-to-toe with the best of them. Worldwide, they have a 22% hold in the electronics market and are trying to close the gap with Amazon. To do so, they’re implementing similar tactics as Amazon and capitalizing on the shift to personalization.

 

Catching Up With The Rest

If you’ve bought something at Best Buy recently, you’ll notice that they too are sending recommendation emails. If you bought an Xbox and they have your email address, you might get emails suggesting new game titles you might like.

Of course, Best Buy stores benefit from the ability to offer instant gratification, but they also separate themselves from other online retailers by offering store-exclusive content. That means if you preorder a game at Best Buy, you’ll get exclusive access to limited-edition content, not available to anyone else. With prices being pretty consistent for video games, offering the bonus of additional content is an interesting approach to helping close the gap with online retailers.

 

Price Match

Around 70% of Best Buy’s inventory is available cheaper elsewhere online (Amazon, eBay), so how do they still manage to compete? To combat this, they’ve implemented a pretty liberal price-match policy for brick-and-mortar as well as online retailers. This policy is a pretty bold statement and makes a strong case for those who prefer to buy all of their electronics at once to do it all at Best Buy. If online retailers can’t compete with price, then they’ll have to get creative to compete with Best Buy moving forward.

Personal Contact

Though brick-and-mortar can seem like an excessive overhead in our digital society, Best Buy uses it to leverage their “blue shirt” experts and staff, who give a real personal touch. This is something an online store just can’t do on the same level. Sure, they could have a pop-up live chat window, but it just can’t replace actual face-to-face, human contact. Their staff is well versed in what they’re selling (sometimes that’s because they are actually employees of the brands they are recommending, instead of being Best Buy employees), and can usually understand your concerns and make real-time recommendations.

Though large businesses are generally not known for their speed in implementing change, all of these companies have done a great job of using data to their advantage to keep things personal for their customers and deliver an amazing overall experience. And as far as it looks, the customers have returned the favor by staying loyal to them and purchasing time after time.

 

 

 

The Business Imperative: Personalization

This Wednesday, the DFW-Retail Executives Association ended its season on a timely topic for retailers: Personalization.  If you missed out on this panel or are one of the 77 percent of companies saying, “In 2016 we need to be doing personalization,” have no fear we have the panel highlights for you.

Cover Photo Amrit Speaking at REA Personalization Panel
DFW REA Personalization Panel

The panel consisted of three experts,

  • Jeff Rosenfeld-Vice President of Customer Insights & Analytics at The Neiman Marcus Group
  •  Veeral Rathod- Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder at J. Hilburn Clothiers
  • And NectarOM’s very own Chief Executive Officer & Founder Amrit Kirpalani.

Panel Moderator Steve Dennis kicked off the panel discussion setting the stage for why personalization is quickly becoming a business imperative.  Explaining that personalization is  “an imperative because the battle has shifted from market share to share of attention- and it’s increasingly difficult to be the signal amidst the noise.”

The rest of the discussion focused on how personalization is changing their marketing efforts, what challenges they faced when launching their personalization efforts, how it is changing marketing, and finally discussed how other companies could successfully launch their own personalization efforts.

Here are a few of our favorite topics from the panel,

Test and Learn

Don’t start off trying to personalize every message coming from every channel.  Amrit suggested that the clients with the most success started off small.  Start off testing a few channels and messages at a time, learn what worked and then test some more.

Be Prepared to Think About Marketing Differently

Personalization fundamentally changes how marketing has been done for years. Instead of a one size fits all strategy, personalization shifts the focus to marketing on a one-to-one level.  Jeff and Amrit agreed that culture change was one of the biggest challenges when companies started discussing personalization.

Not a One Size Fits All Solution.

Take the time to figure out how personalization fits into your company’s structure and into what your customers want.   The Neiman Marcus Group and  J. Hilburn Clothiers both used personalization in the retail space, however they each had a unique approach that fit their customer and business model’s needs.

Have the right partners in place

Not everyone can afford to have a team of data scientists creating custom algorithms.  However, personalization is something that is becoming more realistic for companies of all shapes and sizes to start adding to their marketing efforts. All you need to do is find the right partner.

If you are interested in learning more about sending tailored messages to your customers in real-time across all your owned channels let us know and schedule a demo to see the NectarSuite in action.

