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THE RETAIL TOUCHPOINTS BLOG

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WHY PERSONALIZATION DOESN’T WORK FOR MOST PEOPLE

By Lisa Kalscheur, Monetate


A huge percentage of marketers are personalizing their marketing today. The
Relevancy Group found that 86% of marketers use personalization in some way and
about half use personalization across their web site, social, email and display
channels. But before we pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, it’s
important to recognize how many consumers never see a personalized offer from a
brand — even a brand that’s doing sophisticated cross channel personalization.


The issue starts with identification. In fact, our experience shows that many
brands can only identify about 20% of their site visitors at best. That means
that most personalization programs ignore four out of every five visitors.
Identification doesn’t have to be black or white. It’s not limited to paying
customers and loyalty program members. Brands must start to build identities for
every visitor using relevant bits of insight that can inform an ongoing
campaign.


AN OLD PROBLEM THAT HASN’T GONE AWAY

I recently came across a piece of research from VB Insights from 2015, which
names identity as a major problem for personalization. The report stated that
80% of marketers surveyed don’t understand their customers beyond basic
demographics and purchase history. Many marketers struggle with these same
issues four years later.

There are three marketing norms that are hindering progress.

 * The first is that personalization programs, and in fact many content programs
   overall, are set up as message testing shops.
 * The second is that many marketing programs are not continuous, but are
   instead based on individual actions or specific campaigns, and so data isn’t
   collected in any way that’s usable for ongoing personalization.
 * The third is that many marketers are not collecting bits of insight about new
   visitors that could be valuable as part of a personalization strategy on the
   second, third or fourth pages of a session, or on a second visit, even if
   they aren’t an identified customer.

These problems limit the ability for marketers to learn more about the four out
of five people visiting their site that they don’t know, and it stops them from
becoming more relevant to the one that they do. Luckily, marketers can change
their approach and see tremendous improvement.


SOLVE THE IDENTITY PROBLEM BACKWARDS

Marketers face a lot of uphill battles in their quest to personalize. They have
data that’s too old or too hard to access. Creative and content resources are
limited. Their marketing platforms aren’t integrated. They risk alienating
customers if they make a misstep. As a result, marketers often find themselves
in an A/B testing ‘Groundhog Day’ scenario, where they set up a campaign and
create a test to pick which message works best for most consumers, and then do
that all over again.

To break out of this, marketers fear they have to wait for big data projects,
CRM integrations and creative resource miracles to occur, but that’s not the
case. It all comes down to flipping the approach in reverse. Marketers should
start with the customer, not the campaign.

An online university did this when they created lifecycle campaigns that
followed the journey that their students take from enrollment to studying for
tests to engaging in the alumni community. At each stage, instead of different
predetermined content, they set up campaigns that would first gather information
about an individual that could then be used to personalize content later in the
journey.


FIND THE “GLUE” TO CONNECT CAMPAIGNS

The online university now had insights they could use for the next interaction,
and there they could gather more insights, which made every subsequent
interaction more relevant. They could then analyze campaign performance based on
which data was most valuable to collect and in turn, which type of
personalization was then most relevant. This approach works for rich
personalization on a web site, in email, and across channels.

But what about campaigns for people who haven’t become paying customers yet?
Retailers can focus on picking up clues to inform personalization in a more
subtle approach. For example, using search behaviors, browsing history and third
party data.


TRUSTING PERSONALIZATION TO DO ITS JOB

This approach does require marketers to start thinking about personalization as
something that needs to be running in the background, so that the system can
learn and improve interaction by interaction, page by page, email by email. The
goal is not to replace the work of creatives, and the outcome is not that of a
runaway AI-driven machine talking to customers with no human intervention.
Rather, “always on” personalization can help marketers gather insights, focus
their creative approach and test more messages, more often.

Asking a marketer to embrace the cyclical, ongoing nature of personalization can
feel a bit like asking a runner to jump on a moving treadmill. It’s hard to
understand where to start and how to do it without getting hurt. But it’s really
not like that. Marketers can start with a few small questions, such as “what do
we know about the four out of five people we can’t identify, and what is
valuable about those insights?”  These questions can lead marketers down the
right path, to identifying more people, and personalizing more often. After four
years of starting the identification problem in the face, it’s time for
marketers to take the first step towards a better approach. 

Lisa Kalscheur is CMO at Monetate, leading all marketing and communications. She
has led the evolution of many high-growth technology companies, including
NewsCred and AppNexus. She has driven company revenue by building and leading
diverse, agile teams of top-performing marketers to match the growing needs of
global customer brands. Lisa’s expertise extends across marketing functions from
brand, product marketing, demand generation, field and customer marketing, and
marketing operations to content marketing, corporate communications, and digital
and social media.


 * * #personalization
   * #Monetate
   * #identity problem
 * 1 year ago
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