Personalization: What It Is and Why Personalized Marketing Matters
In this article
Personalized marketing is a marketing strategy that uses individualized messages and offers for each customer. It includes promotions, discounts, email campaigns, bonuses, and more.
To create these offers, specialists analyze personal information about the audience, such as gender, age, location, status, marital status, hobbies, interests, and more.
What is personalization
The features of personalized marketing are as follows:
applying individual methods of communication with customers;
focusing on increasing customer loyalty.
This type of marketing exists due to the high competition in the modern market. Companies need to attract new people and maintain the attention of those who already interact with them. Nowadays, there are many new methods and technologies for collecting and analyzing customer data.
What are the peculiarities of personalized marketing?
Traditional marketing works like this: specialists create an offer, and then target an audience. The goal is to attract a large number of consumers and sell them the product.
Personalized marketing, on the other hand, aims to offer customers the exact product or service that will solve their problems and satisfy their desires. For example, a company that provides computer services should offer personalized products for each segment of its audience: gaming computers, mice and keyboards for gamers; fast diagnostics of devices for busy people; convenient and compact laptops for employees.
Therefore, before creating an individual offer, it is necessary to study the portrait of the potential customer in order to know exactly which product or service will interest them.
Why personalized marketing is needed
Advantages of Personalization in Marketing
Personalization sets you apart from other organizations. It is not enough to simply create an image with a logo and a slogan. Consumers remember companies that offer them solutions to their problems.
Here's a simple example of personalization. For many brands, delivery operates throughout the day: that is, a person sits at home and waits for a courier. Companies that offer a choice of any time interval to save customers' time (for example, from 12:00 to 14:00 or from 16:00 to 18:00) are focused on an individual approach. After all, consumers will plan their day as they wish. This way, you will subtly push people towards becoming your regular customers.
Personalization helps create organic advertising that engages buyers. If people see an ad related to their problems, they are more likely to study it.
When a company is ready to offer something valuable and useful for free, it creates trust among potential customers. Users leave their email address or phone number to get a guide, instruction, book, video, etc. To create a useful product, a lead magnet, study people's needs and use personalized marketing.
Types of strategies in personalized marketing
Differentiating your company from competitors
Communication with consumers
Communication with customers is an important part of marketing strategy. It is created through email newsletters, online chats, social media, and SMS.
The main goal of communication is to learn as much information as possible about consumers in order to offer them an individual discount or offer.
Often, companies give promo codes, bonuses, and discounts to customers after they complete surveys, questionnaires, and other forms of feedback.
Useful content
Create useful materials and help potential customers solve their problems. It can be, for example, a guide to cooking recipes for children or instructions for quickly processing photos.
When a person learns something new and interesting, they are more likely to subscribe to the newsletter and news. The company will continue to communicate with customers until they make a purchase.
Website design
Personalized marketing is used in website design. If a company knows its customer profile, it can adapt the interface to their needs.
For example, many online clothing stores remember the search history of website visitors. In the future, customers are shown products similar to the ones they viewed.
How to collect data for personalization
Lead forms
This tool collects various data and requests left by users. The information that the organization receives depends on the questions in the form. For example, if the form includes a "date of birth" field, the company will learn this information after it is filled out.
This is the example of a lead form for a food delivery service that collects the information from a company that needs to order food.
Surveys
Web analytics services
Web analytics also provides information about the age, gender, time of website visits, and devices used by the user. This information is displayed in reports.
Interviews
Directly learning about consumers' doubts and desires is possible through interviews. This method is great for personalization. Interviews can be conducted in stores, over the phone, or through focus group invitations.
How to figure out a customer profile
After collecting information about your audience, it is worth creating a customer profile. The profile is a detailed description of a person that reflects real brand customers. Without creating a profile, it is difficult to determine the style of the letter and the type of content.
The main points in the customer profile are:
- Demographic: date of birth, gender, marital status, religion, values.
- Geographic: place of residence, climate, culture, local features.
- Socio-economic: ability to pay, status, education, profession.
- Behavioral: needs, doubts, fears, average customer check, seasonality, consumer basket.
Not all points are equally important to a company. For example, for a snowboarding store, climate is more important than marital status. And for a store selling children's goods, information about marital status and the presence of children is a priority.
How to use customer data
Improving newsletters
Use trigger email messages when consumers are ready to see them. Don't forget to add content that interests subscribers. This will increase the likelihood of the message being read.
Interesting offers
Communication with website users
It's important to know what actions the customer performs on your website. At the right moment, show a pop-up window related to their actions on the web page. For example, if a customer is browsing the selection for a long time without taking any further action, add a window with a consultation from a manager to help with the order.
Examples of personalized marketing
Personalized landing pages
Retargeting for cart
Conclusion
Personal data and personalization are necessary for standing out among competitors, creating successful ads, and maintaining beneficial and strong relationships with customers. Lead forms, surveys, analytics services, and interview methods are used to collect personal data.
Thanks to personalized marketing, a company applies various strategies. For example, a strategy for improving communication with consumers, creating a user-friendly website, or gathering necessary information about the audience.