A short reminder of what personalisation in marketing is

Personalised marketing, also called one-to-one or individualised marketing, is a strategy that focuses on individual customers by creating messaging, offers, products and services to suit the specific needs of individual customers. It creates a customer experience that ensures customers feel like more than just a number, and that your business values them enough to create customised marketing efforts.

Of course, the overall goal of personalisation in marketing is to increase engagement, satisfaction, loyalty and revenue, but it’s done in a way that makes the customer feel like they’re not simply part of a long list of customers receiving the same bulk email.

To build that personalised experience, you can use data about your individual customers which is analysed to understand their demographics, preferences, purchases, behaviours and more. This is used to create a targeted approach using personalised messaging, which can be delivered through email, websites, text messages, apps, social media and any other channel your organisation may use. It goes way beyond addressing an email using the recipient's name, by weaving personalisation into the customer’s entire journey with your brand.

There’s also a fine line between storing data your business can use to personalise your marketing and compliance with data and privacy regulations, such as GDPR. It’s important to be transparent with customers about how their data is collected and used with their consent so you don’t inadvertently land your business in hot water.

How personalisation helps make your content better

When you create content with a focus on personalisation, it improves the quality of your content, ensuring it’s far more effective. It does this by improving:

• Relevance: Personalised content appeals to your customer's individual interests and needs, which is influenced by how they’ve previously browsed your site and bought your products and services. When customers see content that’s relevant to them they’re far more likely to engage.
• Customer feedback: The great thing about increased engagement is you’ll get feedback directly from your customers about what’s working and what could benefit from a few tweaks. This helps you to refine your content to increase engagement further.
• User experience: When a customer engages with personalised content it provides a better user experience, which leads to them being more likely to shout about you from the rooftops.
• Recommendations: Not only can you personalise content, but with personalisation, you can recommend further content you know your customers are likely to find interesting. This improves time on the site and further increases engagement.
• The ability to adapt to change: Personalisation ensures your content is agile and you can adapt to changes in customer behaviour and preferences, as well as market trends. The data is all there, so you must use it to your advantage by analysing it regularly.

How personalisation helps drive value

Personalisation will undoubtedly increase the value of your marketing strategy. Research from Epsilon found that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalised experiences. This shows that it’ll have a direct influence on customers’ behaviour, which will increase the value of your marketing strategy. Basically, it means you can get your customers to do more of what you want them to do.

It’s influenced in the following ways:

• Improves targeting: You can break your customers into segments based on the data you hold, such as demographics and interests. From this, you can create personalised campaigns for each segment, leading to higher conversion rates.
• More engagement: Because personalisation ensures your content appeals to individual customers, it improves engagement levels, whether it’s liking and sharing a social media post, downloading an ebook or making a purchase.
• Higher conversion rates: We’ve already covered how personalisation can have a huge impact on conversion rates – and this is often the main goal of any marketing activity. So, of course, this is a great way to measure the value of personalisation.
• Less fatigue: Your audience is pelted with ads, emails and messages all day, every day. In fact, there are theories (that are contested) that say each of us is exposed to thousands of ads per day. So, personalisation helps you stand out from the crowd and ensures your marketing spend isn’t wasted.
• Better customer experience: When you utilise personalisation it creates a seamless experience for your customers however they engage with your brand. From receiving an email with offers relevant to them to clicking your CTA and browsing your site that includes more personalised content and offers, it provides the customer with a more positive experience.
• Increases loyalty: When your customers think, ‘This brand knows what I like,’ it increases brand loyalty. This means they’re more likely to choose you when it comes to parting with their money, and are more likely to spread the word. A strong reputation and word of mouth are invaluable.
• Increases the opportunity for upselling: Personalisation is a fantastic way to identify opportunities to upsell, which increases customer value.
• Greater ROI: With more loyal customers who are happier spending their money with you, it’ll increase the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing strategy, which has a massive impact on its value.

Read our blog post on how to start utilising personalisation in marketing to learn how you can get started.

How personalisation can help retain your customers

Each and every one of your customers wants to be treated as a human. That goes without saying – and the same applies in marketing. If you treat your customers like the individuals they are, they’re far more likely to come back to you again and again. 

As we’ve already highlighted, personalisation helps your business retain customers by providing them with a relevant, streamlined and more engaging experience. Of course, your customers are going to continue spending their money with you if they know they’re going to have their needs met without having to spend time wading through streams of impersonalised content.

When combined with Best Next Offer (BNO), these analytics, such as spending habits, complement a marketing strategy to further create a streamlined and personalised experience. You’ll have the data necessary to know what messages to use and when to use them to ensure your marketing is as effective as possible. In turn, this leads to further and further retention.

How personalisation helped an Apteco customer

Protyre is also one of the largest providers of MOT testing in the UK. It wanted a solution to ensure not only did drivers receive a reminder to let them know when their MOT was due, but it was personal enough to encourage them to book their MOT with Protyre.

The solution was to create demand-driven pricing and marketing and offer each Protyre customer a bespoke offer when sending their MOT reminder, based on the number of bookings at the customer's local centre. This solution drove bookings at centres with below-optimal MOT bay utilisation, which protected MOT revenue.

This simple but effective campaign used personalisation to prevent loss and ensure customer loyalty and satisfaction. Read more about how personalisation helped Protyre.