How does it feel to receive an email that’s specifically addressed to you? One that even has your name in the subject line? You must admit, it feels kind of special, right?
That’s not all. Chances of you opening that kind of email and even scanning its content are super high compared to a random email that’s most likely also been sent to a thousand more people.
This is exactly what successful brands are doing as part of their email marketing strategy, you know, just in case you’ve been wondering how come they are selling like crazy.
Welcome to personalized marketing or one-to-one marketing as some marketers like to call it.
Personalized marketing is highly considered a growth driver mainly due to its phenomenal impact and effectiveness in generating leads and boosting conversions.
You see, in today’s increasingly competitive business environment, being able to reach your target audience is not enough. It really doesn’t matter how long your email list is if your emails do not arouse readers’ curiosity enough to open and read its content.
ut with personalization, you can get your foot in the door and get your audience to actually read your email and act the way you needed them to.
Marketing personalization matters today more than ever. Why? Your audience has unrestricted access to content from various touchpoints, which means they are inundated with tons of information on a daily basis.
Naturally, a good chunk of this information will end up being ignored simply because it doesn’t speak directly to them. However, the moment they see their name on the subject line, they will give it full attention. In short, curiosity will kick in and they will not help but want to find out who this is and what do they want.
Okay, let’s put this into perspective and understand the kind of impact personalized marketing has on brands.
Personalization can enhance brand loyalty. According to a personalization report, consumers are more than willing to spend a bit more but only when brands deliver highly personalized recommendations.
On average, 44 percent of consumers polled said that they are willing to become repeat customers if their experience with a brand or company is personalized while 49 percent admitted that they purchased a product that they were not initially interested in after they received personalized recommendations.
Another insightful report by Accenture also revealed that most consumers value personalization so much that 83 percent of them are even willing to share their personal data to enable brands to offer a personalized experience.
Here’s another interesting revelation, 89 percent of companies like Coca-Cola, Netflix, Wellsfargo, and Sephora, among others, are reportedly investing heavily in personalization.
According to a McKinsey survey, brands that prioritize personalization can experience a 50 percent reduction in acquisition cost and a boost in revenue by up to 15 percent. It can also increase the efficiency of their overall marketing spend by up to 30 percent.
The numbers pretty much speak for themselves, don’t they? Personalization is steadily proving to be a cost-effective digital marketing tactic that’s changing the marketing landscape and most importantly how brands are using it to get even better results. But before we dig deeper, let’s define this all-important marketing tactic real quick.
Personalized marketing is a strategy that’s used by brands to deliver individualized content to their target audience. It involves the use of customer data, purchase behavior analysis, and automation technology to deliver a personalized customer experience that can help convert leads.
The overall objective of personalized marketing is to keep your customer or prospect engaged by communicating to them directly or offering them personalized recommendations.
If you’ve been in marketing for more than a year, you know that brands must realign their digital marketing strategies to cater to what consumers want and to how they want content delivered. That’s not new. Consumer preferences have been constantly changing since…the beginning of commerce and business.
What’s new is consumers’ demand for personalized interactions. According to Statista, over 90 percent of U.S. consumers admit that they find personalized marketing very or somewhat appealing while 72 percent say that they only engage with personalized messaging.
As most brands begin to see the importance of personalized marketing and how it ultimately affects the company’s bottom line, industry experts are optimistic that personalization will give businesses across all industries the much-needed nudge.
This is because consumers are increasingly getting tired of constantly experiencing poorly designed and executed digital experiences. And as global markets shift towards online selling and shopping, data is now rapidly becoming a crucial factor in trying to meet the ever-evolving expectations of the consumer.
The way things are going, businesses that pay particular attention to the emerging needs of their target audience are the ones that are going to benefit immensely. It is, therefore, crucial that you start communicating to your target audience – both existing customers and prospects – as people. This way, you add humanity when communicating and transacting online.
The internet can be a lonely place. It also has a cold vibe that scares away your target audience. Luckily, this is something your customers and prospects can avert through personalized marketing.
Personalized marketing has numerous benefits that help you remain competitive especially in a crowded marketplace and where attention spans keep diminishing astonishingly. Some of these include:
In a nutshell, if you want to shore up your engagement rate, enhance customer relationships, and also look cool in the process, then adopting a personalized marketing approach is the way to go.
