Driving Customer Experience through Personalization

Personalization is crucial for customer engagement and loyalty. Marissa Mayer, formerly the president and CEO of Yahoo, put it this way:

The future is personalization!

Consumer research shows personalized experiences (much like increased customer convenience) are fundamental to customer trust, referrals, and business growth. So, let’s explore six tips to enhance the personalized experiences you provide to your customers.

1. Define your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? What are their wants, needs, and desires? How do they want you to communicate with them and meet their needs across their journey with you?

2. Develop customer profiles (or personas).Outline your core customer segments and the demographics, values, purchase drivers, and overall psychological make-up of customers in those segments. Where do those customer groups get their information? What do they do on an average day? How do they make spending decisions? What solutions do you provide for them?

3. Analyze your existing data. What data do you have on your customers? This might include everything from demographics to purchase history. Examine that data, looking for patterns and trends.

4. Identify touchpoints. Where do your customers interact with your brand? How can you take your understanding of core customer segments (or individual customers within those segments) to craft personalized experiences? What moments matter most to each of your customer segments?

5. Test personalized content and experiences. Create content and experiences (like targeted emails or custom landing pages) designed with a core customer segment in mind. What does each customer segment want to hear, see, smell, and taste at high-value moments?

6. Measure and optimize.As you implement personalization strategies, measure your results. Are your personalization efforts having the desired effects? Are your customers responding to personalized offers? Are they spending more time on web pages optimized for their segment? Leverage your measurement to refine further and optimize your personalization activity.

Technology, by its nature, is impersonal. However, tech can enable your people to provide personalized messages and offerings that resonate with those they serve. The enabling power of technology ultimately should drive personalization benefits for your business and customers. In the words of Jay Samit, the former independent vice president of Deloitte:

Social media and personalization are providing both brand advertisers and end-users with hyper-targeted choices and opportunities for double-digit growth.

Are you seeing those benefits from your social media and personalization strategies?