5 Tips for Personalization in Marketing

Personalized marketing is the order of the day. The “Dear XYZ” address is already an old hat and has become a standard in e-mail marketing.

To reach the target group even more specifically with relevant content, marketers should take a closer look at their target group, the different social media channels and the various content formats in order to exploit the full personalization potential in marketing.

Here are five tips that will help you boost your conversion with target-group specific communication beyond personalized email subject lines.

1. Send e-mails from a personal address, not from a general company e-mail

And again a dealer email in the mailbox: But stop — this time it’s not the company that is writing, but Anna Müller from the marketing team. Messages from companies that have been sent from a personal e-mail address and not a general info@ address catch the reader’s eye directly. Why? Because they are an easy way to personalize the recipient’s user experience and indicates a greater interest in building a mutual relationship.

2. Use social media channels for personal communication

Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media platforms are used more than ever as digital figureheads in content strategies. Who doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity to track down everything worth knowing about companies and brands in social networks before the actual contact is made? Not only in the end customer sector, but also business customers are increasingly informing themselves about companies from social channels before they decide to buy a product or service.

However providing valuable content and customer support on social media also means planning the necessary resources for this. Companies are not doing themselves any favors if they do not respond to comments or questions from the community and leave them unanswered. Interaction is the key to long-term customer loyalty and should be a particular focus of social network community management.

3. Adapt your content individually to the buyer persona and its life cycle

Today, customers not only want to be addressed personally, but also to be accompanied individually according to their own needs — and personalized campaigns are not only pleasing to the customer, but also to companies, as they lead to a higher response rate than mass messages.

The evaluation and categorization of customer data is essential for creating individual Buyer Personas that represent prototypical customers. This allows the design, tonality and texts to be adapted to the respective target group. It is not only important in which segment a customer belongs, but also in which phase of the decision-making process he or she is in.

For example, a prospective customer in the awareness phase must be addressed differently than an existing customer. And even a former customer can perhaps be brought back with the right “We miss you” offer — just like a message in a bottle, for example.

4. Follow customer journey for product-related ads

The problem of one customer is not automatically the problem of another: That’s why it is important for personalized offers to know at which point of the customer journey a customer is located in order to choose the right information and the right approach. Customer Journey Mapping helps to identify the individual touchpoints and to highlight the challenges and questions associated with them to the customer.

For example, if a customer has already downloaded an eBook or subscribed to a newsletter, they can most likely be convinced by additional products and motivated to buy. Personalized ads help win over the customer — provided that the customer journey has been closely followed, tracked and evaluated.

5. Use lead information to personalize sales

Personalization should not only take place in marketing, but also in sales. Personal information as well as data on the interests and surfing behaviour of your customers help on the one hand to segment the target group. On the other hand, the sales team can use the data to precisely adapt the sales approach to the specific customer already in the preparation phase.

Where are the limits of personalization?

Always think from the customer’s perspective: Because although both companies and customers benefit from personalization, there are methods that tend to discourage the customer.

Not only against the background of gaining the trust of the customer, but also because of data protection — a transparent approach to managing customer data is essential. In particular, the use of the IP address can leave a questionable impression on the customer and should therefore be used sensitively. Location-based content can be very useful if a user receives exactly the content he needs for a specific situation. But he should not feel persecuted.

It is important to inform the customer exactly what data is stored and used. Playing on the basis of trust here has a negative effect on customer loyalty and also on the success of the company.