Did you know 75% of all companies use marketing automation? Marketing automation tools free up your marketing team by automating manual activity during digital marketing campaigns. But, marketing automation hits an obstacle when you consider that 36% of consumers also expect personalized experiences. So how can you get the best of both worlds?
How Can Marketing Automation and Personalization Work Together?
Many marketers think automation and personalization are difficult to execute simultaneously, but there’s actually significant overlap between the two. It all starts with customer data.
Typically, you’ll see multiple sections of a company’s website with a form or “contact us!” tab. This is where you’ll be prompted to provide your personal details. Once that information is provided, marketing automation tools get to work analyzing your data and grouping you based on personal attributes. Those personal attributes help the system understand who you are and what you might be interested in.
All of this tracking is done through web-enabled cookies. Simply put, cookies are micro text files (or unique user IDs) that store data pulled from your online browsing.
Once they’ve been enabled, the unique ID can tell any browser where you’ve been, what your interests are, and other personal data used to sort what would and wouldn’t be relevant to you. Each piece of content viewed, page visited, and shopping cart abandoned provides needed insights into your shopping preferences. Cookies are the building blocks for personalized experiences.
In the background, your marketing software is using that data to make informed decisions about what personalized features would resonate most with you. This includes personalized recommendations, reminders of items in your cart, or remarketing ads. That’s how marketing automation and personalization can work together to give you an experience you want.
Of course, to be as effective as possible, marketing teams also need to review gathered data regularly. This is when you should identify where campaigns, messaging, and overall targeted efforts can be improved in the future.
What are Some Examples of Personalized Marketing Automation at Work?
The most common form of personalization is putting someone’s name in the subject line of an email. While it seems like a small task, studies have found that personalized subject lines earn a 26% higher open rate. It’s a quick win for your marketing efforts.
While subject lines may be the easiest, website homepages also offer a great opportunity for personalization. Plus, it’s often one of the first touchpoints with your customers. Some marketers choose to use popup offers to deliver custom messages, while others alter the entire homepage experience.
You can also take your marketing a step further by sending specific messages based on holidays, location, weather, color preferences, and so on.
This can have a major ROI for you, but be cautious about using the data you have. Targeting effectively is a big part of building trust. Never make any assumptions about the individual customer based on gender, age, or other attributes that could be harmful. Failing to do so risks losing their trust – and brand trust is more important than ever. In fact, our Summer 2021 B2C Quick Poll revealed 80% of consumers feel that brand trust has become more important since the pandemic. But, that trust is easy to lose if marketing tactics overstep their boundaries.
What Should I Avoid When Using Automation for Personalization?
We’ve all fallen victim to subscribing to a company’s emails only to unsubscribe after being flooded with their messages. Your customers don’t want to know about products they simply aren’t interested in.
In fact, our Summer 2021 B2C Quick Poll data revealed that 78% of respondents said they felt overwhelmed by more frequent digital brand communications in October 2020. Balancing relevance with opportunity is key.
Make sure your company is getting the most out of its analytics software by leveraging data insights to understand your customers on an individual level. Maybe they love blue t-shirts but not floral dresses. Or maybe they’ve looked at several sunglasses but haven’t completed a purchase.
Use your analytics to strategically notify them about sales on the products they’ve searched for in the past. Plus, it will help you see greater ROI on your marketing efforts and increased efficiency, too.
How Do I Segment My Customers?
Knowing how to segment your customers and potential customers can be the difference between a successful campaign and a waste of resources. Segmentation is the practice of breaking up your current and potential customers into groups that share specific criteria, like location, interests, or previous purchasing behavior. Your ideal segmentation criteria may depend on your business model. For example, B2B marketing may find demographic and company size relevant, while B2C may care more about psychographics and behavioral data.
To segment effectively, you should start by defining your market. What problem does your product solve, and who experiences that problem? Who are your competitors and how is your solution different from theirs?
Next, decide how you want to segment your market – demographics, company data, psychographic, geographic or behavioral information. Note that businesses may have many individual segments to whom they market their products or services, and each will have distinct segmentation criteria that differentiate them from other segments.
From there, you’ll want to research relevant information about each of your target market segment. This will help understand their preferences and how to use those preferences to better inform your marketing tactics and materials.
Finally, test your marketing materials to predict what will work and what won’t. Pay close attention to analytics and adjust where needed. Continue to refine as you gather more data about your market.
Does Personalized Marketing Automation Really Work?
Yes! We’ve helped our clients plan, build, test, and deliver personalized five-star digital experiences.
For example, our client JLL came to Avionos hoping to deliver personalized experiences to their B2B customers around the globe. After just 16 months, we helped JLL launch 48 sites across different countries with specialized branding and personalized content on each. And the efforts paid off.
JLL saw 100% increase in lead gen, 75% increase in purchase orders, and 40% decrease in bounce rate. Want to hear from JLL about the impact of adopting marketing personalization and how they accomplished such a major feat? Check out their webinar here.
What are The Benefits of Personalized Marketing Automation?
At its most basic level, marketing personalization is an efficient way to mass market while still selecting the best messaging for your audience. Saved time means faster ROI and freeing your teams to focus on other tasks.
Having one streamlined process for marketing can help keep sales and marketing departments in sync with one another. You’ll see greater lead gen and ultimately increased sales.
Marketing automation also allows for rich data collection and analysis. Your team doesn’t have to guess what did and didn’t work, they can use the data to easily extract insights.
Unsurprisingly, your team will benefit from delivering personalized experiences in real time. Better customer relationships and trust means increasing your brand reputation and ROI.
If your company is in the B2B industry, you’ll have a better understanding of your sales leads and a better forecast for conversions. You’ll also know when to use top of funnel marketing tactics v. bottom of funnel deal closing techniques.
The best part about personalized marketing automation is that it can scale with you as your business grows so you can have sustained success.
Ready to get started on building out an efficient marketing strategy? Our team is certified across major marketing platforms like Adobe and Salesforce, making it easier than ever to launch fast and see results even faster. Check out our marketing services and chat with us here.
