Most marketing guides and advice will tell you to work on making your communication and customer experiences personalised. It improves loyalty, it makes customers feel special and seen, the data you use that helps you to deliver personalisation is really useful for growing your audience and seeing what they like and don’t like.
But personalisation can cross a line into being a bit creepy if you’re not careful with it. Yes, customers like to be able to receive recommendations for products that are similar to ones they already enjoy, but if they’re being followed around the internet and bombarded with recommendations then they might start to get irked by your brand and freaked out.
So, how can you avoid personalisation pitfalls?
Context
Getting the context right with your personalisation is key. You might decide to opt out of following your customers across devices with recommendations because it comes across as invasive, however arguably, customers are so used to remarketing tactics from brands that it doesn’t come as a surprise anymore. Having a good level of insight about your customers means that you can be more selective about how you use that data and information. You could target users based on where they are in their customer journey and be smart about what you recommend, instead of bombarding someone that’s only visited your website once.
If it’s a gentle reminder to someone that they still have a product in their basket, then this is a much warmer prospect that’s more likely to land than triggering a chain of emails or content directed at someone who isn’t massively invested in your brand and might be put off it for good.
And in your communication with customers, suggesting items again and again that they’ve already looked at but not bought might not be a good use of data and starts to look stale. You can suggest new recommendations on similar products instead, so that you’re providing something more innovative or fresh.
Value
Customers aren’t averse to advertising or personalisation, in fact they really like it, they’re just averse to bad advertising. So, if you can deliver content or personalisation that actually adds value to their lives then they’ll appreciate it. Content that’s related to previous searches, behaviours or purchases is useful, as is delivering content at a good/relevant time. For example, you can deliver some content based on their previous purchases at a particular time when it’d be relevant or they’d be more likely to find it interesting i.e around a particular holiday/season/event. Thinking about ‘when’ is a really useful metric to consider.
Obviously, you can’t make all of your email marketing completely personalised, but even things like a simple but very effective birthday email to a customer with a discount code or offer inside can go a long way and is a great combination of value and personalisation.
Getting personalisation right can be tricky, so if you need a helping hand then get in touch with our team at DOWO and we’re ready to answer any questions you might have and give you a helping hand.