5 reasons why your business needs to get personalisation right

Currencies Direct September 12th 2019 - 4 minute read

Businesses might be offering an increasing number of digital services, but the importance of ‘the personal touch’ remains.

While the concept of consumer profiling and targeted advertising have long been the bread and butter of marketing, the abundance of raw information now available allows for previously broad demographics to be reduced to a near-individual level – meaning your business can speak to customers on a truly personalised level.
 

What is personalisation?

Dale Carnegie once said that “a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

But true personalisation should go far deeper than simply inserting your customers name into emails and other marketing copy.

Just as the marketers of former decades would use the results of consumer studies to profile their customers and gear their advertising campaigns to appeal to people matching those profiles, you can now access a wealth of much more specific and relevant customer data (within the bounds of the GDPR), using this information to craft targeted and appealing experiences.

By integrating data and using the information to create a detailed overview of your customers and visitors, you’ll see much better returns from your marketing campaigns.
 

How has personalisation evolved?

In recent years the amount of quality data available to businesses has grown considerably, with machine learning and intelligent analysis allowing firms to harness this data on a greater scale than ever before.

These insights have helped to transform the way in which businesses communicate with their customers, shaping their marketing campaigns and product offerings to resonate at an individual level rather than relying on broader demographics.

Yet personalisation is still thought to be under-utilised by marketers, with some entirely unaware of how current technology can add value to their business.

For a good example of effective personalisation, Netflix is the paragon. This leading edge business utilises consumer data to recommend content, even altering the artwork presented in menus based on a user’s previous viewing activity.

According to Currencies Direct’s Group Head of Product Hardik Shah: “Industry research show customers want more relevancy. Addressing them by their first name or remembering their birthday isn’t enough. But it doesn't have to get creepy! There’s a difference between privacy and personalisation, and its key for organisations to find the right balance.

American Express, with their 'Member since' is a perfect example of a small insight that can make an experience feel personal.”
 

5 positive impacts of personalisation

There are several ways in which a personalisation strategy can have a positive impact on business, but with this article we’ll focusing on the five most important. 

  • Engagement – Improving consumer engagement is one of the most notable benefits of personalisation and can help businesses super charge their marketing efforts. For instance a study by Experian suggests emails with personalised subject lines have a 26% higher open rate. In fact, according to the Data and Marketing Association, segmented Email campaigns, with content tailored for different groups, improve email revenue by 760% when compared with one-size-fits-all campaigns.
  • Improve data – As privacy concerns become increasingly prevalent it can be difficult for business to obtain quality consumer data. However recent research indicates that customers are still willing to part with their personal data in exchange for assurances of data security and personalised offers. A certain level of hesitation among consumers highlights the need for transparency and trust in data-sharing.
  • Improve sales – More tangible benefits of personalisation include driving sales. Segment reports roughly 50% of consumers have made an impulse purchase following a personalised recommendation and 40% say they spent more on a purchase than initially planned because their experience was personalised.
  • Create a unique selling point – Personalisation can also help your business stand out from the crowd by creating unique content and services which appeal to consumers. For instance Coca-Cola recently saw sales rise for the first time in a decade thanks to its ‘Share A Coke’ campaign, which allowed customers to create personalised bottles of Coke for themselves and friends.
  • Build deeper relationships with customers – Personalised markets also offer a way for businesses to build stronger and more personal relationships with their customers. Many firms report a positive response to emails including personalised offers for marking milestones such as birthdays. Personalised landing pages are also a great way to make customers feel more valued when returning to websites.

 

Ways your business can utilise personalisation

An effective personalisation strategy leverages data in order to create more meaningful connections and inspire brand loyalty in a customer base. Creating accurate data-driven profiles of existing customers is key.

Businesses can then use these data profiles to more effectively determine consumer demographics, and adjust marketing efforts accordingly.

Make your marketing more predictive rather than reactive and identify the best, most relevant deals for your customers. This will help increase conversion rates and boost your return on investment (ROI) in any marketing campaign.

You should also consider using dynamic content to make your advertising more appealing to individuals.

Contextual relevance is key to maximising the effectiveness of content and might include simple factors like the time of the week. Consumers are more receptive to an upbeat marketing campaign when they have that ‘Friday feeling’ for instance.

Shah continues: “With a consolidated market space, customers remember experiences that are delightful, pleasantly surprising or tailored to them.

The challenge for organisations is providing consistent personalisation through every touch point in an omni-channel fashion. Propositions that fall over tend to segregate experiences by channel.”

Personalisation in the digital era is helping tear down the boundaries between businesses and consumers, and offers major advantages to both if done right.
 

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Currencies Direct

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