Communication and messaging is an integral part of building any business. Every entrepreneur begins his startup with a vision and mission that leads to product development to solve customers’ problems or create such customers.
There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
Customer creation is a method of communicating your business vision and principles to the customers in the market. This communication is facilitated through strategic and personalized messaging.
The customers’ communication and messaging should not look like all and sundry; the customers should feel connected through personalized individual messages. Your marketing strategy should include one of the fundamental principles: Personalization.
According to the McKinsey report, “personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5 to 15%, and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10 to 30 %”.
The one-on-one content through personalization gives a privileged feeling to customers and draws his required attention towards your product or service.
Content personalization is described as an approach for connecting with your audience through relevant information and targeted content on an individual level. The establishment of a tailored individual connection enhances the chances of lead conversions. In simpler words, based on available personal data, content personalization involves providing different content to different customers. The available information, based on the browsing history and their behavior is taken into account and comparatively analyzed against a set of variables including age, gender, location, the device used, visitor frequency, date and time, referring URL, purchase history, and session behavior.
Nearly three-fourths (74%) of online consumers get frustrated by websites with content (e.g., offers, ads, promotions) that has nothing to do with their interests.
Hubspot
Personalization can be as minor as the inclusion of the customer’s name in the email or in the form of providing product recommendations and suggestions based on their browsing history. The individual messaging has a profound impact on the consumers as they experience loyalty and trust with your brand. As per the data analytics, personalized experience leads to additional expenditure by 48% of the customers.
Different forms of personalization can be chosen by an entrepreneur, depending upon his priorities and business type.
Segmentation
Segmentation is the most common and most accessible form of content personalization. Customized versions can be created targeting a specific industry, department, job title, geography, or any other segment. Segmentation led to enhanced website experience and increased customer engagement. The drawback of segmentation is that it restricts your optimization ability due to its limited division setting capability. It eventually leads to content non-delivery in real-time, thus losing its relevance to the consumers.
Persona-Based Personalization
Persona-based personalization relies on content segmentation based on the characteristics of each persona who represents their target customer. Personas are based on website browsing activity, behavior, purchase history, or demographic data. Each persona is refined through the inclusion of additional data collected over time for enhancing the personalization effects. Real-time persona analysis and data collection will help you in the optimization of data-driven personas.
Personalization Based on the Customer Journey
Customer journey maps are essential for individualized content significant for each step of the journey that focuses on audiences at a specific stage. Alternatively, content alignment at each level of the customer journey map can be done. It ensures content delivery targeted to their journey phase and assists in their progress to the next step. However, each stage-specific segment can be defined only based on essential customer data to get a clear idea about customer behavior and insights.
Individualization
The exact personalization of customer experience in accordance with the specific consumer expectations is termed individualization. The content should be individualized and targeted to particular unique preferences and interests of each consumer for correct personalization. The marketing team should deliver the real-time data of content experiences and optimize it based on the actions and choices of a particular customer to attain individualization.
Steps for personalized message designing
The latest technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and other modern tools have facilitated the marketers with the smooth implementation of customized content. The general steps that you should follow for personalized message design are discussed below:
Knowing your audience
You should know the details about your audience before creating a personalized message design. You should present the relevant content on your webpage for prospective buyers in their early research phase. It is not advisable and practical to personalize your webpage for every visitor. Instead, shortlist the targeted companies and list them with company names that are the ideal users of your product or service. The prepared list can be utilized for delivering personalized content to the visitors of your website.
List segmentation
The segmentation of the companies list based on similar characteristics is very helpful and saves a lot of time. Segment ensures that your website is organized, making the content personalization convenient and systematic. It guarantees the alignment of marketing with sales that will help in meeting your startup’s revenue goals.
The segmentation or, in other words, grouping can be done in various ways, depending on your business’s priorities. Few examples of the segmentation attributes are company skills, product type, company size, geographical location, and revenue. Grouping can be done based on the small, medium, or enterprise business category or to segregate the prospects from the engaged customers.
Measurement and analysis
The understanding of visitor traffic on your website and behavior is critical for the prioritization of your segments. The right content to the right segment can be delivered in real-time through the analytics tool that identifies your site visitors based on the attributes. The analytics remains a crucial element even after the implementation of your personalization process. An enhanced understanding of each segment is developed based on the consumed content and behavior through the buying cycle. Eventually, it can help gain deeper insights about the buyer’s journey on the eventual closure of the account.
Develop messaging
It is crucial to ensure the better distribution of created content and where to be delivered than emphasizing on creating new content. Organization of your case studies industry-wise will guarantee the right content being served to the right prospects. Personalization can be achieved just by modification in calls to actions and website headlines to attract specific segments.
