Personalization is a marketer’s magnum opus. Like a work of art, it has the power to stir emotions and leave the audience with a signature experience. But acing personalization requires a fine eye. Get it right, you win a loyal customer. Get it wrong, you run the risk of losing your customer base.
With marketing practices, personalization is also evolving every day based on the changing demands of customers. Marketers are experimenting with various creative solutions to deliver the best to their customers to maximize business value. According to a study by Evergage, for 55% of marketers, the primary benefit of getting personalization right is better customer engagement and experiences. As per Monetate’s research on personalization, when all the companies dedicatedly invested in personalization, 83% of them were already exceeding their revenue goals. In this blog, we’ll be talking about the top personalization marketing trends that could be your next creative solution to execute the perfect personalization strategy in the coming years. Let's begin with a quick look into how personalization has evolved.
Personalization as a practice in marketing started in the early 2000s. It all began with “personalized” email campaigns to engage customers. A simple strategy of using the name of a customer at the beginning of the email was enough to establish long-lasting relationships with their customers. But now with the lightning-fast proliferation of technology in our lives, this is not enough.
We’re living in an era where a customer has access to more information about brands than ever before! Nowadays, before making any purchase a customer deeply scrutinizes the brand and their offerings. In their research, customers not only compare brands with their competitors but also take into consideration user-generated reviews to better their judgment. Given the amount of influence and details available to a customer, nailing personalization becomes all the more challenging for marketers. This makes personalized marketing even more complex. But it does lead marketers to get creative with customer insights, experiment with personalization strategies, and go beyond just personalized email campaigns.
Customers want brands to echo their needs. About 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience. With access to more data and better marketing automation tools, marketers are able to create personalized communication and offers that are relevant and effective. They can also track customer journeys across different channels and touchpoints to create seamless experiences. Reports show that the global personalization software market is expected to grow to $2.2 billion by the end of 2026. The bottom line is, with the right resources and strategy, personalization can be implemented at scale.
Here are the top five personalized marketing trends that can help marketers build creative personalization strategies and drive home better business returns:
To personalize, marketers need data. Thanks to third-party cookies, collecting data has been easy so far. But not for long. With Google changing its third-party cookie norms, companies can longer rely on third-party cookies as their primary source of data collection. Apple, Firefox, and Brave are already blocking third-party cookies. Google, which dominates the search engine market share with 60% is only delaying the block until late 2023. Soon, brands will be facing a cookieless reality in the future.
However, brands have devised an alternate data collection strategy to source primary data. It is through zero and first-party data. Any piece of information that is willingly shared by a customer with a brand is called “zero-party data”. How can it be sourced? By giving customers promos and benefits in exchange for their data. About 37% of brands are already using first-party data to build their personalization strategy, up from 31% in 2021.
In the past couple of years, businesses have leaped to adopt digital transformation. The shift of business operations from physical to remote required brands to have a digital presence. Now the need has grown to have an omnichannel presence. Customers seek integrated, interconnected, seamless experiences when they interact with a brand. This has led marketers to broaden their scope of personalization and meet their customers at every possible touchpoint. Collecting insights from various sources only enriches the customer data pool, giving a marketer ample material to create personalized journeys.
The art of personalization is nothing without the heavy strokes of artificial intelligence. AI and ML are opening up a new realm with countless opportunities for personalization in a customer's journey. A close example is how brands like Amazon and Netflix are using AI to personalize show recommendations for their customers. Customers see exactly what they want. Thus, creating a unique user experience.
Under AI's umbrella of personalization, facial recognition technology is on the rise in the coming years. Brands are using facial recognition to personalize customer buying experiences in retail and e-commerce. This helps businesses monitor foot traffic, evaluate average shopping time, and analyze customer behaviors. Using these deep insights, they're able to curate more personalized experiences for customers across touchpoints. With the tech booming, experts say that the facial recognition market valued at $4.45 billion in 2021 will grow at a CAGR of 15.4% through 2028.
Humans are social by nature. We love to live in families and work in teams. That’s what customers want from their brands. To build a community that makes them feel at home. As brands seek to improve customer relationships, building a community is a tried and tested solution to engage with customers.
In the recent past, brand communities have been becoming increasingly popular as they provide the ultimate personalization benefit to marketers - strengthening customer retention and facilitating interaction between customers and brands. Communities are a great source for brands to get to know their audience on a deeper level and use the gathered insights to create informed personalization strategies.
As an average person is always in possession of a mobile device, their location details enable brands to plan out personalization strategies in two ways - using geo-targeting or geofencing. If brands know where their customers are at a given point, this data gives marketers the opportunity to reach out to customers with a personalized experience.
Geotargeting makes it easy for marketers to define a target audience for a given campaign based on the customer's last-known location. Geofence campaigns are triggered when a given customer arrives in a defined area like a mall, or the airport, or is within close proximity to a physical store or brand of their preference.
Location marketing allows brands to travel with their customers, engage, suggest, and drive them to purchase. As of 2021, the location intelligence market was worth $14 billion. Reports now state that it will grow at a CAGR of 15.6% through 2030.
When done right, personalization reaps three main benefits:
When customers receive relevant messaging, they’re more likely to take action and engage with a brand. The increased brand engagement results in a higher conversion rate, which is the ultimate goal of a brand.
Personalization makes a brand interact closely with a customer. Being part of a band community and receiving personalized communications helps customers feel valued. This leads to building positive brand perceptions.
Personalization is a more cost-effective marketing strategy than traditional advertising. It can drive a customer to make a purchase and even spend more! According to McKinsey, personalized marketing increases sales by 10% and delivers up to 8x the ROI than what is spent on traditional marketing.
As customers demand more optimized experiences and there is a surge in customer data, organizations need a solution that allows them to tap into these resources and deliver quality experiences. Therefore, personalization is a necessity. All you need is the tool and the right partner to help you walk your unique path.
Srijan can help you implement your personalization goals with Acquia Personalization. Unburden your marketing, developers, and IT teams to build the right personalization strategy. Talk to us today!