What is personification and why is it important to you?

Let’s say it’s a Sunday night and you could use an ice cream. You walk into a new establishment down the road and order a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream- no nuts, no hot fudge and no embellishments. Just a singular scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream. It turns out being a rather pleasant experience and you decided to visit again for a scoop. This time around, you are greeted with a familiar smile and asked if you would like the usual. Let’s not deny it, everybody loves a personal touch. Personification attempts to do exactly this!

The new buzz in town

In recent times, brands drawn a lot of flak for leveraging ‘personalization’ to sell products and services, because privacy advocates and regulators believe that ‘personalization’ can access personal information without the consent of the users. What the new buzzword ‘personification’ attempts to replace and dispel the negative air that surrounds personalization. The IT research company Gartner defines personification as “the delivery of relevant digital experiences to individuals based on their inferred membership in a defined customer segment, rather than their personal identity.” In layman terms, personal information will not be taken but preferences will be assessed and used to provide a better user experience.

The beginning of a great friendship

What does the future of personification hold for us? Well, news of the collaboration between Marketo and LinkedIn represents a landmark shift in the way personification finds its feet in the interweb. Marketo recently streamlined its digital marketing portfolio into a single software platform, aiming to serve as a one stop shop for launching powerful online campaigns. The ultimate goal is to enable interactive, two way conversations between consumers and brands taking into account the previous interactions and user preferences. In short, melding all of Marketo’s engagement and automation campaigns deployed through multiple channels (email, social media, mobile apps and other digital ads) through a single touch point means to both improve and strengthen the brand’s voice and it’s personable, sincere interactions with its consumers. The merger between LinkedIn and Marketo will essentially see the consumer experience being revolutionized.

What’s the revolution about?

To get in to the specifics, this merger allows marketers to forge long-term relationships with known customers and prospects beyond email, using display and social ads across desktop and mobile. After all, being pervasive on different platforms is essential. It will also provide marketers with better data on known and anonymous prospects, including relevant business, profile and behavioral information, to deliver more relevant ads to customers and prospects on their mediums of choice. It also enables marketers to have fresh, ongoing conversations with existing customers by delivering cogent content at the right time to build brand loyalty. What we’re seeing is the age of the consumer experience, where personas reign supreme and where preferences start a discourse between user and brands.

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