Personalizing the Customer Experience is Key to Business Success

Personalizing the Customer Experience is Key to Business Success

Make your company more competitive with personalized engagement and building trust with customers. 

What is the one successful technique on the biggest, most popular websites? Companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and YouTube use this technique to engage customers. The technique is personalization, which you can see if you are a member of these sites. Content that you see will reflect your previous searches or purchases, personalized just for you.

This personalization appears in your news feed, product recommendations or possible viewing suggestions. You’re online experience is personalized based on collected data each site has for you. And you don’t have to be a large corporation to use personalization on your own website. In fact, to stay competitive you should embrace the power of personalized content to deliver a unique user experience for each person that lands on your site.

Why Should I Create Personalized Content?

1. Consumers are expecting a personalized experience.

As personalization becomes mainstream, consumers are expecting to have a custom experience when they use the internet. A survey by Epsilon found that 90% of customers viewed personalization to be appealing. Yet, 60% of marketing teams struggle to find ways to personalize online content in real time according to Adobe. Additionally, 70% of consumers believe that a company’s understand of their unique needs influences loyalty to a brand. Even the most rudimentary forms of personalization such as addressing the recipient by name in marketing emails are used by only 30% of businesses according to Experian.

If you are looking for new ways to stand out from the competition, personalization can be a powerful tool in your marketing tool belt. Author Alex Allwood, argues that consumer experience is the most important factor in staying competitive, even more than pricing or technology. In a recent interview in The Guardian, Allwood said, “Today’s marketplace has become very competitive and commoditized. There is little differentiation between one brand and the next. And so if you are already competing on price, technology or innovation, what is going to differentiate you from your competitors? What is going to be your point of difference? The answer is how your customer experiences your brand.”

2. Technology can support personalization.

Technology has been developed that makes what used to be a difficult task into a much easier one. Integrated tools that can automate the personalization process are readily available at a reasonable cost. According to Anita Brearton, CEO of marketing tech company CabinetM, “A medium-size B2C company uses an average of 19 tools in its marketing organization; a larger company uses even more.”

When information about customers is siloed in multiple separate applications, it makes coordinating a 360-degree view of that customer across multiple channels including email, social media and purchases very difficult. Several companies have worked to solve this problem including Adobe with Marketing Cloud, however, it is newer companies that look to transform personalization for small businesses and entrepreneurs using AI and other automated technology. Exponea is harnessing the power of machine learning in order to become a consolidated platform for customer acquisition, conversion and retention. Businesses can use this platform to unify omnichannel communications, product recommendations, email marketing automation, ad management, content personalization, and analytics.

In order to stay relevant and competitive in today’s marketing, machine learning, automation and AI should become an integral part of your strategy. Companies such as Exponea make these technologies available to small businesses who want to compete with the giants.

3. Transparency helps to build trust.

In a Columbia Business School survey, 75% of respondents expressed a willingness to share their own personal data with companies that they trust. Building that trust takes time, and requires transparency regarding any personal data collections, how it will be used and benefit that may be received. The European Union’s recent adoption of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) protocol offers a road map to methods of increasing transparency for personal data collections. Many large companies have chosen to apply the GDPR protocol to all customers worldwide.

By making your company GDPR-compliant, you give a show of faith that your business is protected and that you can demonstrate how important security of personal data is to you. When explaining the benefits your customers will receive by providing their personal information to your business, you may find additional opportunities to collect more information through surveys and other methods. This will continue your pathway to more personalized customer experience.

In Conclusion

It’s most likely that you have noticed personalized content when you’ve shopped on some larger e-commerce websites who use their own proprietary tools. However, now smaller businesses have the opportunity to join this trend in full with the adoption of Exponea or similar programs. Personalizing the consumer experience can significantly improve the engagement of new and return customers increasing sales revenues and profits. Improved engagement will also help build trust and customer loyalty.