Focusing on personalisation in digital marketing
Personalised marketing is not new. Whether it is the simple use of your customer’s name to begin your marketing email or the introductory letter accompanying your print brochure, organisations have been looking for ways to make their customers feel unique, acknowledged and looked-after for many years now.
More recently personalisation has reached a new level of sophistication. It allows for filtered advertising, uniquely triggered special offers and individually tailored calls to actions. All help to create a strong relationship between a brand and its consumers. This increases the level of trust and the possibility for greater engagement between brand and consumer. It’s seen to be a key driver of increased buy-in and sales translations. More and more organisations are seeking to reap the benefits of this increased personalisation.
The path to personalisation
This week Marketing Week in association with Webtrends released their whitepaper entitled ‘Your Path to Personalisation: A Framework For Digital Marketing Advancement.’ It looks at the desire by many companies to better understand effective methods for personalised marketing.
The whitepaper argues that through a recent survey ‘we found that companies are planning to invest more in understanding the customer journey and personalisation in the next 12 to 18 months.’ It is argued ‘the key to progress is a purposeful data-driven marketing approach that allows you to reveal deeper insights to better understand your customers’. Above all, it is important to create a personalisation strategy which fits your company and your customers. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building your personalised marketing campaign.
Webtrends identifies 5 key areas for digital marketing advancement to enhance personalisation. Among which are the segmentation of customers and the creation of ‘high value audience segments’. They also advocate the mapping of the customer journey to ‘maximise the end-to end experience across digital touch points.’ They argue ‘the pace of advancement and the order in which you focus your investments will vary, but our goal is to share a framework so that you can set your own path to personalisation.’
Personal doesn’t have to mean small
Often when you think of personalised marketing, it is easy to picture small-scale campaigns fixated on the minutiae of a customer’s needs and desires. But personalised marketing can be effectively rolled out and scaled up. This ensures that it becomes a feasible, measurable strategy that delivers results for your organisation.
According to a recent article by The Guardian, what industry experts have dubbed as ‘personalised marketing at scale’ is fast becoming big news for the digital marketing industry. It ‘represents a new way of thinking that will permanently transform our media approach.’ It is argued that by ‘subtly tailor[ing] your executions based on demographics, interests, location or even purchase history,’ it is possible to reach millions of consumers but each with something that seems personally relevant and interesting.
Great examples of this personalisation highlighted by The Guardian include Cadbury’s Facebook page. This page frequently targets younger consumers of their product with light-hearted, popular culture posts. It also offers family-friendly content aimed to target the adult most likely making the purchasing decisions in the brand relationship. They really get the balance right.
Get started
Getting started with personalised marketing doesn’t have to be difficult. There are so many inspiring examples readily available through industry commentators such as Adobe’s personalisation blog tag. Many insights can be learned from the success of other personalised marketing campaigns. Need help translating these insights into a strategy? Contact us here at OTB to find out how we can help.
