Getting just the right amount of personalization is about making the best use of your data on your customers without stepping over the line to what they’d consider creepy. It’s a fine balancing act that is best approached by thinking small.
Personalization in marketing is more important than ever before, according to 2020 Trends in Personalization. Among the marketers surveyed, 97% reported positive returns on their personalization efforts, which was an increase of 7 percentage points over last year. Offering their take on their target audience, 92% said customers today expect it, which represents a significant increase over the 85% that had said it in 2018.
Certainly, personalized marketing has become increasingly important in the age of sites that remember your preferences and purchases and offer recommendations based on data of thousands of customer touchpoints, as perfected by the likes of Amazon and Netflix.
We, as customers, don’t find one-size-fits all marketing appealing. We like to feel that there is something in it that reflects what we’re really about. We crave to be understood, but at the same time, we are not altogether comfortable with a brand showing it knows us too well.
As I wrote here, some people feel creeped out by finding out retailers know what they are buying when they did not actively share that fact. One of my Facebook connections posted this:
OK So. How the ever-living F*** did Amazon know we just purchased baking pans.
We did NOT google them.
We did not search for them on Amazon.
I am officially creeped out.
Personalized but not creepy
As reported in Gartner survey shows brands risk losing 38 percent of customers because of poor marketing personalization efforts, getting personalization wrong cannot just cost you sales but customers. The figure cited in the title was based on survey results in which 38 percent of 2,500 customers reported that if they found “personalization efforts to be ‘creepy,’” they would cease doing business with that company.
That means that brands have to meet the challenge of meeting the increasing expectations for personalized experience without crossing the line that creeps people out.
The article quotes Martha Mathers, managing vice president at Gartner:
“Brands need to be extremely thoughtful in how they personalize their content today. Instead of utilizing every piece of customer data available, brands should focus on showing customers you can help them first, then layering in the right balance of data to boost message relevance, without making things too personal.”
To achieve that delicate balance, Gartner recommends thinking on the micro level. It suggests focusing on “personalized content that is broken down into smaller components based on defined messages or purpose that contribute to the larger experience.”
Marketing for the moment
While living for the moment indicates not thinking about the larger context, marketing for the moment is reaching people with contextually relevant messages that will contribute and meet their expectation for personalized communication.
As a Forrester blog explained: “Marketers’ attempts to profile, segment, and model customers implies that consumers are static and can be fully defined, but they are anything but. Consumers are in constant motion, evolving their brand affinities, lifestyle choices, technology usage, and emotional responses to the world around them.”
The contextual relevance has to account for the individual situation, including where they are and what’s around them. That encompasses everything from the physical conditions of weather and traffic to what they see on the news and social media. Combine that external context with the customer’s own behavior on your site and online in general, and you have a comprehensive picture of where they’re at and what they’re likely to be thinking about.
The whole combination is what grants much deeper and more accurate insight into the individual’s experience. That comprehensive picture of the customer is what can inform a truly personalized marketing strategy that reflects an understanding of the individual in context.
With an understanding of what people are facing, what inspires them, what bothers them, what they’re passionate about, and what motivates them, brands are able to communicate in a way that resonates with their audience. That’s what personalization is all about.