“Personalization is a chance to differentiate at a human scale, to use behaviour as the most important clue about what people want and more important, what they need,” — Seth Godin
Entrepreneurs, companies, businesses, and enterprises deploy various marketing techniques to communicate with and sell products and services to their clients and customers. Marketing tactics may vary from one industry to the next, from high street retailers to independent businesses, from brick-and-mortar enterprises to online business operators. However, the basic aim of marketing is to inform customers about the availability of products and services and sell the same to members of the public. We may note that marketing personalization is an evolution of such commercial practices; this technique is premised on one-to-one marketing practices, wherein a business customises its marketing messages to suit the tastes, needs, requirements, and preferences of individual customers.
The technique of marketing personalization operates at many levels. Consider this: a local business, such as a grocery store, may opt to use said technique to expand its customer base. The business owner and his staff members can greet individual customers by name in an attempt to boost personal familiarity. In addition, the said business can study the shopping habits of individual customers so that staff members can offer product recommendations based on the shopping habits of customers. Further, individual customers can be offered special discounts on their weekly shopping bills based on a customer’s volume of transactions with said business. These tactics bear the potential to boost the popularity of the said business enterprise and may attract more customers to the grocery business. In light of the above, we may note that marketing personalization is a complex procedure that operates at multiple levels, but the individual customer remains at the centre of the said marketing campaign.
In a similar vein, an e-commerce business operator can use Internet technologies and modern marketing tactics in its pursuit of business enhancing strategies that hinge on marketing personalization. The said business can use electronic ‘cookies’ to monitor customers’ online behaviour and offer selling suggestions in terms of products and services. It must be noted that said marketing techniques are significantly dependent on data and customer information; therefore, the e-commerce operator should invest efforts and resources to compile a database of individual customers’ likes and dislikes, tastes and preferences. In addition, the business would be advised to monitor data that emanates from customer’s shopping habits and online behaviour. This information can be analysed and may provide the business deep insights into customer habits. Further, said information can be used to engage and create future selling pitches to individual customers and thereby expand the customer base of the said business.
Small entrepreneurs and large businesses alike must appreciate the fact that marketing personalization represents a seriousness of corporate intent to deepen customer engagement. The use of such tactics can enable businesses to form a clear picture in terms of the individual attributes of each customer. The depth and granularity of such information can be used as a sales pitch in investor presentations and corporate brochures that are devised to attract venture capital funding into a business enterprise. We must note that substantial investments from venture capitalists and institutional investors can significantly boost the range of business operations and therefore, every business must work to attract such investments. The role of personalized client information can thus, be leveraged to attract enhanced liquidity to a business and boost the desired business outcomes.
Large retail businesses that operate on the brick-and-mortar model should invest significantly in marketing personalization strategies, but these must be optimised to suit the requirements and operating environment of the said enterprise. For instance, a retail business that operates physical stores across multiple geographies can choose to offer its customers discounted items that are tailored to the choice of the individual customer. The choice of discounted items can be based on business records that track the purchase histories of a customer. We note that no two customers are alike in their shopping behaviour and this implies that the said marketing strategies should be premised on information-intensive approaches to delineate customer behaviour. The retail business may also choose to leverage online technologies, such as email, to initiate an on-going dialogue with its customers. This signals business interest to engage with customers at all times and the gesture can help the business to attract new customers. In addition, the information gleaned from the exchange of emails can be channelled to create a more satisfying end-user experience when the customer visits the physical store in the future.
Email technologies and social media handles can be melded to create marketing personalization strategies. We note that most customers have access to a mailbox in modern times, as also the fact that corporate handles on social media platforms have significantly higher number of followers. The serious business enterprise can choose to monitor customer utterances on social media platforms to gain a better understanding of each customer’s unique needs and requirements. Cloud technologies and social media analytics technologies can be harnessed in pursuit of this hybrid approach to personalization. For instance, a customer who prefers custom-designed coffee brews (and makes that fact known on social media) can be offered a special consignment of the merchandise. An email-based alert can be sent to said customer and a time line allotted during which the business will reserve the merchandise for the customer. We must note that this hybrid approach to marketing personalization can result in significant upticks in sales volumes, while helping the business to achieve an instance of customer delight.
One significant aspect of modern times is the high level of penetration of high technology in both business and personal domains. When we survey the world of electronic business, we may note that mobile apps that pertain to travel, ride sharing, food delivery, news, and e-commerce attract the maximum participation and customer traffic. A business enterprise can leverage this fact to create modern marketing personalization strategies in a bid to gain more customers and to drive business outcomes. The business can collect and assimilate customer behaviour on the app in an effort to offer in-app personalization. For instance, a certain customer that spends significant amounts on a certain traffic route can be offered a choice of vehicles by a ride-sharing business or a ride-aggregator app. We must note that the customization must apply specifically to the said customer and can be subsequently escalated to include alternative routes of travel, rides out the city landscape during weekends, and ride-sharing choices. In a similar vein, a food delivery business can choose to create special offers for customers in its pursuit of marketing personalization. These efforts highlight the creative uses of marketing strategies that hinge on custom designs aimed at individual customers.
In the preceding paragraphs, we have examined certain options that enable businesses to personalize various marketing offers. We must bear in mind that these strategies are being driven increasingly by the use of data and technology. However, the laws of the land must be borne in mind when framing such marketing offers because the individual’s privacy remains sacrosanct and must never be violated. That said, we note that marketing personalization may represent the next stage of driving engagement between a business and its customers.
