The power of individualisation
Alistair Blaxill, executive director, Communisis, looks at how individualisation can give companies stronger brand equity while enhancing the customer experience…
Marketers have understood for some time the role that personalisation plays in increasing ROI. However, despite an increasing consumer demand for better targeting and an individual approach from brands, many marketers have failed to take it to the next level and embrace the potential of individualisation.
For those who are unsure of the difference, personalisation allows marketers to tailor certain aspects of a communication to consumers. This may include name, address or detailing their interest in specific products or activities. Individualisation is an evolution of this approach. It allows communications to be created that are driven completely by the preferences of the consumer, through a combination of insight, modelling and data analysis. This allows the marketer to tailor every aspect of the content, from the text to the images of the communication, to fit in with the consumer’s life stage, preferences or behaviour.
These developments mean that marketers are ever closer to reaching nirvana by truly targeting the right person, at the right time, through the right channel with the right message. While marketers have long understood the need to communicate with customers in this way, the reality is that many companies have failed to truly deliver. Subsequently, consumer appetite for direct mail is at an all time low, mainly due to poorly targeted communications.
Importantly this consumer mistrust can also apply to companies that are utilising personalisation. The reason for this is while many understand its power, few have invested budget or indeed found the right marketing service provider to combine insight through data analysis with action, through enabling software and sophisticated digital print or email technology.
The investment into data analysis is fundamental to succeeding in being able to communicate with consumers as individuals. Nevertheless, many companies have been put off, fearing that true personalisation or indeed individualisation would be prohibitive. Conversely, the reality is the opposite. Document composition products now enable marketers to make customer communications a more profitable process by ensuring that the content, irrespective of channel, is relevant to its recipients.
While companies are still hesitating, it is important to realise that the internet has already altered consumer expectations. If they have log in details to a site, they have to come to expect that the site will record information on them and their behaviour. Sites such as Amazon are a great example of how individualisation can impact the customer experience. It has recommended products to their customers that they think will be relevant to them based on previous purchases. Applications such as iGoogle have also added to this tailored medium.
Over the last few years, a number of surveys have demonstrated that the organisations who get it right on the web by adopting this approach receive higher customer satisfaction and uplift in sales. Nevertheless, this doesn’t just have to be the domain of the internet. For every company, regardless of the channels it uses to engage with its customers, must place data at the heart of the business. The intelligence gathered must be utilised to develop a customer’s communication lifecycle, underpinning delivery through to response handling. Conversely, this can be applied from fully customised statements and bills to on-demand marketing collateral and self-service web applications, through to individualised correspondence and proposals produced interactively by customer-facing employees.
With today’s increasingly savvy consumers, organisations must realise that not embracing new advances will leave them in a weaker position. Companies that do adopt new approaches will benefit from stronger brand equity, highly customer-focused communications, improved customer satisfaction and increased cross-sell opportunities.
Therefore organisations that fail to understand the real power in personalisation do so at their peril. Ultimately, not only can it enhance the customer experience it can also reduce costs by streamlining the marketing function. Right time, place, channel and message continue to be essential, more so than ever in the current economic climate.