4 Marketing Personalization Mistakes to Avoid

girl-covering-face
We’ve posted quite a few articles on marketing personalization best practices and ways to increase value with personalization, but what we haven’t touched on are things to avoid when it comes to building momentum with marketing personalization and automation.

Here are four marketing personalization mistakes you absolutely have to avoid like the plague if you want a smooth ride(relatively) on your path to personalization.

1. Infringing on customer privacy and not protecting customer data

Don’t be manipulative when it comes to gather information from customers

All it takes is one screw up for a huge PR disaster and plenty of lost potential and current customers. Just don’t do it.

This applies to email opt ins on retailer websites, to mobile app permissions, to social log ins on websites. Be clear, respect your customers by letting them know exactly what you will be using information for, and you’ll earn their respect.

Since one of the first steps of true hyper-personalization is building an integrated data management system that can bring in multiple external and internal data sets, the inherent risk is quite clear. With all your data in one location, there must be significant care in protecting the customer gold harvested because one data breach can mean multiple streams of data are vulnerable.

Be honest with your customers about what you are taking from them, and once you have their trust, protect what you have. It’s that simple.

2. Relying on one set of data

To build a 360 degree view of your customers, you need to draw insights from various data sources. While one data source may constitute a large majority of your data analysis into your personalization platform, the more diversified your data collection points are, the more accurate your predictive analytics will be.

For instance, a big box retailer with may point to POS data and their eCommerce data as their main data feeds into a marketing personalization tool, but forgetting to integrate social media data for crucial life event data would be simply be a waste. There will be sources of data that will be more relevant than others, but finding out where to piece in and weigh each data channel is too important to ignore.

3. Neglecting testing

Testing is a pain. Multivariate testing can get very messy with hyper-segmentation, but always remember to test while executing. The closer you get to hyper-personalization, the more marketers will be tempted to skip various parts of the testing process.

Don’t fall into that trap. Just because the testing process will become more complicated doesn’t mean you should take your foot off the testing pedal. It will become even more important to your personalization journey that all your data sources, creative pieces, and messages are carefully tested to optimize your personalization efforts. Remember that a marketing personalization tool is exactly that…a tool that needs constant recalibration to make the high, consistent returns that you expect.

4. Thinking you’ve reached true hyper-personalization

Thinking that hyper-personalization is a place where you will someday reach and lay claim to is unreasonable and dangerous to long-term marketing personalization efforts.

Algorithms can be update and tweaked, new sources of data can be added, execution points can be refined and tested.

Knowing your customer 100% and predicting their needs exactly won’t happen without having Jedi mind reading powers, but you can always keep moving in the right direction.

Nobody said personalization was easy, which is why very few have figured out the right path towards marketing personalization. With these tips in mind, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and money while consistently moving and accelerating in the right direction.

Achieving Conversion with Website Personalization

marketing personalization

Delivering a hyper-personalized email marketing campaign isn’t the only avenue to delivering relevant content and offers to each and every customer. Website personalization gives customers access to a personalized onsite experience.

What’s the difference between a personalized and non-personalized website?

Non-Personalized – The content presented is the same for all customers and lacks personalization. Finding desired products and content relies on search and navigation. The customer must first select an item before it’s presented to them.

Personalized – The content presented is controlled, targeted and based on your big data. When a customer clicks through, targeted products and offers will be displayed based on their browsing history, purchases made, website behavior, lifestyle, etc.

As a marketer you want every customer to experience something personal and relevant. In doing so, you need to act on big data insights to segment and deliver personalized experiences in real time. This, in turn, drives higher conversions and revenue.

How can you turn non-personalized into personalized?

Personalized Greeting – When a customer clicks through, have a personalized greeting such as, “Welcome back, Mrs. Jones.”

Personalized Options – This includes the option to view account information, edit and update profile, add a profile picture and once click features that pulls in targeted information.

Visible Browsing History – Let’s say Mrs. Jones was shopping for workout apparel and had viewed a dozen items. Before making a purchase she was interrupted and had to step away for a few hours. When she returns and clicks through, a visible browsing history would pull in the items she’s previously viewed. This prevents Mrs. Jones from having to re-search the items.

