Location, location, location… this is the mantra of real estate. And this is very true with retail. If you’re a luxury store selling $10,000 suits or $2,000 purses, you’ll want to be – among other places in the world – on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where consumers expect to pay a premium for products and desire personalized customer service. This prime real estate is costly and not optimal for every brand. 

But companies don’t fight for real estate when creating their online store. Whether your brand is solely online, or a mix of retail and e-commerce, 75% of consumers are likely to buy from someone who delivers suggestions based on past purchases and knows them on a first-name basis.

Personalization is more than just a first name in an email. It’s the process of producing tailored content by collecting specific data, analyzing it, and using automated technology to interact 1:1 with customers in real time.

Some brands spend a heaping sum of money to acquire new customers but do very little to engage and create unique experiences to get them to return. The best way to do this is through personalization. 

Let’s find out how you can use personalized marketing to increase customer engagement and interact with them on an individual basis. 

Put Yourself in Your Customer’s Shoes

“Personalization is the new normal for brands; being able to connect to consumers on a one-to-one level can be the difference between a targeting strategy converting or getting lost in the noise.” — Revtrax

Customers desire to be treated like a human… both in-store and online. They want to feel truly valued, both online and in-store, and for your brand to know what they like, their preferences, why they’re unique, and when and how to communicate with them across the channels they use. 

No matter how customers interact with your brand, they want a personalized experience. If you are unable to offer personalization, customers may leave as “44% of consumers are willing to switch to brands who better personalize marketing communication” according to this survey.

Unfortunately “93% of consumers report receiving marketing communications that are not relevant to them.” But once personalization is added to the lifecycle of a customer, their experience becomes frictionless, and increases the likelihood they’ll buy from you again, growing your CTLV and ultimately your revenue. 

“Salling Group used their offline purchase data to drive online sales, by using automated audiences when running omnichannel campaigns. This resulted in 25% revenue growth within 5 weeks.”

Ema Jens Pytlich 150x150
— Jens Pytlich,
Digital Marketing Manager, Salling Group

Everyone Is Mobile

One of the most personal things your customers carry with them each and every day is their mobile phone. We store everything on it. For some people, it’s their only access to a computer.

Worldwide, mobile devices have an estimated 52.1% of the global market, as opposed to 44.2% of desktop users, and “mobile accounts for 65% of all ecommerce traffic.” Mobile provides you with additional channels of communication such as SMS, push, in-app messaging, and even a phone call such as when a customer may need to call customer service. 

No longer are you marketing to someone sitting behind a laptop or desktop, but you’re connecting with a consumer through a very personal device they carry with them every day. To connect through mobile, you must create unique 1:1 customer experiences, in real time, to bring people back into your store (online and offline). 

Where Do You Begin?

The best way to start is with the data you’ve already collected from customers, so long as they’ve provided explicit permission. As the option to leverage third-party data is quickly disappearing, you’re still able to deliver personalized experiences through the first-party data you’ve collected.    

First-party data is the most reliable source for unique insights into your audience, making it the optimal method to personalize user experiences, improve retargeting strategies, and predict future trends.

Once you have all this data collected in one central location, you can run it through your CEP (customer engagement platform), and the AI can provide deep insights into how customers progress through their lifecycles (when they buy, why they leave, when they’re likely to unsubscribe, etc.).

The AI can segment users so you can know exactly when and where your team should interact with them and on which channel. With this information, you can learn more about each customer and use real-time triggers to provide contextualized messages.

Final Thoughts

With the available marketing tools, and all the data that consumers have given you, you’re able to generate a unique 360-degree view of each customer and deliver relevant, unique 1:1 experiences… all in real time. 

With all the information coming into your database, AI can save your team massive amounts of time and help provide all the necessary information as to the best time to interact with a customer, and eventually generate a positive impact on the bottom line of your company. 

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