Making it personal
Reaching out to the customers on an individual level is always better than sending out messages to the masses. Personalization of marketing messages helps you tailor the promotional messages according to the unique customers’ characteristics. There are different means of introducing personalization like a website page, emails, webinars, ebooks, social media posts, and other interactive content.
Ways for implementing personalized message process design in the marketing strategy
So, now the question arises, how to implement personalization of messages in your marketing strategy to reap the maximum benefits? The process has been divided into different phases for executing message designing.
Planning your strategy
You should always be able to answer these questions before executing his one-to-one marketing strategy.
- What brand message do I wish to convey to the individuals?
- What type of customer behavior should I expect (website revisits, establishing trust, or more purchases)?
- What are the available marketing resources to enable the preferred strategy?
- What kind of obligations is required, short term or long term?
- What is the status of required resources for success (workforce, tools, time, etc.)?
Setting up your program
After finalizing the plan, the next step is to identify different techniques to be utilized for gathering informational data for personalized messaging. You should create a list of possible inputs, create different data sets, identify patterns for content personalization, integrate the real-time data, and create different distribution channels for the corresponding personalized content. There are several ways to research your visitors and audience. For example:
- Surveys and questionnaires
- Informal discussions
- Formal focus groups
- Anonymous feedback (via email or your website)
- Social media
The focus should be on gathering maximum information from your customers and prospective customers in the shortest possible format.
Technology Integration
Various existing technologies should be utilized to implement the personalized content, such as voice recognition and augmented reality, or any other devices. The use of website personalization tools, marketing automation tools, ad personalization tools, mailers, and other tools are recommended.
Some of the technological tools that can be used are:
- Drift
- Everage
- Optimizely
- Terminus
- Captora
- DemandBase
- Buzzstream
- Quickmail
Implementing marketing tactics
After the personalized messaging strategy planning and setting up resources for information collection, the marketing strategy should be implemented. The marketing methods that can be chosen by you are:
Sending emails from a person’s account instead of company brand
Emails, one of the simplest forms of personalized messaging, should be sent from an actual person’s account instead of your company name. This little change gives a human touch to the emails. If you are using email templates, ensure the content and the email doesn’t look like marketing machine built and should appear authentic.
Utilizing Marketing Automation Tools
The marketing automation tools can propel the lead nurturing promotions based on their interests. Any action or ebook downloads of your lead in a particular topic can be used to send him emails or any other information targeted at that specific subject.
Segmentation of your email database based on Persona
Your email database can be segmented in different ways, but the most effective, most straightforward, and proven method is based on the marketing persona. After defining the marketing personas, you can introduce personalized messages to each persona that is depictive of their particular preferences and challenges.
Using your Recipient’s Names
The thumb rule for personalization is NOT to use the terms like “Dear Sir/Madam”, “Dear Customer,” or any such generalized greetings in your emails. You should use your lead’s real and verified name that would have been mentioned in the filled out form by your prospective customer.
Creating persona-driven Content
Persona-driven content creation is a critical element of the personalized messaging process. It facilitates you to send the customized messages, webinar content, and other information messages to each of your potential customers irrespective of your business size. In the current scenario of enhanced customer awareness and fierce competition, one-size-fits-all content marketing philosophy doesn’t ensure your business success.
Personally responding to the customer on social media
Nowadays, the consumers use social media more and more for their research and check the reviews for desired products or services. Therefore, it is essential daily to monitor and keep track of your social media activity to meet the expectations and providing the right content to the right audience at the right time.
Creating targeted landing pages
If you are unable to send tailor-made email messages to all your personas, you can create targeted landing pages for different offers for your customers.
Benefits of Personalization
Personalization and customization benefit both the customers and you; it’s a two-way win-win strategy. The customer gets the relevant information as per his preferences while you can achieve:
A good database of customer details
Message personalization enables the tracking of habits, behavior, and movements of prospective customers, thus facilitating the valuable data inputs for the marketing team for their future use. The collected data should be communicated to the sales team for a better understanding of the customers’ nature and the efficiency of your products or services in the fulfilment of their needs. About your e-commerce page, the collected data can be beneficial in directing your customers to the products they would most probably buy.
Loyal Fans
The customers return to that company brand only when they are 100% satisfied with the products or services provided and feel a connection with the company. When the company makes them feel special and cared for, the customers return for buying in the future for any additional products or services.
Valuable Company Insights
The informational data collected through personalization and tracking the customers helps you in determining the success rate of your marketing messages and tactics.
40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels.
The message content personalization enables the establishment of meaningful communication, founding profound customer relationships, and enhanced conversion rates, and higher revenues. The implementation of personalized messaging has a profound impact on the overall business success of a startup. The individualized experiences of customers facilitate increased customer loyalty and sales.
One of the fundamental differences between Fortune 500 companies and Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is the clarity of marketing messages and the importance placed on strategic marketing using brand storytelling.
Spellbrand