Personalized Content – When a customer clicks through, it’s important to have a hyper-personalized landing page based on preferences, browsing & purchase history, profile etc. Mrs. Jones has browsed and purchased workout apparel and home office solutions.  The landing page, or a portion of the content, should address her needs and preferences.

Marketing Personalization Then & Now

marketing evolutionLet’s Take A Trip Back In Time…

When you sit back and look at the technology today versus 15 or 20 years ago, the first thing that probably comes to mind is, “Times have changed.”  When you think about it, the advances in technology over the years is quite phenomenal.  The same holds true for marketing personalization, one-to-one marketing and hyper-personalized customer communications. At one time, acquiring customers, boosting revenue, growing a customer base and retaining customers required a much different and often tedious process.

Some of you may remember these “old school” methods.

1. The 3 Foot Rule – Although it was somewhat awkward, this method entailed sparking up a conversation about your business opportunity or product with anyone within a 3 foot radius.

2.  Prospecting Strangers – This is sometimes referred to as cold market recruiting and it involves a strategy of approaching strangers, creating curiosity, getting people’s interest and implementing a path to present your idea, opportunity and product. Talking with potential customers was also a way to gather information for a customer profile.

3.  Paper Ads – At one time, paper ads (ie magazines, newspapers, catalogs, etc) were heavily relied on for marketing campaigns as this method was the only way to reach thousands of potential customers.

4. Trade Shows – This gave business owners the opportunity to display products, introduce upcoming products, sell in mass quantities, acquire new customers and distribute paper ads in the form of fliers. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people flock to trade shows every year to “get the scoop,” take advantage of special offers, and see what’s coming in the year ahead.

5. Mass Mailers – Hands down, this had to be one of the most grueling tasks. The process of mass mailing was a complex strategy that was extremely time consuming. You had to collate a target audience, print out hundreds of fliers, address envelopes, seal and send. Then, wait. Unfortunately, this approach didn’t deliver results that were immediately visible.

6.  Door to Door – At one time, going door to door to introduce and sell a product was a sole means of getting the word out there about your product and would drive immediate results. You had the product in hand, a sales pitch and, if warranted, a demonstration. When all was said and done, you knew if you had a new customer or not.

7.  Word of Mouth – Regardless of the advancements in technology or marketing personalization, word of mouth will never phase out or lose it’s impact.  This is by far one of the most important elements in a business. Positive word of mouth is the modus operandi engine behind reaching and obtaining success.

Granted, most of these techniques have been modified and advancements made however, there is one thing that hasn’t…the need for marketing personalization.

Although some of these are still used and hold a great deal of importance, the marketing personalization road map has changed drastically.  The process has been intricately modified to cover every detail and behavior to substantiate big data. A great deal of time and work that has gone into developing solutions to connect customer data for marketing personalization, trigger marketing, personalized communications and data integration.

Old School has transpired into the here and now…

1.  One-to-One Marketing – Individualizing every bit of data and leveraging social data to establish and create one-to-one marketing messages across all digital channels. This technology allows the market to engage with a customer in ways they never could before.

2. Connecting Customer Data – Facilitating data integration based on browsing & purchase history, web & mobile click tracking, email, CRM, demographics, social, etc.

3. Creating a 360 Degree Customer Profile – In the process of connecting customer dots, and customer lifecycle management, a complete customer profile can be obtained so your company can deliver relevant content to each and every customer in real time.

4. Generating Hyper-Personalized Content – Your 360 degree customer profiles, along with segmenting your data, will determine the most accurate route to deploy content, products and information based on immediate customer needs.

5. Trigger Marketing – Executing a successful and profitable campaign is possible by honing in on triggers, identifying events and communicating in real time during these pre-planned points in time.

6. The Small Details – These details aren’t so small and play a big part in the road map to success. Listening to what your customer is doing and using adaptive algorithms gives you the ability to observe, test and optimize, key in on insight generation, evaluate and optimize your hyper-personalized content. This in turn will fine tune accuracy, value and appearance of marketing campaigns.

Modern technology has come a long way and it’s a far cry from hitting the pavement and go about your company or solely relying on paper ads to spread the word.  Old school methods are still applied today and the importance of these shouldn’t be ignored. One feeds off the other and the end result is a strong and loyal customer base with a steady stream of new customers.

 

 

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