Recipe for Success: Data and Personalization

Check out even more about personalization and artificial intelligence with FUSE Enterprise. Data and personalization are the key ingredients to every successful print and digital marketing campaign. In a world where customers are exposed to at least 2,900 marketing messages a day, most see advertising as white noise and have become accustomed to tuning it out. To break through the clutter, customers are demanding messages that are tailored specifically to them based on their needs, and expect companies to give it to them. That’s why it’s critical to use what you know about a customer to create a compelling piece that drives a desired action. Your competitors are trying to give them the relevance they crave, but the good news for you is that they are not yet very effective at it. There is a misconception in marketing today that a “personalized” message just has a customer’s name and address on it. Relevance spans far beyond knowing someone’s name. To get a customer’s (or prospective customer’s) attention, you need to understand what they like, what they shop for, who they shop for, why they shop for items, when they shop, what motivates them, their personal interests, etc. In fact, with today’s technology, personalization can mean including images of items you added to your shopping cart but later abandoned, with an offer inspiring you to come back and complete your order. Personalization can also be as robust as including the make, model and year of your car, the date of your last oil change or inspection, and reminder that it’s time to get your next one done. And while this sounds like a complicated matter, it’s actually very easy with the right data analytics software and partners. Your Recipe for Success: Ingredients: Your customer database The date and dollar amount of each customer transaction Relevant creative and copy to grab attention A strong offer to motivate a purchase Directions: Working with the date and dollar amount of each customer transaction, conduct a basic RFM analysis. If you haven’t already, create fields in your database that track the recency (how recently a customer has shopped with you); frequency (how often they shop with you); and monetary value (how much that customer will spend with you in their lifetime or how much they spend on an average order). Sort your data using RFM, and use this information to separate your best customers from your worst ones so you can allocate your marketing budget toward customers who are the most likely to respond to your messages (customers at the top of your RFM sorts are your best customers). Someone who spent hasn’t shopped at your store in over a year may never respond to a single marketing message, but someone who shops there twice a week may respond well to weekly coupon offers. Craft targeted messages based on those patterns that move customers to respond in ways that keep them active, loyal and engaged. Design creative pieces with variable fields that you can use to pull in information unique to each customer. Integrate these variable creative pieces into your omnichannel marketing strategy: with special emphasis on direct mail, email and digital retargeting. Some campaigns that combine direct mail and digital see a 118 percent lift in response. Your database contains everything you need to know about you customers, both good and bad. Their styles, tastes, preferences, timing of purchases, etc. are gold mines of data to help you engage with your customers in a meaningful way and develop a bond that will be unbreakable by another brand. Knowing this information helps you recommend new products and experiences that will delight them with your brand and make their loyalty even stronger. To get started, go small and keep it simple. It will be easier to start, track and build upon a simple campaign rather than looking at all of the data at once. Working on just a small snippet of the data will allow you to keep your focus on a smaller segment of customers, and make everything seem less overwhelming. Successfully mixing data and personalization in your direct marketing recipe will help you achieve better response and increase customer life-time value through 1:1 communications with your customers. Learn even more about the convergence of technology and branded content at the FUSE Enterprise summit. Artificial intelligence and personalization will be featured among many other techniques and technologies.

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Recipe for Success: Data and Personalization

Allison Jensen

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Allison Jensen