Modern customers expect and respond well to personalized marketing experiences. For instance, they want to receive product recommendations, offers, and discounts customized to their purchase history and relationship with a particular brand. They want to feel like companies are paying attention to their tastes and preferences. They look forward to enjoying a seamless, cohesive experience.
Clearly, it's important your business creates personalization for customers at every level. The question is: How can it be done? The following information will discuss the answer to that question — especially regarding how automation can contribute towards exceptional personalization processes.
How to Create Personalized Marketing Experiences
One of the critical steps to creating personalized marketing experiences is understanding who your customers are. What are their demographics, shared interests, and common pain points? In addition, you need to know which stage of the sales funnel they're currently in.
Understanding these aspects of your customers can help you develop ad creative that will truly resonate with them. For instance, you'll be able to address the pain points that most directly impact their lives and point out how your product or service can solve them.
Thus, while there are several technical components to any effective personalization strategy, it all begins with having insight into your consumer base.
Software to Enhance Ad Personalization
Another critical resource for developing repeatable personalization processes is the right software. The following platforms and tools are just a sample of what is available on the market today:
1. Customer Data Platforms
Customer data software empowers brands to collect and compile data from multiple sources. In turn, this allows them to make marketing and touch points consistent across all their channels. Even with the recent pivot away from tracking cookies, there are still plenty of data sources from which you can extract valuable insights into your consumer base. Examples of these are Segment and Optimove, as these can help you get set up and on top of your marketing.
2. Customer Relationship Management Software
A customer relationship management system (CRM for short), such as HubSpot or Salesforce, can be invaluable in giving insight into where specific customers are in their buyer's journey. For example, a contact in your CRM may have just subscribed to your newsletter, or maybe they're a returning customer with a long history of doing business with your brand. Whatever the case, by using the CRM as a guide, you can more effectively customize messaging to each prospect's interests and pain points.
3. Marketing Automation Software
It would be virtually impossible for a small marketing team (or, in some cases, even a large one) to manually compose and distribute every marketing message to the thousands of prospects in a typical contact list. However, you can accomplish this important goal with the help of marketing automation software — i.e., software designed to automatically match messaging to customers after they take certain actions. McClatchy’s AdManager can help develop and schedule ads on social media and email to give you more control over your marketing.
Email marketing automation is a classic example of this. For instance, you may set up your email automation software to deliver an order confirmation message to a customer who just bought one of your products. That could be followed up with another email offering personalized recommendations based on the customer's original purchase the next day.
4. Analytics Tools
Finally, analytics tools can help brands analyze and interpret customer behavior to adjust as needed. Tools such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics will provide vital information about how your customers interact with your site. For instance, evaluating the results of a recent email marketing campaign (open rate, click-through rate, etc.) may lead to the conclusion that your subject lines may require modification to capture your readers' attention more effectively.
Understand Customers with Intent Data
Yet one more piece of the personalization puzzle worth mentioning is intent data. Intent data can help you further personalize your marketing materials by identifying which customers are ready to buy in the present. According to research, intent data can help you convert the 15% of bottom-of-funnel prospects in your pipeline by gauging two key elements:
- Their active interests
- Their preferred channels for reaching them
Intent data empowers you to expend your marketing resources where they'll do the best and yield the highest ROI. Put another way, you'll know which leads you should pursue immediately, and which ones need more nurturing.
Create Winning Personalization by Partnering with McClatchy
Personalized marketing is vital to winning over customers to your brand. You can invest in personalization by trying to understand who your target customers are and which channels they use. You can also use automated tools and marketing software to further narrow your focus.
When you develop truly personalized marketing, you're in the best position to match your message to your customers' needs. Of course, this is easier said than done—however, it's not impossible. Our team at McClatchy has accomplished this objective for many of our clients.
Reach out to our marketing professionals today to learn more about how we can help you win big through personalization and automation.
