The days of generic messages and mass marketing are over. With competition growing in every industry, personalization has become a necessity for businesses to connect with their target audience.
According to a recent study by Salesforce, 66% of consumers “expect companies to understand their unique needs,” yet 66% end up feeling like they’re treated more like a number than a person. Buyers are more sophisticated now. Rather than one-and-done transactional relationships, they expect a personalized experience where brands treat them like the unique individuals they are.
By adding personal touches to their sales efforts, businesses can strengthen their relationship with their customers, improve conversion rates, encourage loyalty and, ultimately, drive business growth.
To help you get started, we’re diving into the importance of personalization and providing practical ideas for implementing various personalization strategies. Let’s explore the power of personalization in sales together.
What Is Personalization?
Put simply, personalization is when a brand tailors experiences or content to individual users based on their preferences, behaviors, or other details. This can be as simple as having email marketing campaigns include each customer’s name in the subject line or as complex as using algorithms to recommend products based on past purchases.
Driven by data, personalization allows you to provide your customers with a brand experience that’s tailored to their preferences and relevant to their needs. This has made it an incredibly effective marketing tool for businesses looking to optimize their sales funnel.
Why Does Personalization Matter?
Personalization in sales matters more now than ever before. According to McKinsey, personalization can increase revenues by up to 15% and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by up to 30%. The reason is simple: customers are no longer satisfied with one-size-fits-all solutions.
A recent survey of 5,000 consumers found that 71% think personalization matters. On top of that, 80% are willing to share data in exchange for deals and offers, indicating that personalization can be especially powerful in sales.
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When you take the time to understand your customers’ needs, it sends the message that you value them as an individual and care about solving their unique pain points. Personalization nurtures the customer relationship, making them feel seen and heard, which can lead to increased loyalty and repeat business.
Additionally, crafting personalized experiences can help you stand out in a crowd of competitors. By leveraging customer data, you can deliver a more meaningful and memorable experience. In today’s world, where customers are bombarded with sales messages and advertisements, being authentic and relevant can make all the difference.
To sum it up, personalization matters in sales because it can drive revenue growth, strengthen your connection with your customers and help you stand out from the competition. It’s a powerful strategy that can make the sales process more effective, efficient and even enjoyable for all involved.
What Kind of Data Does Personalization Use?
Effective personalization requires businesses to proactively gather and analyze data about their customers. Here are some of the types of data that are commonly collected and used for personalization efforts.
- Demographic data: Basic information about customers such as age, gender, income, occupation, location and education level can be used to personalize marketing messages, offers and promotions.
- Behavioral data: Behavioral data tracks the customer’s interactions with the brand, including their purchase history, browsing history and search history. This data can be used to send personalized product recommendations and marketing campaigns that match what they’ve shown interest in.
- Psychographic data: Psychographic data measures the customer’s values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. Think of these as attributes related to an individual’s personality. This information can be used to personalize the tone and messaging of a campaign.
- Social media data: Social media data tracks the customer’s interactions with the brand on social media platforms, which can be used to personalize interactions based on the customer’s social media activity. For example, a makeup retailer could send a special discount to a customer who tags them on Instagram.
- Geographic data: Geographic data tracks the customer’s location. It can be used to tailor messaging based on the customer’s location, such as an airline sending a personalized email about low-cost flights departing out of a customer’s local airport.
Overall, businesses will need to collect various types of data to effectively personalize the customer experience. By leveraging this data, businesses can create tailored marketing messages, promotions and offers that resonate with their customers and lead to increased loyalty and repeat business.
Enhancing the Buyer’s Journey With Personalization
From the interest stage to the final sale, here are some ways you can personalize your customer interactions and boost the effectiveness of your sales strategy.
Encourage Customization in the Early Stages
As you strive to create a more personalized customer experience, it’s important to remember that there’s a fine line between being helpful and being creepy. While customers appreciate a personal touch, they don’t want to feel like their privacy is being invaded, especially if the relationship between you and a consumer hasn’t been fully established yet.
A smart workaround to this is to let the customers take the reins and customize their own experience in the early stages of interest. Leverage tools that give them an opportunity to provide their information for the first time and enjoy a tailored experience based on their input.
For example, you could make a quiz that recommends relevant products based on a customer’s answers or create a content generator that produces share-worthy content featuring input from interested visitors.
You can put any of this into an Interactive Video to further increase engagement. See the online calculator example below. It provides potential customers with more information about their estimated payments, savings and so on — after the customer provides key data.
Tip: This kind of video can be great for lead generation. Put it on your website and gather contact information so you can follow up with potential customers.
By allowing customers to actively participate, you can use their input to enrich your first-party data and deliver a more relevant experience while still respecting the customer’s privacy.
