The Power of Personalization in Digital Marketing
Hello <NAME>, how are you?
It’s never nice when the mass email sends out doesn’t quite go to plan. But let’s face it, even if the algorithm got things right and your customer’s name was successfully placed at the beginning of the message, what good would it really do?
The answer, in today’s game at least, is none whatsoever. Long gone are the days where consumers were impressed enough by seeing their name in an email to actually read any more of it. Indeed, blank canvas emails of that nature have long been consigned to the thousands of others in the junk mail of burner accounts – the last place you want to see your marketing efforts – so how do you get that consumer’s attention you so desire?
Today, advanced email personalization is becoming a bare minimum for marketing-savvy businesses. According to Yieldify, 89% of businesses are investing in it, so if you’re not yet, you’d best catch up. The big questions for anyone behind the curve, then: what is digital personalization in 2021, and how can you make it happen?
What does personalization mean today?
It’s true that email personalization did once boil down to targeting by name or company alone, but up-to-date efforts are a lot more considered, tailored, and most importantly, engaging. Competitive personalization today requires a much more robust and strategic approach – but one that is absolutely necessary for a ludicrously saturated field.
How exactly do you stand out with a singular email among the digital bombardment virtually every consumer receives on a daily basis? The answer lies in customized email marketing campaigns with tailored product inclusions, personalized ads, targeted incentives, and more. In highly competitive markets, such a level of personalization matters on a number of grounds:
- Your customers now expect it.
- The better the personalisation, the better the customer experience
- It’ll increase revenue, sales and conversions for you
- It’ll boost customer retention
Modern marketing efforts find the most traction with customers who feel valued, listened to, and connected to a brand they can relate to. All those things are achievable through personalization – you just need the tools to make it happen.
How technology is helping businesses win back clients
The personalization demands listed above require the use of audience and data analytics to be successful. The more data you have on a consumer, the more likely you are to be able to meet their individual needs. As such, machine learning has become a huge part of the personalization process, with businesses looking to meet customer interests at every possible touchpoint.
Today’s data harvesting and analytical machine is a pretty complex one. To be competitive, the average marketer needs to consider:
- Web analytics
- Marketing automation platforms
- Insight and intelligence from sales teams
- Landing page optimisation and wider SEO
- Customer data analytics
- Combining internal data with external, third party data
- Social listening
- Predictive analytics
- Customer data and data management platforms
- Recommendation engines
Plenty to think about and a lot for anyone not too well versed in modern marketing to take on. Of course, there are still legs in some more traditional methods that shouldn’t be ignored. Email marketing campaigns, for example, still maintain their position as a useful marketing tool. As Amy Birch, email marketing expert at Wired Plus, comments:
“Email personalization is an effective method for winning back old customers who haven’t converted in a while. Targeting those who haven’t purchased from you or haven’t read your emails in a long time, you can create an email campaign for inactive leads. Make it personal by including recommendations and an incentive to entice them to re-engage.”
So, do it right and you can reconnect with old flames through your email efforts. The thing is, it takes a lot more to impress these days, so make sure you put enough energy into your marketing campaign.
