A Guide to Personalization: Part 1 of a 3-Part Article
By Lia Grimberg
Your CMO has just asked you to implement a personalization strategy across the organization and it sounds daunting. As she stated, the case for personalization is very clear:
- 75% of business leaders now say personalization is "table stakes"
- 33% of consumers abandon a brand that lacks personalization
- Companies that get personalization right have the potential to generate 40% more revenue than those that don’t
- 89% of Marketers see a positive ROI when they use personalization in their campaigns
But before you can get started, you need a clear definition.
What is personalization? Is it getting your customer’s name right in an email? Is it posting their loyalty balance online when they log in? The answer lies in the question. How do your customers define personalization?
Today’s customers expect brands to recognize and anticipate their wants and needs and deliver value for the data they are sharing. This means that personalization needs to be implemented across all your customer touchpoints: offers, product recommendations, pricing, communication channels, rewards, content, frequency of communication, and finally customer experience.
Below are some guiding principles that I use with my clients to get personalization right:
- Your customers are human and so are you. Treat them like people, not just numbers in a database.
- Data is a valuable resource. Use it wisely, and leverage insights about your customers to make their experiences better.
- Only communicate when you have something meaningful to say. Irrelevant communication destroys customer relationships.
Loyalty is so much more than a program. It is an intentional approach that leads to transformative outcomes for both customers and the brand. You currently have a wealth of information coming from first-party data, such as transactional data and zero-party data (information that customers intentionally share with you in a survey). Your personalization and messaging strategy needs to be rooted from insights from your first and zero-party data to differentiate your brand from those of competitors.
This treasure trove is your competitive advantage, a way to understand your customers, that is unique from any other player in the market. We, as marketers, then must repay our customers for their data in personalization and relevance, as everyone knows that in today’s economy, data is more valuable than oil.
About the Author:
Lia Grimberg is the Principal and Consultant at Radicle Loyalty, a Canadian consulting firm that helps brands build meaningful long-term relationships with their customers. Lia has a radically different approach to help organizations build loyalty programs and unleash their data to better understand the customer and create personalized marketing communications, and to drive specific KPIs, such as retention, engagement, frequency, and larger baskets. With 20+ years in loyalty, Lia honed her loyalty and marketing skills during her corporate career at companies such as The Bay, Loblaw, LoyaltyOne, The Home Depot, and American Express in Canada.