22/07/2016
How many of the regular spam emails, which grace your inbox on a daily basis, open or close with a personalised message? Gone are the days of ‘Dear Customer’, now fervently in its place email marketing campaign drafts are littered with ‘[insert name here]’ and ‘[send to recipient list A]’.
But why the explosion of personalised marketing, why now and how can you reap the rewards?
Have you ever walked into a local bar and the server poured you a drink without asking, or, after binge watching a boxset on Netflix has your ‘top picks’ reflected the
content of your previous choices? Personalisation is the process of advertisers seeking to create personal connections with consumers, in hopes of enticing a sale.
When someone goes to the effort of learning our name, remembering a fact or recalling a previous conversation, it makes us feel good because we’ve been recognised – we are memorable therefore we are special. The same works for personalised marketing; you are far more likely to open an email personally addressed, than an umbrella introduction like ‘Dear Customer’ which sharply reminds us that we are just an email address in an endless database of contacts.
Personalised marketing has rocketed in the last couple of years. Whether it’s due to consumer research that helped marketeers cotton on, advances in technology that allow for greater data capture (damn those delicious cookies), or because we are becoming desperate for new techniques of acquiring the attention of a desensitised audience – it looks like personalised marketing is here to stay.
The biggest barrier to personalised marketing is gathering the data to begin with; it’s only possible to personalise marketing for members of your audience that are willing to give up their information. But there are other, simpler ways you can focus and fine tune your marketing campaigns to highlight a personal touch.
The most important thing is to research your audience. What is the average age, the geographical location, gender; what interests them, what are their hobbies or purchasing patterns? Once you know who your audience are, you can go about finding, targeting and tailoring your marketing campaigns in the places that your audience dwells.
For example, if your business sells children’s clothes, your target audience are parents – the best place to find them? Definitely Facebook over LinkedIn, so aim your marketing efforts to social media and tailor it specifically for that particular network.
Basically, personalised marketing is pretty much essential – and when executed correctly it will help build your brand voice, create a loyal audience and return results.
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