Why the Time is Now for Personalization in Marketing

The new online consumers – we’re a fickle but decisive bunch.

We can now comparison shop with just a few taps and swipes on our mobile devices from anywhere we are. The ease of doing that and making online purchases has made the buying decision process much faster than it was in the past.

That means marketers need to work harder to get our attention, and businesses need to be more innovative in winning our wallet share. Personalization is one way they’re working to do that.

Personalization involves leveraging the customer information within existing databases (like CRM) and other sources (like conversations from the call center, and customers’ online social media profiles) to ensure marketers are addressing the interests and key life events of individual consumers.

Births, birthdays, graduations, new home purchases, and retirements are major life events for most people, and are an excellent opportunity for businesses to reach out to their customers and prospects with congratulatory messages and promotions aimed at such events. This kind of thing is among the low-hanging fruit on the personalization front because it allows businesses to easily craft content ahead of time for such life events, and send it to the right consumers at the right times. For example, a diaper company could help a consumer celebrate the birth of a baby with a special offer on its nappies. A department store could send an online card to a new graduate, along with a promotion related to book crates, sheets, a shower caddy, or  towels,

“If you’re just dabbling into personalized marketing, the first thing I would say is hurry up, because it’ll really drive your business. That should be top of your list of what you can do to drive sales tomorrow,” Brian Monahan, former vice president of marketing at Walmart.com, was quoted as saying in this VentureBeat article. The article also indicated that personalized marketing enabled the retail giant to increase its uniques from 55 million to 85 million within about a year and grow its sales by billions of dollars.