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As an ukbusinessupdates.com battling for market share in an increasingly competitive online environment, you need to pull out all the stops to make your product or service stand out. In my opinion, personalizing the customer experience is the least you can do when it comes to differentiating your business and improving lead generation.
While my years as a business owner have shown this to be true, the statistics here support me. According to an Epsilon survey, 80% of consumers wants personalized experiences from store sellers. If there’s one thing that’s undeniable about entrepreneurship, it’s that you won’t succeed if you can’t provide what consumers want.
That’s why it’s critical that you personalize your customer’s experience so that their experience feels like it was made just for them. Ultimately, we all want to feel special and valued – personalized experiences do just that. Here’s how.
Related: Five Actionable Steps to Using Personalization to Drive Sales
What are personalized consumer experiences?
A personalized consumer experience refers to any interaction, product or service specifically designed to meet a shopper’s unique individual wants and needs. There are many ways this can be put into practice, including, but not limited to, the following:
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Using a customer’s real name in the subject line of an email
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Reminder emails to prospects who haven’t emptied their cart or haven’t been in lately
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Customized discount codes with prospect’s name
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“Welcome back” messages on a website’s home page
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“Thank you” offers and deals for loyal, returning customers
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Remembering the consumer’s size and style (for fashion stores)
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“Recommended for you” additional products or services
These are just a few simple ways you can tailor your marketing materials to the specific end user. While they are usually small gestures, they go a long way toward building rapport and loyalty with your customers.
Related: 4 Marketing Personalization Tips for Digital Businesses
How to personalize consumer data
Don’t be afraid to use your customer or prospect’s data to deliver personalized experiences. It’s a fair decision, according to 57% of online shoppers who are happy to agree to the exchange of personal data in exchange for customized discounts and offers.
Here are some ways you can securely and ethically collect consumer data that can be used to deliver desired marketing materials:
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Requests for geographic location data
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Opt-in requests to email newsletters
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Offer Google or Facebook based customer profiles
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Track cookies on your website or mobile app
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Use ethically responsible third-party data aggregators
However, make sure your data collection methods Staying GDPR Compliant to ensure that the personal privacy rights of EU shoppers are respected.
Related: 3 Tips for Using Consumer Data to Create More Personalized Experiences
Personalized products and services: examples of real brands
Below I’ve put together a short list of some of my favorite personal experiences, products and services offered by top global brands. You can take inspiration from these campaigns to design your own campaigns:
1. Starbucks — Free mobile app:
Seattle-based coffee retailer Starbucks has one of the most popular apps on the market. In fact, from 2019, more consumers will use the Starbucks app to make purchases then Google Pay and Samsung Pay combined in the U.S
Part of the app’s success lies in the company’s ongoing offering of free products, such as coffee and pastries, to customers who use the Starbucks app to pay. Simply remembering your customer’s shopping history and gradually rewarding loyal customers is an easy and effective way to personalize your customer’s experience.
2. Amazon – Personal Shopping Assistant:
If you’re an Amazon shopper, you’re probably familiar with the ecommerce giant’s incredibly streamlined buyer journey. There are very few hitches or obstacles and everything is designed to speed up the purchase process.
However, what really sets Amazon apart is its unique ability to remember their customer and tailor the prospect’s shopping journey just for them. For example, Amazon assists the customer during the shopping experience by offering the following features that act as a kind of personal shopping assistant:
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“Recommended for you” products
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“Buy it again” products
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“Continue where you left off” notifications
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“Keep shopping for” notifications
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“You might like it too…”
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“Inspired by your wish list…”
All these familiar cues combine to create a highly personalized shopping experience that makes the consumer feel respected and cared for.
3. Grammarly’s Usage Reports:
As a longtime content marketer and writer, I am a huge fan of Grammarly. I use it every day to create and copy (mostly) perfect emails, thanks to their spelling and grammar checking features.
What I love most about Grammarly’s user experience is that they send me weekly reports to show me the different ways my writing has improved or decreased compared to previous weeks. They also show me what to pay more attention to in my writing, such as clarifying antecedents or correcting sentence fragments, for example.
I owe much of my marketing success to Grammarly’s unique customer personalization efforts. Savvy business owners would do well to mimic the level of detail and care Grammarly puts into their personalized product.
Personalization pays off
The most successful entrepreneurial projects of tomorrow will offer tailor-made solutions for individual consumers. In fact, we are already seeing it today with highly effective campaigns from brands like Starbucks, Amazon and Grammarly.
The days of success with off-the-shelf solutions and cookie-cutter services are a thing of the past. There’s just no doubt that, Yes, your company must adopt personalized experiences if it wants to stay competitive in tomorrow’s digitalized economy. Digital transformation starts with personalization. As entrepreneurs, you and I cannot afford to ignore this crucial first step.
