Making your CRM strategy more personal – so that you understand the psychology of your recipient – is one thing, but how do you make sure your increased understanding translates into quantifiable results, once you’ve adopted the principle. What is it that is going to make your commitment to a deeper level of personalisation a valuable investment for you as a business and your customers?
First of all, as I’ve previously discussed, richly personalised campaigns which are based on personality traits and live behaviours, rather than just data collected from your preference centre, are incredibly complex and take time to master. That said, data-driven marketing is increasingly becoming the norm. However, there are still many brands that are not yet monetising their email marketing as effectively as they could.
A large number of brands are simply not using their data to optimise cross-selling opportunities, or using it to identify new ways to enhance the communications they are sending to their customers in a way that will see them increase the revenue they generate. This is a big problem, which is largely down to limited data visibility and perhaps one of the biggest obstacles we notice regularly when talking to clients about their email marketing strategies. They often tell us that this impacts their ability to identify high value customers when they are most likely to consider making a purchase and that they lack the resources required to execute and deliver sophisticated, highly targeted campaigns.
Data is in many respects a brand’s biggest obstacle to achieving a lucrative personalised marketing campaign, especially those that have an array of touch points through which customers can interact with them –but it is also their biggest asset.
So how do you make sense of this data?
For starters, you need to look for a solution that will unite your data in one central location. This is most likely to be trapped in numerous silos, not just across your marketing department but the entire organisation. But that’s really only stage one. You need to look at how you can segment that data into different clusters, which correspond to the different journeys customers will, and can, experience when they interact and buy from you. This allows you to make far better sense of how your customers are behaving and how they need to be engaged.
It may sound like it devalues your ability to target customers individually, but in actual fact it’s purpose is to cluster your customers into specific user journeys so you can gain more accurate information, which is relevant to specific stages in the buying process. Once you have established these segments, you’ll have a far more detailed picture of their specific needs, which you can then use as a basis for sending far more detailed personalised messages.
Whatever it is you’re selling, whether its holiday breaks in the forest or a mobile phone contract, it’s likely there will be a number of different variables and scenarios that relate to each holiday or contract you sell. Each of these will typically have their own purchase lifecycle and contain a number of unique moments which are regularly repeated.
For example, new customers will start the journey with you in a very different way to a regular customer, but in both these circumstances customers will be considered to be part of the same segment and therefore share particular requirements. Depending on what the next stage is in your journey, each of these starting sets may then break off into 5, 10 even 20 different clusters, and then potentially split again to the point where you have hundreds of different customer journeys.
These multi-layered customer journeys enable you to make better sense of your data and ensure your customers are targeted at specific times when they will be incentivised to make a purchase, whether that’s their anniversary with you or a key date before they depart for their holiday.
For holiday bookings this can be incredibly lucrative. Reminders sent to customers in the run up to their departure encouraging them to book activities, if they have been accurately segmented, can significantly increase conversion rates and their propensity to buy.
Why? Well for one it taps into their mindset in an emotional way, it instantly establishes a connection. That could be the visuals of children playing in the pool at your hotel if the customer is embarking on a family holiday or the promise of a luxury spa if they are looking for a relaxing break away. If then, it recognises their specific preferences and purchase history and responds to their personality traits (i.e. the way they interact with the content) they’ll be totally bought in. However, it’s also because it enriches their whole experience.
The lifecycle journey before a holiday or the renewal point of a contract are just as important as the end result. If customers are totally encapsulated and enthralled throughout this process, they are going to be far more invested in your brand, which means the ROI of your campaigns will naturally increase.
