While many brands claim to offer personalized consumer experiences, most still have an opportunity to improve how they’re doing it. In fact, just 15% of CMOs feel that their company is on the right path towards personalization, meaning 85% aren’t quite as confident about their efforts. 

Personalization in digital marketing can be complex and might seem intimidating, but the truth is, you don’t have to have it all figured out before you get started. The important thing is to do just that – get started.

What Does Personalization Mean?

For starters, let’s get back to the basics: what is personalization in marketing? This is the practice of using consumer data to tailor experiences to an individual consumer’s preferences. When it comes down to enabling predictive personalization and optimizing the consumer experience, your data is the driving force.

What does a personalized experience look like?

Imagine a consumer, Jessie, visits a beauty brand’s website to look for skin care products, which she regularly purchases from this brand. Rather than seeing pop-ups for a sale on mascara or foundation, or seeing the latest hair products, the brand can curate a more relevant, personalized experience that includes skin care product recommendations and related deals. 

This experience is more likely to make Jessie feel like the brand understands her and her preferences, instead of having to wade through unrelated product recommendations and offers just to get to the products she wants to purchase. It’s not confined to the website alone, either – brands can extend these types of personalized experiences to other D2C channels like email and SMS.

Why You Should Focus on Improving Personalization

That said, the question remains: how exactly does personalization help in your marketing efforts?

Expanding your digital marketing efforts to include personalization can drive results for your business in more ways than one. Here are some of the key reasons why personalization is important for your brand:

  • Consumers expect personalized experiences while maintaining privacy. 

The best way to improve the consumer experience is to focus on personalization. It’s not enough to simply provide a great product to consumers – the experience needs to be on the same level. Consumers don’t have a ton of patience for less-than-stellar experiences, and if they don’t feel like a brand truly understands them, most are quick to move along to a competitor who better meets their needs. That being said, personalization doesn’t require you to invade a consumer’s privacy. They want personalized digital experiences, but don’t want to feel like they’re being spied on.  

Your brand already has the data it needs to curate relevant and meaningful experiences, you simply need to focus on putting the right tools and strategies in place to enable personalization at scale. While it may be difficult to figure everything out before you get started, your consumers aren’t going to wait around – it’s time to get started.

  • Improving the digital consumer experience improves marketing ROI. 

At the end of the day, your business’ bottom line matters most. Personalization may seem like a lot of work up-front, but the results far exceed what you’ll see from static content that isn’t tailored to the preferences of your consumers.

It’s important to remember that personalizing the consumer experience doesn’t only benefit your business in terms of sales. Your business goals are the guiding light for how you implement personalization – you can use it to grow your CRM, boost engagement, and improve checkouts. 

In a world where consumers can quickly and easily switch to other brands, enabling personalization at scale is the key to improving marketing ROI for your business.

  • Personalized experiences keep consumers loyal.

Every marketer knows that acquiring a new consumer is far more expensive than retaining one. When you’re putting your data to good use and showing consumers that you know them and understand their preferences, you’re more likely to increase retention rates, which means you’re saving some money in the long run.

Curating personalized and relevant experiences for your consumers creates stickiness and brand loyalty – improving engagement and sales for your brand. The more relevant and meaningful the experience, the more likely consumers are to return. 

While you know personalization is important, it can be tough to figure out exactly how to get started. With the right tools and vendor, however, implementing personalized consumer experiences can be quick and easy. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how Breinify can help you achieve your business goals and create personalized experiences for your consumers, reach out to us today!