2018 has seen a growth in Artificial Intelligence usage in marketing and the demand for relevant content. Long gone are the days of spam! Using data like spending patterns, trends, and insights, brands are able to dive in deeper to their customer needs than ever before. Personalized marketing goes beyond simply including a customer’s name in your interactions. It is about determining what your target market wants and using that information to better serve them.
The key to a successful personalization marketing strategy is to engage customers and prospective customers on an individual level.
Targeting your content to specific customers is extremely beneficial and can be done in multiple ways. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s dive in!
The Benefits of Personalized Marketing
Increased brand loyalty
If a customer knows that you are putting their needs first, they will be more inclined to come back for another purchase.
Positive customer relationship
Personalization marketing allows you to build relationships with your customers and prospective customers. Responding to their comments, sending out birthday emails, and showing that your care all adds up to a positive customer relationship.
Targeted and refined content
Now that you know who you are wanting to target, you are able to figure out what they want to see! Isn’t that great? No more mass marketing with the hopes that it will reach the right people.
Higher ROI
A more refined campaign means that more of the right people will be targeted. This will result in a boost of sales and conversions as your strategy is best suited to that target market’s needs.
Personalization Marketing Examples and Strategies
There are a number of ways for you to incorporate personalization marketing into your strategies. Many of them are quick to use and simply require a little TLC.
Make Your Page User-Friendly
The easiest way to explain this strategy is with an example.
Let’s look at the B2 Hotel in Zurich. Zurich attracts people from all over the world. However, the hotel is French native. The problem is then posed, “how do we make our website more user-friendly and personalized for our worldwide audience?”
That’s simple! A multilingual website personalizes the customer’s experience by suiting their language needs. This allows for easy navigation around your website so that more sales or bookings can be made.
Now, Google Chrome usually automatically translates the website pages and content for you. You might have seen this little pop up before:
However, not all internet browsers provide such a feature. To make your website multilingual, look at adding a translation feature that will translate the page accordingly.
For WordPress websites, you could look at installing the following translation plugins:
To bring this example and strategy full circle, let’s see how B2 Hotel has incorporated translations for personalization. Instead of keeping their website in their native language, they have included a few different language options to suit their audience’s needs. This small change has now opened the site up to a wider audience and therefore higher potential of sales.
Source: B2 Hotel
Call Them Out
If you are harnessing the power of email marketing, you should be personalizing your emails – doing so will have an enormous impact on your success~
When you receive newsletters, which one gets your attention?
“Courtney, this one is for you!”
or
“Today’s Topic is Personalization Marketing.”
Your attention goes to the one that directly calls you out, right? The fact is that 74% of marketers say that targeted personalization increases their customer engagement and improves click-through rates. On top of that, Aberdeen has cited that personalized emails improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%.
Just look at the power of Coca-Cola’s personalization campaign. Who doesn’t love a product with their name on it?!
Source: ShareaCoke.com
However, personalized marketing doesn’t just stop with including someone’s name in the material. It goes much deeper into creating a connection with the customer and anticipating their needs.
Have you ever bought an item of clothing online and then for weeks on end your Facebook page is littered with ads for that site? Or our favorite, have you ever noticed that when your relationship status is “single” on Facebook, you are constantly faced with dating site ads? Those brands and websites are anticipating their customers’ needs based on their demographics and spending trends.
Here are a few ways for you to make use of your customer data to anticipate their needs and offer up a personalized experience:
The Abandoned Cart Email is a great tool to bring customers back to your site. It acts as a reminder of the item that they wanted to purchase in order to lead them back to your site. We’d recommend using MailChimp’s e-commerce service, Abandoned Cart Lite for Woocommerce, and Woocommerce Cart Report to track and report how customers are interacting with their cart.
Pro tip: try adding an extra percentage off for further enticement!
Source: Pinterest
That’s not all, let’s not forget about product recommendations. Product recommendations are all about that customer date we just spoke about. This tool uses a particular customer’s history on your website to make recommendations for their next purchase. By doing so, you are unveiling products that they might have not been aware of before.
Source: Pinterest
Promote a Positive Personalized Customer Service
A personalized customer service can go a long way in building a loyal customer base. If a customer knows that they are going to receive good customer support, they will be more inclined to purchase from you again. Thanks to technological advances, there are a few ways for you to keep up with your customers.
Social Media
Social media is great for quick interactions with your target audience and customers. People often turn to social media to either praise or shame brands for their product and services. It is important to monitor your messages and your comment section to stay up to date with any issues.
Regardless of whether the message is positive or negative, you should always respond. Address the sender directly and assure them that their problem is being handled. If the message is a praise, a quick “thank you” goes a long way! You could even go a step further by sending them a quick video via DM to respond to their problem or just to reach out. Just sending them a quick video answering their questions will have a HUGE impact. It will create a sense of identity and show that you went the extra mile to make your customer feel heard. It’s always great to put a face behind the name, too!
Product Reviews
Opening up your business to product reviews is an easy way to ensure a personalized service. Your product reviews act as a platform for you to understand what your customers want and how you can make that happen. Whichever platform you choose for your product reviews, don’t let your customers go unheard!
You can opt for a survey, a form on your website, a comment section for the product or a follow up email to see how your customer felt about their experience. The customer will appreciate the chance to provide their feedback and your business will appreciate the chance to improve its services.
Show Them That You Care
Who doesn’t love getting extra attention on their birthday? Build your customer relationships by sending them a personalized email for their birthday. The gesture will show that your brand cares and that it will go the extra mile to put them first. The gesture doesn’t have to stop at birthdays. You could look to include sending out thank you emails and anniversary emails to celebrate the time that they’ve been a customer.
The goal is to make your customer feel special.
Personalization marketing is all about creating a relationship with your customer and making them feel special. You are continuously building and evolving to suit your customers’ needs and wants.
Think of personalization marketing as you would dating. You want your date to feel special so you get the chocolates that they like, and you take time to learn more about them. Just like dating, personalization marketing is a one-on-one interaction and no two interactions are the same. It’s all about providing a tailor-made experience to satisfy each and every customer.
However, not all internet browsers provide such a feature. To make your website multilingual, look at adding a translation feature that will translate the page accordingly.
For WordPress websites, you could look at installing the following translation plugins:
To bring this example and strategy full circle, let’s see how B2 Hotel has incorporated translations for personalization. Instead of keeping their website in their native language, they have included a few different language options to suit their audience’s needs. This small change has now opened the site up to a wider audience and therefore higher potential of sales.
