5 Examples of Customer Personalisation in Consumer Brands
Today’s consumers expect personalized marketing, and brands who use data-driven campaigns to tailor content to their interests are seeing the results. It is certain that striking a balance between, “We think you might find this helpful” and “we’re watching you” isn’t a simple process. You need careful research, planning, and testing before you jump into any large-scale customization initiatives. Here are five Snippts for you from what other brands are doing — for you to take some inspiration from and kickstart your customer personalization initiatives:
First: Cookies are delightful
Pardon me — but I have no intention of addressing your watering mouth. What I intend to say is that even the best-customized marketing becomes less personal, and less desirable if it’s carried out without the user’s agreement. Iberia Airlines very smartly used cookies and without being too sneaky about it. While the holiday season of 2016 was going on the airline’s customers received emails posing the question: If you could visit any vacation destination, which one would it be? And who would you like to take along? To answer, customers were redirected to a microsite where they would fill in responses and also the email address of the person they love to travel with.
Not long after that, that loved one would receive an email. Beginning with a beautiful holiday greeting about the dream vacation. But that was not all. Only, to view the card, that person had to click a link. And once the user clicked on it — using cookies [with the user’s permission] the traveller’s friend would see banners across the web, suggesting the perfect Christmas gift. That gift, of course, was the dream vacation. It’s a cute idea, right? — and around here, we’re suckers for a good holiday marketing campaign.
Takeaway: Think about the entire lifecycle of each campaign. Iberia did not just stop with sending a holiday invite from a friend — and stop with that initial touch point. But instead, kept driving reinforcement.
Two: Stop and smell the roses
How do make something as boring as pricing advertisements more appealing? And making it more relevant for mobile audiences? You need to drop your baggage. Take inspiration from the pros on how to do it. Mobile network operator O2 team came up with a brilliant plan. Imagine the typical pricing ads you see for network carriers — with 100s of options and brands following the spray and pray approach — and hoping that at least one of those options stick. But O2 was different. They used data based on device and location — for tailoring their messaging to their consumers.
Utilizing this data, they could offer personalized and niche marketing advertisements displaying what the best offer for that particular individual was. Or what similar consumers preferred to upgrade to. In total — they created 1000 versions of the same ad. In addition, they also suggested the location of their nearest store.
Someone should crown them the best — taking into consideration that there was a 128% better performance of their personalized advertisements.
Takeaway: Each customer has a different likelihood to pay. As a brand, your objective should be to capture as much of the upper-end of that price band the customer is willing to pay.
Three: craving for that ‘personal touch’
Remember Facebook’s personal videos? Every time you have your birthday or a friend anniversary? But Facebook is a tech giant. It must be difficult for consumer goods companies to do that level of personalization, right? Wrong. Cadbury’s chose to create its own. It spoke to customers’ personal tastes in chocolate instead of accompanying them for a walk down the memory lane with the brand.
The Australia-focused campaign matched a Dairy Milk flavor to each user by taking into consideration the information from their Facebook profile like location, age, hobbies. Once the user agreed to connect with the brand, a beautiful video was automatically generated which had custom content basis the users’ profile information. You can check out one of the videos here.
As sweet as the chocolate itself, right? Yaa melts my heart too. This campaign got a fabulous response. Who would not want to share their own personal chocolate video? It achieved a 33.6% conversation rate and 65% click-through rate. The personal touch works well, no?
Takeaway: Personalization is sure to give a message greater resonance because consumers are curious to know how things impact them directly.
Four: The more the merrier
Wait, are you a Starbucks Refresher? Because you are a hidden gem:)
Doesn’t Starbucks echo like an ancient Roman god? The king of coffee beans and stimulants? Well, I don’t know about you but my blood type is Starbucks. I love everything about it including the fact that it successfully keeps customers engaged with its gamified mobile app. Isn’t it cool that this brand combined the Starbucks rewards system with the facility to customize and order drinks through the app?
Using information like location and purchase history it tries to get as personal as possible.The introduction of the personalized rewards system saw Starbucks’ revenue ascend to $2.56 billion, while the app has generated around 6 million sales per month (around 22% of all U.S. sales).
Takeaway: Get to know your customers as much as possible — and implement programs tailored to them
Five: Segment! Segment! Segment!
The Swedish sustainable food retailer Matsmart wanted to raise awareness of its offering on Facebook. It ran a series of prospecting campaigns segmented by the main target audiences, grouped mostly by demographics, designed to drive new visitors to its website. The retailer then ran highly relevant dynamic ads featuring different products, based on different Facebook user profile segments. Between October 2015 and March 2016 it achieved an 84% increase in website revenue.
Takeaway: Segmenting audiences enables brands to display the most relevant products or services to the right consumers at the right time
Remember that while you might be a marketer, you’re also a consumer. When it comes to experiments like these, put yourself into the shoes of the customer and ask, “Is this delightful? Or is it just creepy?” If it leans toward the latter, find out what’s giving it that vibe, and try something different.
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