Personalization is a critical part of developing an efficient marketing strategy. In the past, common marketing tactics included broad reaches such as billboards or flyers. Personalized marketing is the new way to efficiently engage your target audience. It allows you to tailor promotional messages to customers by identifying their specific interests. 

In this day and age, with information so readily available, customers expect a seamless buying experience. This means they don’t want to be bothered with irrelevant products or information. 59% of customers say that personalization influences their shopping decision, which goes to show customers are far more likely to engage with promotional materials that truly resonate with their interests. A personalized buying experience is a sure-fire way to keep customers converting.

1. Craft tailored responses to your customers on social media

When replying to comments on social media, it is easy to use a generic, scripted response. There is hardly any value in responding to your customers in such an uncustomized, automated manner. Your customers will notice the repetition of your responses and will likely be turned away if there is little to no customization. 

Find a way to connect with the customer whether it is asking them a thought-provoking question or creating a unique response based off of the content of their message. Customers who receive a personalized, well thought out response will feel important far more resulting in a positive and memorable brand experience. 

This customer reached out to Southwest via Twitter regarding the great experience they had with the company. Rather than providing the customer with a generic response, Southwest tailored the response to the customer by including details about their story. 

This simple addition of information is far more personal and makes the customer feel connected with the brand. The customer feels valued because the personalization of the reply shows someone truly considered their feedback. This kind of conversation is likely to encourage a long-term, positive relationship between the customer and Southwest.

2. Create a loyalty program

Loyalty programs are an excellent way to keep customers coming back again and again. A successfully implemented loyalty program gives you major insight into the cognitive process your customers follow when making a purchase. 

The Starbucks mobile app is a great example of a well-executed loyalty program. Upon opening the app, customers are greeted with a personalized message. Customers must pay through the mobile app to receive what Starbucks refers to as “stars,” which translate to rewards such as free drinks or pastries. This means anytime a customer visits a Starbucks location and makes a purchase, it is recorded.

The company is then able to see what time of day customers visit, what locations they frequent and their order preferences. This is incredibly useful data for a company to leverage and offers endless marketing opportunities. The collected data allows Starbucks to modify any promotional deals or drink specials to align with their customer’s interests and preferences.

3. Use platforms that assist the process

Marketing personalization is no easy feat. It can be very time-consuming to effectively tailor your content to target customers. There are several tools that can help you dissect customer data and personalize marketing efforts based on automated processes. These programs simplify the process and take out a chunk of the tedious work associated with personalization. 

Blue Bite, for example, uses content logic, based on information such as product data, user location information and previous customer actions, to deliver customized, relevant messages to every user. This platform has the ability to greatly decrease the time spent on personalized marketing efforts, because Blue Bite does it for you.‍

4. Ask for customer feedback

Having accurate data to work with is an incredibly important part of a personalized marketing approach. About 55% of marketers feel they don’t have sufficient customer data to implement effective personalization.

Asking for feedback may seem like a no-brainer, but it is actually commonly overlooked when it comes to implementing a personalized marketing strategy. Customer feedback gives you the chance to get an inside look at what your customers want. One way to collect feedback is to create short surveys to send out to recurring customers. These surveys could include questions about new products your customers would like to see or questions about their interests and preferences. 

Another way to approach feedback is by adding a live chat feature to your site. Live chat allows you to uncover the most common issues and questions your customers are facing in real-time. You can then adjust your marketing approach based upon the discovered needs of your customers.

5. Update and analyze your content regularly 

Personalized marketing should never take a “one size fits all” approach. Your target audience’s wants and needs are likely to change over time, which means your approach and content need to adapt as well.

We recommend refining your personalization strategy at least once every few months to ensure you stay on top of any trends in your industry. This also allows you to take a look at how your existing personalized approaches have been performing and get insight into what’s working and what’s not. If you see your original personalization tactics may not be working as well as you hoped, take the opportunity to test something different. 

All things considered, personalized marketing is an incredibly powerful tactic when implemented correctly. Any data you collect has the potential to become substantial, useful information that will allow you to create a memorable user experience and ultimately improve your bottom line. Never overlook the power of utilizing customer data. It can change the way you do business as a whole. 

This guest post is by Ryan Gould, Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Services at Elevation Marketing.

From legacy Fortune 100 institutions to inventive start-ups, Ryan brings extensive experience with a wide range of B2B clients. He skillfully architects and manages the delivery of integrated marketing programs, and believes strongly in strategy, not just tactics, that effectively aligns sales and marketing teams within organizations. Find Ryan on LinkedIn.