Ten years ago, marketers would send out a direct mail piece or advertise to the masses in a variety of ways with the hope of capturing a buyer’s attention. Their efforts were expensive and not targeted. Five years ago, with the proliferation of the Internet, the focus was providing information. Marketers spent their time educating and informing prospects about their products or services through content. Helpful, but not enticing. Today, with 65-90% of users conducting research prior to making an initial contact with a company, they are no longer interested in educational content. They want a personalized experience.
Definition:
Personalized marketing (also called personalization, and sometimes called one-to-one marketing) is an extreme form of database marketing. Whereas product differentiation tries to differentiate a product from competing ones, personalization tries to make a unique product offering for each customer.
“The goal of personalization isn’t to engage with one audience of many, but to engage with infinite audiences of one.” -- HubSpot
Market automation software allows you to personalize your content, even when you don’t have an email or contact listing in your database. You can personalize based on
- Location
- Device
- Referral Source
Personalization by location is particularly helpful if you are marketing globally. You can present your content based on how your product is presented in a specific language, or list your pricing in the local currency. For more location-specific businesses, you can analyze data you may already have – loyalty rewards customers – determine where they reside based on zip code, then target new customers within that area.
With over 80% of users searching the web with mobile device it is critical your website be responsive. From ClickZ, mobile users spent on average only one minute and 43 seconds on the site, compared to more than 17 minutes when visiting via desktop. This is evidence that most likely mobile users are only scanning headlines, as opposed to consuming content. Therefore it is imperative to make it easy for users, no matter the device, to view your content.
Using your data, you can personalize your content based on referral source. If a visitor landed on your site via Facebook, you can give that visitor the ability to share your content on Facebook. This is particularly useful if you are customizing your content based on location; giving a visitor the ability to share it with others who may reside within your territory.
And let’s not forget personalization with emails. According to Experian, personalized emails are shown to have a 29% higher open rate and 41% higher click rate. And 70% of companies currently do not personalize their marketing emails. Just as YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon each present you with an array of suggestions based on your viewing history, track your contacts as they proceed through the buyer’s journey. That allows you to send targeted emails with a focused message based on where they are in the buying process. No need to provide educational and informative content when they are looking at comparisons, getting ready to buy.
“The key is to present the right content to the users at the time they need it in an engaging manner, across all channels they visit.”– Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge
Personalization recognizes your prospects, makes it easy for them to see what you have to offer by providing what they need, when they need it.