The average person is exposed to a vast number of marketing messages in a single day. While experts can’t agree on how many pieces of advertising material an individual processes on a daily basis (whether hundreds or thousands), one thing is certain: it’s a lot.
Another certainty is that consumers don’t like irrelevant marketing material; it annoys them, and they’ll go to great lengths to avoid unwanted advertising. So how do you create marketing campaigns that strengthen your relationship with your customers rather than driving them away?
One word: personalization.
Personalization a highly effective marketing strategy, but it’s one of the most underutilized. It’s also what consumers want.
According to a study by Swirl, 87 percent of consumers surveyed said more personalized shopping experiences online or in-store would increase brand loyalty.
A study by Salesforce found that people will happily go elsewhere if you don’t meet their expectations when it comes to personalization.
The following tips will get you started with personalized marketing tactics to produce marketing material that makes customers feel warm and fuzzy about your brand.
Personalize emails
Personalized emails have the power to elevate your brand in your customers’ eyes and keep them away from the “unsubscribe” link. Email is also one of the most accessible avenues for personalized marketing, and using customer data such as a first name is an obvious place to start.
Date of birth is also very handy for personalization because birthday emails generate 342 percent more revenue than other promotional emails. Even information such as the date a customer made their first purchase or signed up for your newsletter can be used to send an “anniversary” email.
Surprisingly, something as simple as personalizing the send time of your emails according to time zone or past email opening behaviors can make a big difference.
A study by BustedTees found that personalized send times significantly improved click-through rates and boosted their email revenue by 8.2 percent.
Related: 3 Ways to Maximize the Customer Experience
Recommendations based on user behavior
Suggesting products or services to customers based on their purchasing and browsing behavior is a straightforward way to make their experience with your brand more enjoyable.
According to a survey by Harris Poll and Listrak, a whopping 80 percent of consumers want retailers to personalize their marketing emails according to what they’ve bought previously.
A study by Barilliance, which looked at data from 1.5 billion online shopping sessions, found that providing “visitors who viewed this also viewed” recommendations accounted for 68.4 percent of the revenue from those sessions.
Amazon is a great example of the power of personalized recommendations based on user behavior and reportedly attributes 35 percent of its retail sales to these tailored product suggestions. Amazon’s algorithm, dubbed item-to-item collaborative filtering, takes information about a customer’s past purchases, items in their virtual shopping cart, items they’ve rated positively and data about what other customers have viewed and purchased to provide product recommendations.
Amazon’s personalization tactics also affect how customers perceive the brand. When Swirl surveyed 1,000 consumers, they found that 56 percent of consumers felt that Amazon regularly demonstrates an understanding of their personal needs and preferences, which was more than twice the percentage who felt that way about traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.
Segment leads according to needs
By asking customers a few simple questions, you can immediately gain information to personalize their experience and make their interaction with your brand a positive one.
Even a pop-up with two options can make your customer’s life easier and help them find what they’re looking for, which is a high priority, according to research. For instance, when gift-giving holidays are approaching, asking if a visitor is shopping for men’s or women’s gifts can instantly cut out a huge chunk of irrelevant options.
The consumer’s desire for personalization is so strong that despite general concerns about personal data use and privacy, they’re increasingly willing to give information in return for a more personalized experience.
A study by SalesForce found that 57 percent of the 7,000 people they surveyed were willing to provide personal information in exchange for personalized offers and discounts.
Groupon Australia uses a pop-up on its website to effectively segment leads according to a customer’s location, so they can make use of deals in their area. If a person lives in Melbourne, they’re unlikely to be interested in what a Perth restaurant has to offer. For Valentine’s Day this year, Groupon even had a page to segment visitors according to their “love stage,” from “friend-zone changer” to “bring love back to life.”
Let the referral source dictate the landing page
People are more likely to stick with you if they get personalization from the get-go, so tailoring the experience from the moment they hit your website is beneficial.
One way to provide personalization early on is to have different landing pages for your website for different referral sources. The referral source gives you information about a visitor, which you can use to link the source to a landing page that will instantly present them with relevant offers.
Evidence for the positive effect multiple landing pages has on consumer engagement comes from a study by HubSpot, which found the more landing pages a site had, the more leads it generated.
Another study by Monetate revealed companies that personalize their websites have an average of a 19 percent uptick in sales.
Zooshoo uses the pathway from source to landing page to its advantage by having targeted offers for different traffic streams. For example, they created a promotional pop-up that was only seen by visitors who had come to the Zooshoo site via a Facebook targeted ad. By implementing this personalization strategy, Zooshoo reportedly converted over 7 percent of abandoned click-throughs into purchases.
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Ready to get personal?
Now that you know how personalized marketing can bring you closer to your customers and foster brand loyalty, it’s time to develop some solid strategies and find the right tools to implement them. Here’s some further reading to help you get started:
- How to Implement Personalized Marketing: Tools & Tactics
- 6 Tools To Personalize Visitor Experience on Your Online Store
- Hyper-Personalized Marketing: How Exactly is it Done?
- Making Personalized Marketing Work
