All things considered, it’s a must…
There’s lots of decisions to be made and various avenues to consider as a marketer. One of the more prominent, hands down, is Marketing Personalization. The road map of promoting your products, generating interest, acquiring customers, obtaining & expanding a loyal customer base and boosting your revenue is vast. It’s no easy feat.
When it’s time to substantiate a plan of action, there’s a slew of questions darting from every direction. The most pressing of all questions leans towards, “Is there a need for marketing personalization and how important is this?” An extreme “in a nutshell” answer is YES and VERY. But, you’re not here for one word answers…
Let’s sift through to some of the more salient fundamentals of marketing personalization…
1. You’ve got some hardcore competition – Ninety trillion emails are sent out each year. Approximately 70% of those emails are not personalized and are considered generic while 25% contain a trivial amount of marketing personalization. Bottom line…less than 10% of emails received are considered legit by the recipient. The rest are deemed as “spam” and dispersed to the trash bin unopened. That’s not where you want to be. We’ve all heard the expression, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” With 90 trillion emails being sent every year, there’s a tremendous amount of competition. Swimming in the sea of mediocrity isn’t going to cut it. You’ve got to do more than make an impact or come up with a catchy slogan. You need to gather,disparate and segment your data efficiently to deliver the most relevant content, products and offers.
2. Customization vs Personalization – Although similar, these two terms are sitting on opposite ends of the stick. To differentiate the 2, lets think about a cup of coffee. A customized cup of coffee is based on general information. John likes coffee. Regular. Cream and sugar. He enjoys a cup of coffee periodically throughout the day. A personalized cup of coffee transpires from connecting big data, connecting the dots and creating a 360 degree customer profile. Jane is a coffee aficionado. Regular. Columbian Dark Roast from a local cafe down the street. Medium cup. Two raw sugars. A splash of skim milk. She enjoys a cup at 9 am, noon and 3 p.m. Jane does not drink coffee after 6 pm. Customized is good. Personalized will get their attention.
3. 360 Degree Customer Profile – As they say, no 2 snowflakes are the same. The same holds true for your customers. Without marketing personalization, John is simply a 35 year old male who lives in a small town. It’s flat and notably generic. There’s very little data to create a relevant marketing campaign for John. Adding marketing personalization into the mix allows you to segment and individualize each morsel of your big data to execute hyper-personalized communications. One-to-One marketing connects your customer dots from across the board through social, email, website, CRM, mobile, transaction, and 3rd party channels. With all of this information, you’re able to create a 360 degree customer view on John. Based on this data, you now can leverage and distribute the most relevant information, products and offers to John in real time..
4. Turbo-Charged Personalization – You’ve noticed that John is spending a lot of time in the home office categories and purchased several small ticket items. This was compiled from his behavior and transaction data. The big question is why? With turbo-charged personalization, the channel to social information opens. In the world of marketing personalization, this enables you to stand out from the rest because now your customers shared social information is included. John is shopping home office items because he started his own business and will be working from home. However, he’s on a budget and waiting for the big ticket items to go on sale. As a marketer, this is your opportunity to deliver hyper-personalized messages in real time based on pre-planned points.
5. You’re aiming to please – Over 70% of online customers have expressed their frustration when companies send them emails with offers, products and information that have no relevancy to their life or needs. Your goal is to please your customer, not irritate them. Without marketing personalizaion, you’re going in blind. Marketing compaigns will be generic and lack value to your customers. Maybe you sent John an email that included special offers for pet food and baby items. The offers are stellar and select items are over 80% off. That’s great, but how does this apply to John? It doesn’t. The email isn’t opened and immediately transferred to the virtual trash bin. With marketing personalization you’ll have the big data to hyper-personalize communications. You’ll know that in addition to John embarking on a small business venture, he’s also in his mid 30’s, allergic to animals, single, and he’s an outdoor enthusiast. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, traveling and mountain climbing.
As a marketer, you’ve invested a great deal of time and money. You’re on the right path. Now it’s time to face forward and onward march. Adding a solid marketing personalization plan gives you the opportunity to take what you already have and move towards success. In this day and age, customers expect personalization throughout their entire buying process. They want to be acknowledged, enticed, and have their interest sparked with emails loaded with offers, products and information compatible with their life…in real time. When a customer is checking emails, you’ve got only a few seconds to catch their attention and make an out-of-this-world impression. It’s not the time for impromptu.
Nectar can provide your company with the easiest One-to-One Marketing Suite and help you connect your customer data, increase customer engagement and revenue.