Personalize Communications and Interactions
Another prime opportunity to add personalization is when potential buyers reach out to you for more information. In this stage, customers are actively seeking help and evaluating options, so providing personalized assistance and resources can make all the difference.
For example, don’t just send a generic sales email to those requesting more information. Ask for their name and why they’re interested. Then, send a personalized message that highlights the most relevant features. This ensures your information is helpful and demonstrates that your business understands their unique challenges and is willing to go the extra mile to help.
Personalizing your outreach communications and interactions in the evaluation stage can also involve following up with the customer at key touchpoints in the process. Sending a personalized follow-up after a demo or sales call can show the customer that you are invested in their success and are committed to providing the support they need.
That follow-up can take many forms. You might do an individual call — the most personal touchpoint but often not scalable. You could send a text-based follow-up, usually via email or SMS. Or you might do a video as this insurance quote follow-up shows.
An effective sales follow-up needs to be:
- personalized
- automated
- succinct
- engaging
The video above hits all those points in around a minute.
By providing tailored resources and following up, you can effectively demonstrate your business’s commitment to the customer and provide a personalized experience that sets you apart from everyone else.
Seal the Deal With Personalized Offers
As your relationship with your customers develops and you learn more about them, you can then start to leverage their information to craft personalized offers that are relevant and appealing. By adapting your offers to their interests and behavior, you can increase the likelihood of a sale and build a deeper connection with the customer.
The personalized proposal below is a great example from the banking industry. After collecting information about the customer, such as their goals and risk tolerance, the company leveraged those facts to create an offer tailored to the customer’s needs and preferences.
Even better, they presented it in a video that had a real person explaining the proposal and the next steps in the process, further humanizing the message and connection between the brand and their customer.
Another way to personalize offers is to use demographic and psychographic data to develop detailed customer profiles and create targeted campaigns. Does a customer have young kids? Maybe throw in a family discount as an incentive. Got an environmentally conscious client? Highlight the sustainable aspects of your brand in your offer.
Carefully consider who your customer is when crafting offers and you’ll not only show that your business understands and respects their lifestyle, but you’ll also create a sense of exclusivity and camaraderie with your customer.
Finally, let’s not forget that when can be almost as important as what. You also can leverage data to send personalized offers that are timely. By analyzing customer behavior and purchase history, you can identify the best time to offer a discount or promotion. Maybe a customer has had a product sitting in their cart for a few days. Close the sale by sending them a personalized offer that convinces them to make that purchase.
By using customer information to create attractive, personalized offers, you can stand out from the noise of all those generic, irrelevant promotions your customers hear all the time. From creating targeted campaigns to keeping note of shopping activity, these are just some of the ways you can use data to customize your offers and seal the deal.
Keep Them Coming Back for More
The sales process doesn’t stop once you’ve made a sale. Upselling and cross-selling are essential strategies for increasing revenue and boosting customer lifetime value. By leveraging the wealth of customer data available to your business, you can identify opportunities to offer additional products or services to your existing customers.
One way to do this is to analyze customer purchase history and identify products or services that are frequently purchased together or in the same time frame. By identifying complementary products that add value to the customer’s experience, you can increase the likelihood of an upsell or cross-sell.
For instance, if someone recently took out a loan to buy a new car, they probably also need to update their car insurance soon, which presents a perfect cross-selling opportunity for a company that offers both. See how KBC seized that opportunity with the Personalized Video below.
While selling closely-related products is always ideal, don’t worry if an obvious connection isn’t there. Instead, focus on making sure that you promote relevant and appropriate products or services to the customer.
Sending your banking customers a message about the benefits they’d receive by taking out a personal loan with you makes sense. Promoting the latest gas-guzzling pick-up truck to a customer that’s only ever purchased your electric cars? Not so much.
Upselling and cross-selling have long been popular tactics for increasing revenue and customer lifetime value. Through personalization, you can offer additional value to your existing customers that’ll keep them coming back for more and boost your bottom line.
Leave Lasting Impressions With Personalized Video
Personalization is no longer just a bonus in sales — it’s a must-have. Through collecting and analyzing insightful data points about their customers, businesses can tailor their interactions and communications to create a more personalized experience that resonates with customers and drives sales. But even something as simple as a first name adds a personal touch that makes a difference.
And when you combine personalization with video, you’ve got the ultimate combo. Engaging and dynamic, video is becoming the go-to solution for brands looking to create a standout user experience. Our own clients have seen some pretty impressive results, including 3x higher upgrades and 8x higher sales.
If you’re looking to take your personalization game to the next level, reach out to Idomoo for a demo. Our team can show you firsthand how video can transform your customer experience and drive results.
Ready to get started? Let’s talk.
