Personalised Marketing – Getting it Right

Personalisation helps to reduce the noise around your marketing message and allows that message to evolve and develop based on your customer interactions and behaviour.

Achieving this is becoming more and more important in digital marketing, using personalisation to create a focussed marketing message and call to action is what makes it highly effective.

Executed correctly, personalisation can succeed in getting the right communications to the right people at the right time. Companies that can do this on an individual basis rather than mass market are seeing excellent results. However, there are certain things to consider before embarking on this type of marketing to make it a success:

Real-time

Every email that you send to a customer needs to be relevant and timely. Email is still the most effective form of digital marketing, but its value can be weakened by sending endless generic emails. Identify customer segments and send them personalised dynamic emails that are tailored to the time and location the emails are opened.

Know your Audience

As well as demographic analysis, location and behaviour, tap into your customers purchase and browsing history to really target your message. Insight needs to be gathered not just online, but across all customer touch points to ensure you have rounded view of each individual. As well as listening to customers to understand what they like, what is ignored is just as important. It’s about putting the right product and information in front of the right customer.

The Devil is in the Detail

Mistakes often happen when assumptions are made based on data that is incorrect or incomplete leading to a bad experience. Personalisation relies on data and technology working together, but still requires monitoring to make sure that the message reflects the brand and consumers they are targeting. Personalised marketing can be executed at scale but the right systems need to be in place to maintain accuracy and relevance.

Beware of overkill

Companies should be mindful of how they use their customers’ data when communicating with them. Personalisation is a highly effective tool in building customer engagement, however if you are too intrusive you run the risk of invading a person’s privacy and this will have a damaging impact. Only communicate with them when you have something relevant to say.

According to Econsultancy research, 74% of marketers report that personalisation increases customer engagement and 84% report it directly impacts customer retention and loyalty.  Whichever way you look at it personalisation is here to stay and represents an exciting new way of thinking for marketeers and brands.