Personalisation is changing marketing
Today’s consumers are flooded with marketing messages from multiple channels to the point where they have started to tune them out because of the sheer amount of them.
So what’s the answer and how do brands and campaigns stand out from the masses?
Personalised marketing messages- that forge a real connection between the brand and the target market. According to Epsilon, a marketing company who conducted research into this, 80% of consumers said that they’d be more likely to do business with a brand that provides a personalised experience.
So as personalisation becomes commonplace, what shifts can marketing teams expect in customer and conversion outcomes? We looked at the data gathered from a survey conducted by Twilio and applied it to the issue at hand.
The survey in which they found that just 25% of businesses are effectively implementing omnichannel marketing strategies. With consumers now actively engaging across multiple channels, effective personalisation depends on an omnichannel approach that meets consumers where they are, not where brands expect them to be.
While three-quarters of customers surveyed said they’d never had an “invasive” experience with brand personalisation, 64% of those who encountered this issue pointed to the problem of brands having information about them they didn’t knowingly or willingly provide. Furthermore, with the latest changes to privacy on phones, such as the iOS 14 update, which gives users the option to opt-out of app tracking. Once a user’s phone is updated, every single company that wants to track users and their data across different apps and websites have to ask permission first using a standardised prompt created by Apple. If they chose not to allow tracking, it makes it much harder to obtain data about a marketers, or companies audience, which would allow them to build strategies to target these audiences.
On the back of these changes, it’s now more important than ever to for brands to share their CRM integration with their marketers so they can form good strategies.
It is also more important than ever to be contextually relevant. If we can’t track, we can’t be exact in personalisation- however, we have much more of a chance of reaching audiences if we’re contextually relevant.
In short, customers want personalisation to change based on the context of their interaction with your brand. In practice, this means that how they connect and what they’re looking for should inform the nature of personalisation.
For example, a prospective customer that clicks on a product ad from your social media site wants specific information about the item in question, how they can order it, and how long it will take to arrive. It’s a simple but critical move.
In some cases, anonymity is the path to personalisation. Here’s why: While customers are often hesitant to provide personal information to brands if it’s used to create identifiable profiles of them within company databases, they’re typically willing to share personal data if companies promise anonymity. This anonymous data, meanwhile, is a great source of overall market trends that can help inform personalisation strategies at scale.
About 45% of consumers say the “coolest” personalisation effort they’ve seen is when companies apologise for poor shopping experiences. This is the other side of personalisation-based marketing: While most efforts focus on gaining customers, this approach focuses on keeping them. Combined with action — such as discounts, free shipping, or other benefits — apologies are an effective way to retain consumer loyalty.
Most importantly, when it comes to personalization, people are the priority. Customers not only want to be treated like people through the personalisation of recommendations and service but also want to see the humanity behind your brand. As a result, it’s worth personalising your web pages, social sites, and marketing efforts to showcase the human side of your story and help drive the creation of a shared customer/company narrative.
The volume and variety of customer data now available — from personal preferences to transaction histories and social media interactions — lays the groundwork for effective personalisation throughout marketing.