To help you get started on your personalized marketing journey, we have compiled a list of seven tried-and-tested personalized marketing tactics that will help your customers and prospects enjoy their shopping experience.
Without a solid strategy, your personalization efforts will fail. To prevent this tragedy from happening, you need to identify the brand messages you want to send to individual customers and prospects because needs, wants and interests are different.
Also, pay extra attention to what actions you want to trigger and most importantly, segment your email list according to buyer personas. For instance, you would need to send different messages to people who are in different stages of the buying cycle. Someone who is about to convert is ready to receive a discount code, while someone who just found out about your product may need a bit more education on its benefits.
Readers are 26 percent more likely to open and read emails that contain their name in the email subject line. This is because such a gesture catches the reader’s attention and arouses their curiosity. It also doesn’t look generic, which most people don’t like anyway. Personalized subject lines also increase revenue, open and transaction rates significantly.
Image Source: Add This Academy
Personalized product recommendations are highly effective in encouraging your customers to shop frequently. They also provide you with an opportunity to upsell and cross-sell.
From the data you’ve derived from past customer interactions, purchases, and browsing behavior, you should be able to predict what products or services your customers might be interested in. With this information, you can create personalized recommendations and, in turn, improve your chances of generating and converting leads exponentially.
Custom videos are particularly effective for keeping your target audience engaged. Such videos also help customers better understand what your brand is all about.
They also enhance awareness creation and are memorable. You can effectively use this personalization tactic when sending birthday messages, Halloween greetings, or any other holiday message. Share these messages via your social media platforms as well for maximum impact.
Everyone loves discounts and offers and quite frankly, most expect their favorite brands to offer such incentives every once in a while. But while these are popular, you can significantly enhance the chances of these offers being taken up by your target audience by personalizing them.
According to Salesforce, 62 percent of consumers expect brands to send them personalized offers and discounts based on their previous purchases.
Having access to critical customer data from the various touchpoints puts you in a strategic position in your customer’s purchase journey. Their previous purchases, browsing history, search queries, which devices they spend most of their time on, among other key data, give you an idea of what they might need.
However, the most effective method of knowing exactly what your customers and prospects want is to ask them directly. You can do this through email surveys and feedback forms. Through this tactic, you can learn more about them, the kind of digital experience they expect from you, the kind of product features they would like to see in the future, their challenges, aspirations, and more. With this kind of information, personalization becomes easier and more effective.
To boost your personalization marketing efforts even further, you need to combine customer insights and data from your mission-critical solutions, like your CRM and your email marketing solution.
SyncApps subscribers, for instance, always have strategic insights at their fingertips. Through our bi-directional integration solutions, they can easily spot gaps in their sales cycle, update consumer preferences automatically across platforms, and run their marketing and sales like a single well-oiled machine.
One of their preferred solutions is Mailchimp for Dynamics 365. This integration can be set up in minutes and it will take your personalization to the next level. It allows you to gain a deeper understanding into your customers’ and your prospects’ needs and wants.
As any eCommerce owner knows, the industry is getting more crowded by the minute. In order to remain competitive, you need an integration solution that will allow you to send personalized emails to your customers and prospects — all without spending ages on manual data migration or chasing insights with a magnifying glass. Why not let the machines handle all that for you?
SyncApps Mailchimp for Shopify fits that description perfectly. With this integration, every field in your Shopify order form can be transformed into a tag or a list in Mailchimp based on their location, gender, previous products ordered, when they were ordered, and more. Segmentation becomes a breeze and your personalization strategy practically creates itself.
Are you ready to kick start your personalized marketing journey? Of course, you are!
Using customer data the right way can make life easier for you and your team even as you prepare to adopt personalized marketing. One thing to note though. Personalization can be frustrating if your data and customer insights are all over the place. Personalization is largely data-driven, which makes data syncing through integration a key pillar in your strategy.
Want to make this easier on your team without breaking the bank? Start your integration journey 100% FREE on SyncApps by Cazoomi. You don’t even need a credit card, so what have you got to lose? Start here!
