Personalization: Create a Powerful Personalized Marketing Strategy

Scaling the delivery of personalized marketing content is one of marketing’s most important roles. But customer preferences force digital marketers to walk a fine line. On one hand, too much personalization may be viewed as invasive, and on the other, too little or poorly executed personalization drives the perception of irrelevance.

Although 86% of individuals responding to Gartner’s 2021 Personalization Survey said they are open to some personalized marketing communication from brands, the survey also found the following:

• More than half (55%) say they’ll stop doing business when a brand communicates in a way they find invasive, and 40% said they would stop doing business when they perceive a brand communication as irrelevant.

• Nearly 60% block the brand when they find it invasive, and 44% block the brand when it communicates in a way they find irrelevant or annoying.

With such a fine line and such big consequences separating good personalized marketing from bad, it’s no wonder the topic remains a critical discussion when building a digital marketing strategy.

The intent of marketing personalization is to provide the right message to the right person at the right time to drive conversion and customer satisfaction. The challenge is how to connect a customer’s experience of “rightness” with a digital marketer’s ability to measure, and hopefully optimize, “rightness.” External factors — from fragmenting privacy regulations to channel proliferation — have exacerbated the pain of fulfilling personalization’s promise.

Specific challenges to marketing personalization include:

• Scaling personalization efforts cost-effectively without overburdening complementary workstreams, such as content development

• The risk of personalization being defunded when programs fall short of expected ROI

• Establishing a clear connection between personalization efforts and KPIs to demonstrate ongoing improvement

• Increased pressure to deliver incremental financial results, leading to high expectations that underestimate what it takes to plan, organize and execute.

• Proving personalization’s value to the customer and organization

Sixty-three percent of marketers say they face a moderate or significant challenge in delivering personalized marketing experiences to customers. The common pitfalls marketers encounter in executing a multichannel personalization strategy include:

• Prioritizing commercial goals over customer needs. When designing personalization initiatives, many marketers overlook actual customer experience, which limits the impact of personalization efforts.

• Letting data availability guide personalization efforts. Personalization is often designed using existing customer data as a guide. But existing customer data is often biased toward information about who a customer is — aspects of their identity — versus what they actually need.

Successful multichannel marketing personalization requires a customer‑centric approach. This includes thinking carefully about the key customer needs, goals and preferences and then designing efforts accordingly. It also includes extensive test-and-learn experimentation — formulating hypotheses about customer behaviors, preferences and needs along the customer journey and identifying the data needed to deliver the most effective, tailored help to customers at each touchpoint.

The following steps provide a framework for executing the marketing personalization strategy:

Step 1: Define key personalization objectives and metrics

Align your marketing personalization strategy with the primary customer and business goals your organization wants to drive by taking these key actions: 

• Identify the primary business use case and goals. Review common business use cases and goals and choose the best fit for your organization.

• Determine key customer goals. Identify the key customer goals and outcomes your personalization efforts must enable.

• Finalize overall personalization objectives. Find points of overlap between business goals and customer goals to identify the primary personalization goals to pursue.

• Identify commercial and customer success metrics. Brainstorm not only commercial metrics, but also those that track customer engagement and satisfaction.

B2B buyers are becoming more open to tailored brand messaging and experiences. The large majority of B2B buyers (82%) want personalized communications from all brands or brands they give permission to. And 57% of B2B buyers view personalized communications as a positive.

However, the risks of overpersonalizing are significant. Our research indicates that 14% of buyers have negative sentiments toward personalized communications, and although our data shows the majority of B2B buyers are open to receiving personalized communications, only 36% say they are open to receiving it from all brands. B2B brands without a balanced personalized marketing strategy risk getting blocked, ignored or replaced by B2B buyers.

As you tailor your B2B strategy, here are some important factors to consider:

• B2B marketing personalization preferences vary across industry sectors. For example, B2B financial services CMOs may have an easier time reaching their B2B buyers, as the majority of their buyers welcome personalization. Meanwhile, B2B healthcare buyers are much more sensitive to their data being collected and used in messaging. Ensure these nuances are accounted for in your industry marketing strategy.

• Older and younger buyers’ marketing personalization preferences diverge. CMOs can’t count on a halo effect from personalization by default — only 6% of Gen X and Boomer B2B buyers want personalized communication from all B2B brands. Most of this older group — 61% — only want personal messaging from B2B brands if they give them permission.

   

  Millennials are more likely to want personalized communications from all B2B brands (41%) and B2B brands they give permission to (43%). Just 4% say they don’t want personalized messaging at all.