Consumers are pretty skilled at tuning out ads and marketing campaigns that don't apply or appeal to them. Modern day customers are looking for personalization, and traditional means of advertising are becoming less effective. In order to stand out from the competition, organizations need to deliver a personalized customer experience.
Modern-day customers use 2-3 digital devices (or more)! These devices are allowing businesses to gather tons of information about customers' lifestyles and behaviors online. Harnessing this data to drive personalized customer experiences across the buyer journey will allow marketers a chance to create a truly, hyper-personalized experience for their customers.
What is hyper-personalization?
Today’s marketer is asked to go above and beyond when it comes to personalization. A personalized subject line doesn’t cut it anymore, in fact, we are seeing the rise of something known as hyper-personalization. Hyper-personalization is the use of data and even artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver more relevant content, product, and service information to each user.
So what is the difference between personalization and hyper-personalization? Personalization is what we already see frequently in marketing, like using your first name in an email subject line or salutation, or using knowledge of your purchase history to recommend other products. Hyper-personalization goes one step further and utilizes behavioral and real-time data to create highly contextual communication that is relevant to the user.
For example, using data gathered, you would learn that:
A user opened an email advertising clothing and accessories from your company and clicked on the link to a pair of shoes in the email, spent about 15 mins browsing your selection in your app and then left without purchasing.
You could then analyze that use further and discover:
- An affinity for items on sale or clearance
- Prior purchase history for a certain footwear brand
- Maximum purchases happening on weekends in the afternoon
- Emails getting high engagement
Hyper-personalization would use that data to send that user emails advertising shoes from their preferred brand on sale on weekend afternoons in the hopes that the user would engage more with the content and the content would be exactly what they were searching for.
Level Up
How can you start implementing elements of hyper-personalization into your marketing initiatives?
- Showing different, personalized messaging or landing pages to website visitors depending on the data gathered about that consumer.
- Recommending products to a visitor based the season in their location, their prior purchasing history, recently searched items, emails opened and links clicked by that user.
- An automated drip email campaign to send additional marketing to customers who interacted with specific online advertisements on your website.
- Sending out a survey to customers who have completed a purchase, to collect voice of the customer data and improve the user-experience for individual customers and your user-base as a whole.
How to sell hyper-personalization?
Since hyper-personalization goes beyond "one size fits all" marketing, you don't want your initiatives to come across shallow or like you are throwing things at a wall to see what sticks. There are three main ingredients to consider:
- Trust - It's the tale as old as time. Trust is essential to the business-consumer relationship. Customers have to trust your company and your brand in order to interact with your content. Every day, the amount of competition in the online space is growing, customers are going to choose the organization that they trust and that has invested the time and money into building and nourishing that relationship.
- Relevance - The more crowded the online space becomes the more essential this ingredient is. It requires truly getting the right message to the right person at the right time, all the time. You hear it all the time, but it is easier to put this into practice with the amount of customer data we have access to now. It's time to tap into your data so you can start personalizing communications with your customers.
- Engagement - Engaging customers with hyper-personalized campaigns will customize their experience with your brand or organization. Dive into the information that you gather through regular communication and interaction with your customers. You won't see results if you aren't analyzing your metrics, data and consumer demographics to truly create a unique experience.
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