personalization

I originally wrote today’s post for GetFeedback. It appeared on their site on March 1, 2020.

According to Salesforce, 51% of customers expect that brands will anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before they make contact – by 2020. Well, here we are!

The future of business is personal. We are embarking on “The Age of You”, in which “Mecosystems” (ecosystems that revolve around and cater to you) and “responsive experiences” (customer experiences that adapt to your needs and preferences) will prevail.

The marketing pundits tell us personalization and customization is key to successful marketing. One-to-one marketing, they call it. Recognition that every customer is different, and should be interacted with differently.

Last August I wrote that Marketing needed to develop five key-capabilities to drive the Consumer’s Decision Journey. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend you do. Although this post can stand on itself, it may help you to see the bigger picture. A picture that looks at contextual marketing through a Service Dominant Logic lense.

Non-profits assume their potential contributors will see the good they will do and generally focus on a theme – a particular disease, a philanthropic cause, and so on. New research shows that success involves more than just generating sympathy for the group’s charitable objective: asking for money to increase awareness of the cause can actually reduce donations.

Lately, I’ve highlighted the various ways companies (and even colleges) are putting their customers in their ads by using social personalization or other means. In Australia, Coke took the idea one step farther, and put customer names directly on its product:

Are you overlooking a way to personalize your ads that goes far beyond the usual “Dear Roger” salutation? In my recent article, Put Your Customer in the Ad, I mentioned that LinkedIn was using profile pictures for targeted ads. Since then, I’ve been able to capture a couple of examples. The first one surprised me when it appeared, and to generate a second one I had to surf a variety of profiles. Here’s what I like about these ad:

In my direct mail days, we used personalization whenever possible. Starting a letter with “Dear Roger” instead of “Dear Friend” responds better every time (if the recipient’s name is Roger, that is!). A sweepstakes that uses a personalized address message like, “Imagine our Prize Patrol ringing the doorbell at 123 Shady Circle,” will garner more entries than one that uses a generic message.