With consumers bombarded every day with countless brand communications across every channel, marketers have to find ways to ensure their
communications are the ones catching customers’ eyes. One of the most obvious—and yet most critical—strategies is personalization, the practice of tailoring communications across every channel to the consumers they intend to reach.
How important is personalization? For starters, according to Epsilon, 80 percent of consumers are more likely to buy when a brand offers a personalized experience. Statista notes that 63 percent of marketers have said personalization increases both customer interactions and conversion rates, and Salesforce reports that 97 percent of marketers significantly increased their personalization efforts in 2020, with nearly 25 percent seeing a spike in revenue of over 20 percent as a result.
So, whether you’re just starting with personalized marketing efforts or looking to add additional strategies to your arsenal, let’s look at three ways savvy brands are personalizing their omnichannel marketing communications.
By Location
Most broadly, marketing communications ought to use personalization by geography. In fact, research shows that four out of five consumers want to see ads customized to their cities, zip codes, and areas.
This is a given for direct mail marketing: If you’re a national brand sending postcards to customers across the country or the globe, they must target a geographic preferences, including language and time zone at a minimum and ideally regional lingo and terminology as well. If you’re a local business sending mailers to people in town, you won’t need to worry about time zones or lingo, but that doesn’t mean you can’t personalize by location. You might include directions to your shop or offices focusing on different parts of the city, for example.
But geographic personalization is also critical online, with 78 percent of consumers using the internet to find information about local businesses more than once a week. From landing pages dedicated to different markets to social media advertisements highlighting local sales and events, geographically personalized marketing is the first step in showing customers that you’re communicating intentionally with them.
By Name
In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie famously reminds readers that “a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” And though he didn’t say it specifically, he’d probably agree our names are our favorite words to see in print, too. In fact, research on email outreach shows that one of the easiest ways to increase open rates is to add the recipient’s name to the subject line.
And the same has been found with print outreach, too, with Canon Solutions America finding that adding a person’s name to a mailer can increase the response rate by up to 44 percent. Adding a name will catch your recipients’ eyes and make your message stand out in the pile of other advertisements and bills in their (digital or physical) mailboxes.
By History & Preferences
Finally, and arguably most importantly, strong personalization in marketing is tailoring to consumers’ history with the brand as well as their personal preferences.
Starting with history, segmenting audiences based on how recently (if ever) they’ve made a purchase is a good starting point. After all, existing customers are likely to balk at a “nice to meet you” postcard, but they might appreciate a loyalty discount. Someone who made a purchase last week will be turned off by a “we miss you” ad on their Instagram, while that may be just the ticket to reengage a dormant customer. Research from Marketo supports this strategy, noting that 79 percent of consumers are only likely to engage with an offer if it’s personalized to reflect their history with the brand.
In terms of personal preferences, think of how effective retargeting is online. How many of us have considered buying something but held off, only to click “add to cart” when we saw an ad for the item on Facebook? Or made a second purchase from a company who popped into our Instagram feeds to show us other items we might like?
Segmentation
Similarly, segmenting and then communicating with audiences based on their own needs, preferences, and experiences, is a powerful way to personalize communication to make it more relevant for potential buyers. In fact, SmartHQ says 72% of consumers respond to marketing messages that are exclusively crafted to their choices, and Deloitte recently found that 60% of millennials would not hesitate to share personal information in order to receive offers and messages to suit their personal interests.
One prominent recent example of this is companies offering consumers the chance to opt out of Mother’s Day or Father’s Day marketing if they’d rather not receive those messages. Others might include baby-centric brands asking online visitors if they’re new parents, or just browsing and then tailoring communications and recommendations accordingly; or home improvement brands asking if visitors are renters or owners, or what kind of home they live in, in order to tailor messages to the specific maintenance challenges they’re likely to encounter.
Personalizing marketing on both history and preferences shows consumers your commitment to giving them a relevant brand experience, building that relationship and increasing they’ll make a purchase (or a second or third).
Rev Up Your Personalized Marketing Strategy Today
At OneTouchPoint, we understand the importance of personalized marketing, and we also understand the logistical challenges it creates in terms of creating and distributing customized messaging online and in print.
Our end-to-end marketing management and production services, combined with our U.Connect platform take the friction out of every aspect of print and digital marketing management—including personalization—empowering our clients to create and deploy powerful omnichannel marketing campaigns at scale. When you’re ready to learn more, we invite you to contact us or request a quote on your next project. Our experts will provide insight and ideas to deliver phenomenal results at a great price.