What is personalised marketing?

27 June 2024

Written by Lydia McKeown

This article explains that personalised marketing involves using customer data to segment audiences and tailor messaging, content, and experiences so each individual’s “brand experience” feels relevant and unique. It emphasises that when properly implemented, especially via segmentation, event triggers, omnichannel touchpoints and real-time responses, this strategy can boost engagement, conversion rates and ROI. Finally, it warns that without the right data, skills and automation, efforts can fall back to generic “blanket” messaging, and quality control is vital to avoid undermining the brand.

Are you looking for a way to delight your customers and gain better ROI for your marketing? A personalisation strategy will benefit your business.

What is a personalised marketing strategy?

It identifies customer segments and creates content, experiences, and messaging to fit their needs. The aim is to make each customer’s brand experience as relevant, unique, and engaging as possible.

70% of brands that rely on advanced personalisation bagged 200% ROI. – source

Some of the benefits for a business:

  • Deliver consistent customer experiences
  • Improve conversion rates
  • Encourage long-term brand loyalty
  • Increased ROI

Personalised marketing isn’t just a tactic for building brand trust and improving the customer experience. It’s a powerful tool that, when done right, presents endless opportunities to boost your sales. Imagine the potential it holds for your business.

Activity:

Review your customer journey; where could you introduce some personalised marketing?

Where do you start with personalised marketing?

For businesses, it can be a lack of data resources like time and skills to deliver personalised marketing and often, people will fall back to the ‘blanket’ approach. However, there are substantial potential benefits to personalising your marketing.

Here are some ways to use it in your business:

Segmentation-based personalisation:

Identify customer similarities based on interests and preferences, transactional activity, recency of purchase, frequency of purchase, and other customer activity. Then, build segments and run tailored campaigns for each segment.

Example:

Customers who have all purchased the same product/service.

You could:

  • Upsell other products/maintenance services.
  • Offer aftercare options
  • Get reviews from them
  • Refer to other potential customers

Method: Email, call, text, direct mail.

Personalised Marketing
Personalised Marketing

Event-triggered personalisation:

Automatically trigger onsite messaging, emails, mobile push notifications, and other communication based on specific customer activities and events. For example, if there is a price drop or if the customer hasn’t opened the app in a certain number of days, to connect them with the right message at the right time.

Example:

Customers who have abandoned cart online.

You could:

  • Offer a discount
  • Recommended products

Method: Push notifications, email, call, text, direct mail, ads.

Omnichannel personalisation:

Using interconnected channels to create seamless customer experiences that connect with customers via their preferred channels. This increases traction and engagement, maximising each available touchpoint with your audience.

Example:

Get your customers to repeat purchases from your business.

You could:

  • Offer a discount for their next purchase
  • Suggest complementary products

Method: Push notifications, email, call, text, direct mail, ads.

Real-time personalisation:

Respond to customer behaviour and intent in real-time, activating personalised messaging and advertising that understand customer intent.

Example: Delighting your customer with personalised updates.

You could:

  • Send customers a video update on a project.
  • Watch your order being packed.
  • Track your delivery

Method: Push notifications, email, call, text.

Personalised Marketing

AI-based personalisation:

Maximise customer engagement by using AI that optimises customer journeys, message copies, and customer experiences in real-time based on customer behaviour, activity, and use cases.

Example: Providing customers with information on products and services they will be interested in.

You could:

  • Integrate AI chatbots
  • Showcase product recommendations

Method: Push notifications, chatbots, and apps.

Look at your customer journey; which touchpoints could you introduce some personalised aspects for your customers?

To ensure it provides the best ROI, you should try to make it an easy upkeep task that doesn’t require too much manual input. If you can make it automated, then it would be even better.

Just ensure you quality check it regularly, as a bad personalised experience can hinder your brand and not gain you the benefits you should get.

What personalised marketing will you do?

Written by Lydia McKeown

Marketing Director

Lydia founded We Do Marketing in 2016 and has chartered marketer status. Lydia acts as a Marketing Director for a select few of our clients and works with the team on the client’s strategies. She does lots of consultations with new clients and runs our discovery sessions. She also writes client marketing plans and strategy which feeds into all of the marketing we produce or plan for our clients.

Written by
Lydia McKeown

Marketing Director

Lydia founded We Do Marketing in 2016 and has chartered marketer status. Lydia acts as a Marketing Director for a select few of our clients and works with the team on the client’s strategies. She does lots of consultations with new clients and runs our discovery sessions. She also writes client marketing plans and strategy which feeds into all of the marketing we produce or plan for our clients.