Hyper-personalization: The Evidence of Future Marketing Evolution

When contemplating the millennial consumer culture, it is evident that the end customers are much more informed than ever before. They depend on data and make logical decisions instead of trusting any particular brand blindfolded. And the fact that a significant share of conversions happened today is by means of reviews, user-generated content & influencers, inspire us to deliver highly targeted, customized and hyper-personalized experiences.

However, don’t confuse personalization with its advanced edition; for personalization merely incorporates personal and transactional information like name, title, organization, purchase history, etc. Hyper-personalization transcends personalized marketing a step beyond by utilizing AI and real-time information to suggest more relevant content, product or service to each user. For instance, If you send a promotional email with the user’s name as the subject line is an example of personalization. It's good, however, not much effective in terms of driving the preferred engagement.

On the other hand, hyper-personalization involves much-sophisticated analysis. Imagine if a user spends approximately 20 mins looking for a specific brand, but leave without purchasing anything. With access to penetrate a little deeper into the data set. You will get to know whether the user has a strong liking for discounts if he was looking for products with offers, Prior search and purchase history will give a notion of how he/she behaves in your app. Further, A hyper-personalized marketing campaign would send a push notification or an email advertising a flash sale on that particular brand, possibly on a Sunday if the data suggests the rate of conversion is comparatively higher during Sundays.

So now the question that haunts your intellect is, how exactly the hyper-personalization can be implemented?

Data Gathering And Segmentation

The begin with hyper-personalization, start with data collection. The quality of your hyper-personalized marketing is merely as good as the information you gather. The right kind of data can help you get your potential customers' attention, which improves your chances of conversions to a huge extent.

Let me explain this with a real-time scenario, imagine if you want to send a promotional email regarding one of your products that costs $500. When you expect great results from this campaign, you should need to know who in your customer database usually buy similar kind of products ranging from $500-600. Things will get even better as you find customers who always choose a particular brand. This helps you develop a truly personalized message.

Segmenting the data is as important as collecting it. The added segmentation guarantees that only people who are interested in a specific brand will see the message, and this augments the possibilities of a sale. Targeting those who previously bought a similar type of product from a different brand will again improve your chances.

Make the Best Offer for Each Customer

The major objective of segmentation is to make sense of the data. This is important to frame an efficient marketing strategy that ensures the maximum outcome. According to a study published by Accenture, 75% of millennial customers are drawn to purchase something which is personalized according to their individual preferences. This is why your offer must reach the ones who actually need it.

However, simple personalization is the way to go. One can begin with age and gender, and further, include more segments based on who purchases similar products often and when they do it. For instance, suppose you have a group of customers who are more likely to shop on weekends. And this is when you can start sending messages based on their previous purchase and browsing patterns.

Finding the right channels and reaching out

The keys to successful communication are the right channel and time. A huge amount of data infused with multi-channel marketing will create massive possibilities. Emails, paid promotions, smartphones, social media, you have a multitude of choices to experiment on.

Perfect timing is the next big thing when it comes to hyper-personalization. Understanding your customers' time preferences and reaching out to them is what an ideal marketing campaign is all about. And if the process seems a bit hard when attempting it manually, don't lose your mind. You can leverage an automated marketing team or a platform to facilitate your marketing efforts.

Multivariate Testing

Marketing is all about experimenting; to find what works best for you is a very valuable insight. Consistent testing can aid you to discover the most compelling factors of your campaign. And while measuring the outcome consistently, you will possibly crack the pattern that gives you the maximum results. ults. You can even try the combination of different elements to find what works wonders for you.

What's Next?

Major brands such as Amazon, Starbucks, Spotify, Netflix, etc have already adopted this hyper-personalization strategy. And the results suggest that their marketing campaign effectiveness has increased by 3X, email redemptions by 2x and a 3 times increase in incremental spends through offers. In addition, 84% of millennial marketers believe that an AI-powered hyper-personalized marketing strategy can improve the efficiency of your marketing efforts. Batch-and-blast is dead already, hyper-personalized marketing is the future. Quoting Ann Handley words, “Even when you are marketing to your entire audience or customer base, you are still simply speaking to a single human at any given time.”