4 minute read
On this page
1. Show your customers that you understand their needs 2. Give your customers a reason to trust you 5. Add value at each stage of the customer journey Think about your entire customer journey across all touchpoints. By thinking about the different scenarios your customers might encounter with your products and the mindset they might be in when they interact with you, you can find opportunities to add value to each stage of the customer journey.
From recommending the perfect item on Amazon to tailoring your playlists on Spotify, personalization is everywhere we turn. It's about delivering the right content to the right person at the right time, making every interaction feel like it was meant just for them. As businesses and brands dive deeper into the world of digital marketing personalization and its sophisticated algorithms, understanding its importance and mastering its strategies can unlock a world of content-based possibilities for creating memorable and impactful user experiences.
Today's consumers value a great experience as much as they value the actual product or service they are buying. Think about it: when you shop on a website or mobile app, you expect nothing less than a perfect experience across all data points, from homepage to basket. It starts with finding exactly what you're looking for, accessing peer reviews to make sure you’re getting the best possible product, and enjoying a smooth checkout experience.
After that, you naturally expect fast delivery and pinpoint-accurate updates about when your purchase will be in your hands, along with a hassle-free return process and personalized product recommendations for other items you might be interested in. As consumers, this is the kind of personalized, meaningful experience that we've come to expect for all our purchases.
And since people buying for businesses have gotten used to great consumer experiences in their personal lives, the demand for personalized customer experiences has also spilled over to B2B and B2B2C relationships, with business buyers switching vendors for a more consumer-like experience. So, whether you sell to consumers or businesses, it’s critical to show your customers they're more than just a number to you by showing them you understand customer needs.
Trust is quickly becoming the new currency. When customers are in the market for a product or service, they have an overwhelming amount of options to choose from. There’s no reason they would choose a company they don’t trust over one they do.
So how do you foster higher customer loyalty, retention, and lifetime value? No matter what your business does, no matter the use case, you have to demonstrate to potential customers the value of giving their behavioral data and demographic information to you. In other words, you need to clarify what they get in exchange. Beyond the obvious of telling them their personal information is secure (and ensuring it is!), you also need to use it in ways that show customers you understand them. How? By helping them get what they need and recommending ways to get the most out of their purchase.
For example, if you ask potential customers to create a customer profile for themselves in exchange for a discount, don’t throw the information into a database and forget about it. Use the information to recommend other products or services, or a better deal on something you know they could be interested in. They’ll be happy they chose to share their data with you because you’re using it to make their life easier, not to improve your conversion rates.
We've all been there: You call up customer service, punch the numbers and answer the questions to make it through all the decision trees, and then you’re asked to repeat all of the information you just provided when you finally get to speak to a live agent. Or how about having to sift through a long page of mostly irrelevant products just to find the one you need?
The more time it takes for your customer to get what they need, the more likely you are to frustrate them and eventually lose their business. That's why things like progressive profiling, showing relevant offers, and thinking about customer journey optimization are so important. You need to think about what you would do in their shoes. For example, where would you look for information about the products your company sells? What information would you need? And what would be the easiest way to find that information if you needed this product urgently?
Showing your customers that you respect their very limited time is critical. Give them the information they need about your products, so they don’t have to ask or look elsewhere. Make it extremely easy to find what they’re looking for. It’s another great way to show your customers that you understand them, and it will ultimately help you deliver a great user experience.
The customer journey doesn’t end with a purchase. You need to nurture customer relationships and show them you care about how satisfied they are with their purchase. For example, you could provide video, content downloads, or anything else that will help them make the most of their product or service. Instead of just offering another product to buy, you need to guide them toward the next best action to take.
This will help create customer loyalty and let them know you care about them personally — and when the time comes for them to buy another product you offer, chances are they'll stick with you. Because why would they look elsewhere when their experience has been so compelling?
Think about your entire customer journey across all touchpoints. Document key customer moments, and then analyze how your customers interact with you through people, processes, technology, and customer data at those moments. By doing so, you’ll discover opportunities to recommend next best actions to your customer.
For example, suppose your company sells refrigerators. You know your customers typically do their research about this major purchase on their computer. Now suppose a customer goes to your website on their mobile device at 5 am. What can you infer from this atypical purchase history?
For starters, you might suspect that this customer has woken up to a leaking refrigerator and immediately grabbed their phone to figure out how to deal with this emergency, before they even left the kitchen. But how can you know for sure? Just ask them! If they tell you it’s an emergency, you can add value to their interaction with you by offering advice on what to do to mitigate the urgent situation — for example, unplugging the refrigerator, keeping the door shut as much as possible, and so on.
By thinking about the different scenarios your customers might encounter with your products and the mindset they might be in when they interact with you, you can find opportunities to add value to each stage of the customer journey.
Some people simply prefer to remain anonymous when shopping around. On the surface, this can make it seem difficult to know who they are, or what they're looking for, but there's a lot they're actually telling you just by their browsing behavior.
For instance, suppose you run a national pet supply store. When a customer visits your site for the first time, you can learn basic information like their geolocation. With just that one piece of data, you can start personalizing by offering them products that are popular with other people in the region at that time of year.
If you manage to get the customer to fill out a form, make sure the form is quick and simple. For example, the form could simply ask for the visitor's name and what kind of pet they have.
Though it may seem very basic, there’s a lot you can do with that information to make your site more relevant to that person and your personalization strategy more effective. Beyond just greeting them by name, you can show relevant content that’s specific to each kind of pet, or change the images to reflect whether the customer has a dog or a cat. Make your website feel like it’s speaking to them.
Consider this real-life personalization example of buying a new sofa from Lova’s Furniture e-commerce store.* A couple is renovating their basement to turn it into a hangout space for their teenage kids. They do their shopping around, which includes looking at sofas, prices, and quality.
After asking friends and neighbors for recommendations, the couple visits a Lova’s Furniture store, and they have an excellent experience with the sales clerk. They fill out a floor plan and give the clerk a lot of information about their family, their renovation plans, and why they are looking for a new sofa. After comparing all their options, they order a beige sofa from Lova’s Furniture, and are told their new sofa will arrive in 6 to 8 weeks.
Between the purchase and the sofa delivery, the couple is essentially left alone, and that’s where their excitement about their new sofa begins to fade. They start to move on to other details of their renovation project, and they even start to get a bit frustrated not knowing exactly when their sofa will arrive. The only contact from Lova’s Furniture is the eventual delivery notice and delivery of the sofa many weeks later.
Lova’s Furniture provided a great experience to these customers when they came into the store. And while nothing went wrong and the couch was delivered on time, you could say that Lova’s Furniture missed out on a huge customer engagement opportunity.
*Retailer’s name changed for anonymity.
By leveraging the information the couple voluntarily provided, Lova’s Furniture could have kept in contact with them during the time between purchase and delivery to provide a great experience and create loyal customers. Here’s what their marketing team could have done:
Lova’s Furniture could also be doing more to tap into the trust created by peer recommendations. Here are some ways they could do that:
Customer retention and customer loyalty are not a pipe dream. From artificial intelligence development, machine learning algorithms and chatbots to the old “name trick,” whether it be an advertisement, an email, or a landing page, personalization efforts have many faces.
Just put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What would be useful in terms of information or offers? How can you find the information you need quickly? What would you want your data to be used for? Answering these questions from your customer base’s perspective will help you deliver a more meaningful, data-driven personalized experience. Learn how XM Cloud provides the technology, expertise, and scale to support your goals today.