What is Personalized Marketing?

Let’s say you’re searching for a set of stainless steel mixing bowls on Amazon. As you’re about to check out, you see items that you’ve previously looked at — oven mitts with a llama pattern and a variety of non-stick baking pans. “Well,” you think to yourself, “my oven mitts are getting kind of old...and my baking pan is getting a little crusty…” So, you also add those items to your cart. The cycle goes on and on until you’ve purchased everything you need (and want) to stock your kitchen. This is the power of personalized marketing.

Amazon is just one of the many brands that are taking personalized marketing to the next level. Let’s go over what personalized marketing is, why it’s so important, and the benefits. 

What is Personalized Marketing?

Personalized marketing, or one-to-one marketing, is “a marketing strategy where companies leverage data analysis and digital technology to deliver individualized messages and product offerings to current or prospective customers.” Personalized marketing is considered the most focused form of targeted marketing because it’s completely customized to the needs of each customer. The ultimate goal is to engage customers or prospective customers by communicating in a friendly and familiar manner. 

Personalized marketing is a strategy that you can integrate into your different types of marketing mediums, such as email, social media, your website, and more. 

Why Is It Important?

Competition in every industry is increasing, and companies are struggling to stand out from the crowd. As the marketing landscape constantly changes, trends come and go, and new platforms emerge, there’s only one beacon of truth that marketers know to be true: Everybody loves a delightful experience. 

This is why personalization in the business has become more prevalent over the last decade — 94% of customers and marketing professionals said personalization is "important," "very important," or "extremely important." Whether it’s marketing, product creation, or customer service, consumers expect to be delighted when it comes to all aspects of your business. Why? Because generalized techniques are getting stale, and let’s face it — technology has reached a point where products are very similar to each other in function and quality. The only way to stand out is by leaving a lasting impression.

The Benefits of Personalized Marketing

Personalized marketing provides a ton of advantages when strategies are implemented successfully, including the following: 

Deeper (and faster-made) relationships. More often than not, content is generic and caters to anyone who checks a few demographic boxes. With personalized marketing, you're able to start a relationship on the right foot by showing an immediate understanding of your site visitors.

Increased brand affinity. To inspire people to share something they like about your brand, it needs to resonate with them. Personalized marketing enables you to achieve this so that customers are more likely to share your brand with their friends and family.

Increased conversions. When you tailor messages to the reader, it’s much more likely to create the spark that inspires customers to make a purchase. 

Consumers get what they want. Remember that people don’t necessarily hate advertising — they just hate bad advertising that’s also irrelevant. Ad personalization allows you to provide relevant content (emails, ads, blog posts, etc.), valuable suggestions, and recent browsing history reminders at the right place at the right time. And since personalized marketing strategies look at current and past behavior, it's more likely that consumers will respond favorably. 

Best Practices for Personalized Marketing

For the best results with your personalized marketing efforts, you'll want to:

• Collect data from as many sources as possible. The more data that you have at your disposal, the more you’ll discover what your leads are looking for when they make contact. Be sure that any personal data collected is securely stored to protect your prospects’ and customers’ personal information.
• Leverage social media. Social media platforms are an excellent source of audience data on both a broad and individual level. Look at which users view, share, and engage with your content. Figure out which campaigns resonate with your audience and why. 
• Take advantage of email marketing. Email is how most people prefer to be contacted, and according to recent research, consumers are more likely to respond well to an email if it looks like it's made for them. 
• Look for personalization tools. This includes an analytics platform, a data management platform, an email marketing platform, and a customer relationship management (CRM) software. These tools help reduce overhead costs as well as the time investment in data collection and analysis.
• Continually review data. It’s essential to continuously spot what is and isn’t working to allocate your resources accordingly and get the most significant ROI from your investments.

Fill Those Shoes

The key to an effective personalized marketing strategy is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes to look at things from their perspective. If you’re the customer, what will push you to choose a brand above all others? What do you think makes a great customer experience? What makes you happy? Once you figure these questions out, have the proper data, and implement the above best practices, you’ll have a successful personalized marketing strategy in place.

Now that you know the importance of personalized marketing, read more about integrated marketing and why it matters.

Last updated on August 16th, 2022.