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May 14, 2021This is a guest post from Jill Goodwin, a Content Master & Writer of Amazing Ideas.
Your customers want to feel noticed. They’re keen to communicate, are interested in your brand and its behind-the-scenes operations, and want the opportunity to learn more about the way your business works.
It’s for these exact reasons that so many brands and businesses are on a personalization spree.
Personalized marketing materials that address customers by name make them feel more connected to the company they’re dealing with. As a result, this makes them more willing to invest in their products and services.
The Benefits of Personalized Marketing
Personalized marketing is an exceptionally effective tool when used in the right way. It involves gathering data on your customers and their preferences, and using it to engineer marketing experiences that appeal to specific demographics.
Email data will probably be your most valuable data source should you choose to personalize your customers’ experiences. Your ability to collect and assess data from email list segments, surveys, and polls will make or break the success of your advertising campaigns. This data will allow you to create archetypes of your customer base, which will help you effectively personalize your marketing efforts.
Modern marketers are increasingly using this approach to craft engaging and profitable marketing campaigns. Personalization is a helpful approach when it comes to attracting the attention of individualized generations of consumers, like the Millennials and Generation Z.
Comprehensive research has shown that personalized email campaigns enjoy 29% higher open rates than standard marketing emails. They also garner 41% higher click-through rates, which is excellent news for your bottom lines.
It’s important to remember that personalized marketing is so much more than just using your customers’ names in your promotional mails. This type of marketing is a complete strategy on its own. You need to incorporate it into your social media, email, digital and blogging strategies to maximize its benefits.
Why You Should Adopt a Personalized Approach
1. Personalization Allows You to Address Specific Demographics
Your customer base is probably a specific one. One of the primary benefits of personalization lies in its power to help you reach specific audiences with your message. You can target your audience based on their interests and consumer habits by collecting data from surveys, studies, and list segments, and using it to create your campaigns.
Let’s say your data shows that your target audience appreciates pop music. You could use references to modern pop artists and songs in your blog posts, email campaigns, and even in your email opt-in forms to personalize these materials and boost your conversion rates.
2. A Personalized Approach Helps You Create Better Content
Personalized approaches help your business stand out from its competitors by creating memorable content that engages and persuades your customers.
A fantastic example is Coca-Cola’s Share A Coke campaign, which saw common names printed on Coke bottles to grab Millennials’ attention. It encouraged customers to find a bottle with personal meaning and Tweet or Instagram their experiences using the hashtag #ShareaCoke. This novel campaign provided Coca-Cola with its first sales expansion boom in a decade!
3. Personalization Strengthens Your Brand Identity
A truly personalized approach has the power to strengthen your brand identity significantly and give your company an approachable face. Personalization shows that your business has a human side, and that you are empathetic and mindful towards the needs and demands of your customer base.
Show your customers the faces behind your brand by including images and names of your team members in your correspondence. Let them know that humans who genuinely care about their well-being and satisfaction run your business.
Respond to queries, complaints, and compliments with unique, personal messages rather than cut-and-paste responses. It’s small gestures like these that can go a long way in making your customers feel valued and heard.
4. You Can Build Stronger Bonds with Customers Through Personalized Content
Personalized marketing strategies will help your brand foster longer-lasting personal connections with your customers. You can express your gratitude for their support by sending them emails and coupons for their birthdays, or personalized emails on the anniversary of them signing up for your mailing list.
You can expand this approach by personalizing your entire website and its pillar pages. Time and time again, this strategy has increased conversions and boosted sales by making customers feel more welcome on your site.
5. Personalized Marketing Can Increase Conversions and Sales Figures
You might be looking to connect with your customers through personalized marketing, but there should be more to your strategy than that. Personalization can aid in boosting your conversion rates and bringing your business more sales, while retaining and impressing your supporters.
Offering customers recommendations, free tools and templates, and downloadable guides can all bring you more business in the long run. This tactic is especially useful for online businesses offering services or software, as it promotes brand awareness in the digital world.
How to Personalize Your Marketing Materials
As you can see, personalization has several benefits for businesses of all sizes and sectors. Here are some simple tips to help you personalize your own marketing materials for your customers:
- Provide excellent customer service that’s courteous, friendly, prompt, and professional.
- Only make promises to your customers that you intend to keep and can realistically do.
- Always be available for your customers via email, telephone, live chat, or personally. You can provide a great customer service experience by taking time to understand their needs and expectations properly, and going above and beyond to fulfill their requests.
- Address each of your customers by name, especially when sending out bulk marketing emails.
- Ask for suggestions, comments, and feedback, and use them to improve your business and the level of service you offer your customers.
- Make your customers feel appreciated and build lasting loyalty by sending them thank-you notes and birthday wishes.
- Proactively embrace negative reviews and poor feedback. Handle them in a manner that resolves the complainant’s issues respectfully and efficiently.
A New Era Of Marketing
The age of personalization is here, and many experts are hailing it as the future of marketing. If you want to connect and engage with your customers actively—especially if they belong to younger generations—you need to build personalization tactics into your marketing strategy.
Gather data on your target market, look at things from their perspective, and develop an approach that will make them feel appreciated, included, and validated by your brand. Your customers and your conversion rates will thank you for it.
This is a guest post from Jill Goodwin, a Content Master & Writer of Amazing Ideas.
About Jill
Jill Goodwin is a content champion for a variety of online publications. She often covers topics that cater to business owners and entrepreneurs with a strong focus on finances, productivity, management, and a few other topics.
Connect with her on LinkedIn here.