I was scrolling through Quora the other day (as I often do), when I came upon this question: Why does personalization take such a large part in digital marketing? And it got me thinking. Obviously, we’re a marketing-automation-focused blog here at Net-Results Marketing Automation, and personalization is a huge benefit of marketing automation strategy and implementation. Why? Let’s get into it!
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Let’s start with what we’re really talking about when we say “personalization” in regards to digital marketing and marketing automation by association. Whether you’re looking at Web Content Personalization, Dynamic Email Content, or intelligent Campaigns and Workflows, the basic strategy is consistent: provide the right message to the right person at the right time.
The strategy for everything should center around the lead. What is the lead is looking for at any given time? What about during the different steps in the customer journey?
We want to be providing our leads with what they want to see and what will provide value to them — and you guessed it, that’s where personalization comes in! By providing value throughout your interactions with your leads, you have the chance to build a relationship of trust and build your brand in their mind. Their customer journey becomes a way for you to provide value and be helpful! That relationship-building comes in super handy when it comes to conversions or to your sales team opening up conversations.
Also, the automation of this personalization becomes increasingly important the more leads there are in a specific customer journey. I wrote about this in-depth in a blog post from a few weeks ago, so feel free to check it out if you’d like to know more about how marketing automation can boost your organization’s performance when it comes to scalability in particular.
Just because your quantity of leads increases doesn’t mean that you want to decrease the quality of the interactions that you have with those leads. This is probably a “duh” but it’s worth stating anyways! You still want to keep your communications as absolutely personalized as possible.
Check out this blog post: 5 Problems that Marketing Automation Solves
So why does personalization in marketing automation matter?
Well for starters, 60% of marketers admit they struggle to personalize content in real-time, but something as simple as a personal email subject line can increase open rates by 26%. Pretty easy to see why this matters! Not taking personalization into consideration can have a huge effect on key metrics and revenue-generation behavior.
It’s customer journey 101: each point of contact is an opportunity for a conversion. Every touchpoint is helping to build a relationship with the leads who haven’t purchased from your business yet.
And what does that look like? Here are some examples of personalization in marketing automation strategy and implementation, and it goes beyond just lead stage all the way down through the funnel into advocacy.
- We already mentioned email subject lines but the numbers speak for themselves! Personalize your email subject lines for your various customer journeys.
- See a lead viewing a specific page that indicates sales readiness? Trigger an email for a relevant piece of content or sync with your CRM to have your Sales team reach out via manual contact.
- Customize your homepage or landing pages with separate messages for returning website visitors versus first-time website visitors.
- Automated emails depending on the time of year, current events, or even weather conditions. You could even send out birthday emails from a dedicated account manager or “anniversary” emails to current customers.
- Provide targeted offers and messages based on the way that a lead came into your pipeline.
Need some help with your Customer Journey? Map your Customer Journey and gain better understanding of what your leads are looking for in each step of their interaction with your organization with the our Customer Journey Worksheets.
Hope you found this blog post about why personalization matters in marketing automation useful! Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog below to get the latest blog posts delivered to your inbox.
Till next time,
Sarah
Marketing at Net-Results
