“Hold the pickle ... hold the lettuce … special orders don’t upset us. All we ask is that you let us serve it your way.”
That’s a jingle from a 1974 Burger King commercial. Translated into in today’s modern terms, that means we want to personalize your experience. The commercial aired 45 years ago. Was Burger King ahead of its time? Today, companies are spending big parts of their marketing, sales and IT budgets to create personalized experiences with the hope of winning over their customers, getting them to come back, and making them loyal to their brand.
The concept of personalization in marketing, especially in the modern digital era, which includes websites, emails, messaging, etc., has typically been a “one-to-many” strategy. In other words, customers were segmented into groups, known as personas, and messages were sent to these groups. The messages could be based on the customers’ interests, past buying behaviors and demographics, so the messages could appear to be very personalized.
The Burger King example is actually a higher form of personalization. It’s individualization. Often, that comes in a human-to-human interaction in which the employee can handle a special request or use past experiences (or data) to give a truly individualized experience. It’s a “one-to-one” experience.
Another example might be when a customer checks into a hotel and the clerk says, “Welcome back. Would you like the same room you had the last time? I noticed you requested a hypoallergenic pillow. We’ll send that right up.” That information about the hotel guest came from data in a computer, which was interpreted by the front desk clerk, who then delivered the individualized experience.
Individualized effort pays off big, driving a stronger connection that can result in increased customer loyalty. While most individualized experiences come from a human-to-human interaction, technology is now able to drive some of them.
The annual Trends in Personalization report put out by Evergage (with help from Researchscape International) has plenty of stats and facts to explain and support the popularity of this trend.
- Ninety-eight percent of marketing professionals believe that personalization advances customer relationships. Furthermore, 70% believe it has a “strong” or “extremely strong” impact. – Each year the numbers prove this. The key is for the impact, in terms of sales and revenue, to exceed the cost of what it takes to personalize or individualize the experience.
- Eighty-five percent of marketing professionals believe their customers and prospects expect a personalized experience. – It looks like customers now expect a personalized experience, rather than being pleasantly surprised by one. Rock-star companies raised the bar by doing it right, which educates the customer on what it’s like to receive a personalized experience.
- Four in 10 marketers (40%) use machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), to drive one-to-one personalized experiences (up from 26% last year). – Companies are increasingly seeing the impact and benefits of putting the individual person at the center of personalization and applying technology to do it in a real-time, scalable way. Those companies that employed a machine-learning-driven, one-to-one approach saw even greater results than their counterparts.
- Seventy-four percent believe they need to make personalization a bigger priority. In other words, they need to invest more, spend more time, and figure out how to deliver a better experience. – This is for competitive reasons. As mentioned above, the companies that do this well have set a higher bar. The companies playing catch-up will find it challenging to win customers who defected not because the service they received was bad, but because someone else offered a better, more personalized experience.
- While 97% of companies plan to spend at least as much as last year on their personalization budget, 48% plan to increase their budget, up from 37% the prior year. – Companies are recognizing personalization as a competitive weapon that can increase market share and sales.
- Is it worth it? Ninety percent of marketing professionals who work on creating a personalized experience report a measurable lift in their results. – In other words, it is paying off. This comes in the form of increased conversion rates, better visitor engagement, an overall improved customer experience and an increase in leads and customer acquisition.
According to the report, email remains the most personal channel (78%). That makes sense, as it’s fairly simple to send emails with messages specific to the customer’s recent purchases, buying habits, etc. This is followed by the personalized website experience (58%). Amazon is the “poster child” of the personalized web experience. Websites are dynamically changing from customer to customer. Coming in third is the in-person experience (42%).
I’m predicting that this will change, but as for right now, the human-to-human experience is still the greatest opportunity to create customer loyalty. Even with all the ability to automate and digitize the personalized – and now individualized – effort, the human-to-human connection is hard to beat.
