Personalized email: Relevant messages get real results
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The most successful brands don’t view personalization as a novel marketing technique to impress customers or show off their technology. Rather, they view it as a core component of a holistic customer engagement marketing strategy.
If you’re not personalizing your content to customers across all channels, you’ll lose to the brands that actually take the time to get to know customers and treat them as individuals, wherever and however they choose to engage. A cross-channel personalization strategy is table stakes.
Let’s look at how today’s marketers can build a scalable, revenue-driving 1:1 marketing strategy, step by step:
- Sort out your data and establish a value exchange
- Make it relevant and real time
- Meet customers where they are
- Personalize for the customer, not the channel
- Use AI to achieve scale
- Measure your results
A personalization strategy starts with the right data
Without data, you simply cannot personalize your marketing. What’s more, without the right kind of data, you won’t be able to do much more than the weakest form of personalized communications.
And finally, if your data sets aren’t fully integrated in a way that gives you a complete view of your customer, you can’t personalize consistently, in real time, across all your channels.
Getting your data sorted out is the first step for any successful cross-channel personalization strategy. Have a plan to collect more first- and zero-party data — these are the types of insight-rich customer data that will elevate your personalization. Namely, your plan will be about establishing a value exchange: what are you offering customers in exchange for their data? Make it worthwhile for customers to share their data.
Next, you’ll need to do away with data siloes across your organization. Consolidating all your data in a single, unified solution will allow you to fully leverage it so you can deliver seamless 1:1 experiences.
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Think relevant, real time, and right now
With a personalization strategy, it’s all about delivering the right message to the right customer at the right time. And although the right message to the right person is important, it’s the “right time” part that makes all the difference.
Relevance plus timing is what truly elevates your 1:1 marketing and ensures that it resonates with audiences.
Personalized communications that happen in real time (for example, as a customer is browsing your website or engaging on your app) and are relevant to the customer (based on their behavior, preferences, or otherwise) convert more customers more often.
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Omnichannel you must
In today’s world of digital-first commerce, bringing the customers to your brand isn’t the goal. You need to bring your brand to the customers. Don’t assume that a strong product offering and message will drive customers to put in the leg work to find you.
The beauty of a fully omnichannel approach to 1:1 marketing is that you have more flexibility in how you reach customers. More channels means more opportunity for engagement.
It also means more opportunity to collect the data that further fuels personalization. If you want to drive more revenue, make sure you’re meeting customers with personalized experiences wherever they are.
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Want a personalization strategy that gets results? Download the e-book HERE
Personalize for the customer, not the channel
An all-too-common mistake is to personalize for the channel, rather than for the customer. But if customers receive inconsistent personalized content as they move from one channel to the next, the experience feels fragmented, and your tailored, individualized messages won’t be as effective.
Customers want 1:1 experiences that are consistent and frictionless. Whether it’s moving online to offline, or from one digital channel to the next, customers consider this the same journey with your brand.
They expect you to know them based on who they are as an individual, not based on the channel they’re using.
To prevent this problem, fully integrate all your data and channels. This will allow you to build unified customer profiles that give you a single, cohesive view of the customer for seamless personalization.
The case for omnichannel personalization: Beyond the sale
Omnichannel personalization is the new frontier. Here, we explore how brands can build customer loyalty by delivering personalized experiences on the channels that matter most.
True personalization at scale
Every customer that engages with your brand should have experiences unique to them as an individual. At least, that’s their expectation. So if your business grows to tens or hundreds of thousands of customers or more, that’s a lot of 1:1 engagements.
The truth is, manually building and executing at that scale is basically impossible. That is, unless you have advanced tech to help you.
Artificial intelligence is the secret to scaling your 1:1 marketing. By leveraging AI-powered automation, you can provide every customer with the right message, on the right channel, and at the right time.
With AI doing the heavy lifting, you’ll never miss an opportunity to engage customers and drive more revenue.
Top global brands like PUMA Europe, which have audiences all over the world and in multiple languages, rely on customer engagement technology with built-in AI to provide superior 1:1 experiences and achieve positive business results.
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Find out what works — and what doesn’t
Getting the technology and data in place to make execute a personalization strategy requires an investment. And as with any investment, business leaders want to see some sort of return. So you need to be able to demonstrate exactly how your efforts produce measurable business outcomes.
One of the most critical parts of a revenue-driving personalization strategy is having visibility into how personalization is impacting revenue.
Make sure you can measure your results so you know what is working — or what needs to be adjusted. Tying purchases and conversions to your campaigns will show your highest-performing efforts. That way, you can lean into those programs that you know generate the best results.
Conversely, you can scrap or tweak any campaigns that aren’t moving the needle, or dig deeper to understand why they aren’t working.
The best way to do all of this is by having analytics and reporting capabilities built into your customer engagement platform.
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Putting it all together
Yes, customers expect highly relevant 1:1 experiences. But they also really appreciate them. When you can create seamless personalized journeys for your customers, they’ll feel that your brand truly understands them. Part of how they demonstrate their appreciation is by purchasing your products or services, and giving you their loyalty.
If you want to follow in the footsteps of brands that have built a successful, revenue-driving 1:1 marketing strategy, start building your own, pillar by pillar.