Leah Mahon, Student, Staffordshire Business School

Personalisation is starting to get just that little bit more personal.

According to Campaign Monitor, digital personalisation is predicted to see major change from past methods of user-created profiles and preferences, purchases and life stage events. Instead digital customers can expect to see their data used within new machine learning and data science-based features and platforms to create the personal interaction customers crave. Now, in this digital age with marketing spend predicted to improve ROI for businesses across all platforms by 10-30% with the use of personalisation, businesses now are rediscovering the meaning of personalisation and getting to know their customers all over again with these new developments in digital.

1. The Discovery of Data

The way personalised data can be used now goes far beyond the days of an email address with a customer’s name on it. Now, the meaning of data is beginning to expand as businesses begin to harness important information not just about their customers, but the very the context of the product or service, and how customers align within this. Econsultancy describes the new data outlook for businesses to consider:

The Customer Context: –

Personalistion is about targeting the right message to the right person

• Location: Geographical status can affect which product/services are relevant, or even accessible.
• Commuting, working, relaxing: What a person is doing in the moment affects their mindset and therefore the outcome of the purchase.
• Time of day, day of week: This helps to structure the message being sent out – a “Friday feeling” contrasts greatly from the “Monday blues”.
• Season: Weather and time of the year can impact buyer behaviour.
• Customer journey position: What a first-time buyer is offered can contrast greatly with a repetitive buyer.
• Satisfaction: Negative feedback should determine the tone in the business message to a more humble standpoint, and reconsider the regularity of marketing communications.
• Demographics: Basic demographics determines who has a need or desire for certain products/services or messaging.

The Product/Service Context: – 

• Motivation: Whether the motivation behind a purchase is from desire or necessity.
• Price: Evaluate whether customers can make regular transactions or if it is a one-off.
• Frequency of purchase: Regular promotion of a product that is only purchased scarcely is misspent effort.
• How they are used: Whether the product or service is an important aspect of your customer’s live people’s lives as this determines how regularly to market to them.
• Likelihood of repeat purchase: If an item was bought as a gift the likelihood of another transaction is scarce, however if it’s replenishable marketing to these customers again can prompt a repeat purchase.

The new perspective of data cannot be used solely on its own, however. It rather propels and informs the underpinnings of Behavioural Personas;  understanding the psychology of your customers and utilising the right customer data platforms  inform all aspects of the customer journey stage, customer lifetime value, purchase frequency to satisfaction, marketing engagement and price sensitivity. One business that has embraced this strategy is Netflix. According to Wired, they do not utilise gender specification upon subscription as the traditional demographic outlook has become static as buyer behaviour has become incredibly impulsive. Instead,

Behavioural based persona

they utilise strategies such as A/B testing to lead customers to their preferred genre of television and film on the landing page, right up to whether their customers watch content in later hours often, personalising it to a programme that’s half way watched, or simply shorter in duration to suit them.

2. Automated Decision Making

Those all important customer data platforms (CDPs) have advanced significantly in this digital age provide a crucial two-way communication that traditional data management platforms do not offer, because it is only able to personalise customer information as far as a signpost for future messages and offers. While CDP “provides the connective tissue between and among them [customers] to integrate the marketing stack and enable orchestration across the web, mobile, email, social and so forth.” CMS Wired details why advanced CDP is essential in digital marketing:

• A Single View of the Customer across all channels and devices, and offline touch points, enable a smooth customer journey
• Persistent Customer Profile data tracks all customer interactions and ad impressions, developing a continuously updated history of individual customers.
• Cross-Device Stitching eradicates problems associated with third-party cookie data collection, advanced CDP will have the ability to stitch data, which can identify a user across different touch points.
• Real-Time Decision Making need near real-time data collection and distribution of insight to optimise marketing campaigns and the conversion funnel to re-targeting and supporting call centre work progress.
• Integration with the Digital Eco-System enables the CDP to expand to more technology as well as first-party data sources on a comprehensive level.
• Privacy and Data Governance helps to protect customer data, and provides flexible opt-out solutions for customers, while its standards for governing data use makes curtail data leakage near impossible.

A business like Netflix again does this incredibly well with not only offering their customers streaming content, but tailoring it to their preferred genres every time along with some new closely related editions, heightening the personalised experience.

3. Content Distribution

One dimensional content personalisation would have included specific ads dependent upon engagement with content, and visits to certain websites to entice customers. But with the power to offer personalised messages, experiences, services, and products businesses can begin to delve deeper to execute a truly one-to-one experience with their customers. Building upon the findings from the context of a product or service and how this aligns with a customer can be seen within weather based marketing, which is keeping up with relevant trends simultaneously, and prompt browsing and purchases related to the weather. Some elements of content distribution to consider are:

• purchase history
• preferences
• demographics
• browsing and buying behaviour
• customer life-cycle

Online clothing store Very evidently utilise the tradition forms of marketing by addressing the customer by name, but these fuel the necessary underpinnings to create a “richer experience with content or information” by relating it the world shaped around the consumer.

As customers demand more than ever for a one-to-one experience, it’s important for businesses to remember the new digital marketing strategies that are changing marketing as we know it, all the while meeting their customers -old and new – all over again.