Targeting and delivering a personalised campaign is key to attracting and retaining an audience. Here, we will explore how to target audiences by offering expert advice and how to introduce personalisation to build trust and loyalty with customers.

The Benefits of a Personalised Campaign

There are several benefits to offering a personalised campaign, both from the customer’s point of view and the business itself. They include:

• A better experience for the customer: Customers feel more engaged and valued by a brand if they receive a personalised marketing message, and the brand can feel more relevant to them. Offering a personalised campaign means the direct user connects with the company and meets their individual needs and wants.
• Boosting Brand Loyalty: Customers like it when a brand or a company treats them in a unique way. In fact, after a personalised experience with a brand, 44% of customers will become repeat customers. In turn, this approach creates and builds brand loyalty and helps gain a competitive advantage over those companies that aren’t offering personalised marketing.
• Increased Revenue: As well as building brand loyalty and the customer experience, ultimately, the personalised approach can impact the revenue generation of the organisation. An increase in repeat and valued customers with a better experience is likely to see the business experience increased turnover and revenue.

Use Data on Customers

One of the starting points for developing personalised marketing is to utilise customer data. It enables a company to send more relevant messaging, whether this be through a digital campaign, or a mailing service, at the most relevant and effective times.

There is both implicit and explicit data to be utilised, information that customers provide through forms and accounts, and information that is unintentionally provided to the company, such as shopping habits.

To help segment the market, companies can ask specific questions on forms in order to gather relevant and useful information that can help shape their campaigns. Additionally, you can analyse things like basket data, which many large companies such as Amazon do, helping them offer products and services to individual needs.

It is important to keep data fresh and relevant. People may have changed, their buying habits or circumstances changed, and they may not even be contactable using those details. A data refresh and clean-up every so often is of great business benefit.

Make use of Technology

There are technological aspects that can assist a business with launching a personalised marketing campaign. In addition to implementing web content management systems, and automated marketing programs, companies can utilise the development of technology and turn this towards customer loyalty schemes, for example.

We have seen this developed across various organisations, including the global coffee chain Starbucks. Using the development of app technology, the brand created an app to reward loyalty while also gathering customer data. Active Starbucks Rewards members in the United States increased by 18% year over year to reach 23 million members in the second quarter of 2021, accounting for 52% of sales in stores in the United States. Personalisation of drinks allows Starbucks to see customer preferences, and the app’s interactive nature keeps customers engaged and feeling valued for their loyalty.

In terms of important technological features, as mentioned, CRM can play a vital role in the personalised marketing goal.  A CRM can act as the customer database, allow marketing and sales teams to track purchase history and activity, and integrate with other existing systems and processes to create one, streamlined approach.

Stay up to Date

Businesses should take note to stay up to date with the performance of their personalised campaigns. As referenced, regular data refreshes are important and will define the personalised messages the customer receives. These need to be as accurate and relevant as possible. Otherwise, it will have minimal impact.  

Stay on top of new technologies, and be aware of how they could be integrated into your strategy, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and don’t lose track of your overall business aims and objectives.

Email campaigns, targeting on platforms such as apps and social media, or direct mail marketing, can be adjusted, tweaked and learned from. Marketing teams should use analytics to check performance, and if all of this is in place, there is no reason you can’t introduce effective personalised marketing campaigns.