The marketing industry has moved beyond questioning whether or not to personalise. I think we can all unanimously agree that not personalising your marketing efforts is a pretty serious oversight. (Yet somehow, there’s still 14% of marketers out there not investing in personalisation.)
With rapidly innovating technology, almost any type of media can be personalised. From homepages to email copy, recommendations to loyalty discounts, sales funnels to Personalise Videos, you can personalise the living daylights out of pretty much anything as long as you have the data and it fits your goals.
A lot of you may start to worry when you hear the word “personalisation.” It means more work, more hassle and more room to mess up, right?
Wrong.
Modern technology lets you personalise at scale, so 1:1 digital communications can reach millions of customers. Personalisation is layered in terms of its complexity and capacity, and personalisation efforts can be implemented to varying degrees, depending on what you’re looking to get out of it.
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The excuse we hear from most marketers is that you simply don’t have the time or energy to allocate towards a well-executed personalisation campaign. But what you may be missing is the huge cost of not personalising your efforts. Let’s take a look at the numbers and the real ROI of personalisation.
The Return on Personalisation
Across the customer life cycle, a savvy marketing personalisation strategy delivers unparalleled ROI that makes a major impact on your bottom line. Research has shown that personalisation can:
- Reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%.
- Lift revenues by 5% to 15%.
- Increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10% to 30%.
Additionally, 83% of marketers believe that personalisation is differentiating, and 94% of businesses with extensive personalisation agree that it distinguishes them from their competitors.
Adding Video to the Mix (Plus ROI Numbers)
The numbers get even better when personalisation is combined with the engaging format of video. You can use data-driven video for customer acquisition, like in the video above, or for retention through onboarding, loyalty and even customer service campaigns.
Across industries, companies and organisations have enjoyed dramatic results when they’ve leveraged videos personalised for the individual viewer. Take a look at the numbers:
- One of Europe’s leading insurance companies saw 7x ROI by leveraging video personalisation to reduce churn and increase cross-selling.
- A nonprofit organisation who used Personalised Video in their fundraising campaigns earned over 9x ROI.
- A global gaming brand was able to get 17x more lapsed customers to return with a data-driven video campaign.
- One hospitality brand, for example, saw a 6x increase in revenue just from leveraging Personalised Video in an email campaign!
Put simply, personalisation marketing works: 88% of U.S. marketers reported seeing measurable improvements due to personalisation — with more than half reporting a lift greater than 10%.
Personalisation Is Scalable
Customers now expect a personalised experience and align their brand loyalty to the extent which they feel “known” and valued as a customer.
We hear so often from marketers that they don’t personalise because it takes up too many resources. But that’s not the case. A data-driven video platform allows you to reach customers 1:1 at scale, even when you have millions of customers around the world, like Ubisoft. You’re not creating a separate video for each customer — you use logic and data to determine what each customer will see.
And what is the cost of not personalising? Communicating content that isn’t targeted to your different audiences pretty much means a wasted effort. Two thirds of customers expect their interactions with brands to be personalised.
If you’re not personalising, you’re spending your time and effort on initiatives that, simply put, don’t work. Worse still, generic non-personalised messaging can upset your customers and cause the opposite reaction than you intended: churn.
Personalisation and Customer Retention
If personalising your customer acquisition efforts is important, personalising your retention strategy is nothing short of critical. Your existing customers have a far higher expectation of you than those you have no relationship with. Failing to make them feel respected and valued can be catastrophic for a business.
Remember that not only can attracting a new customer cost up to 7 times as much as retaining one, but those shiny new customers are also the least likely to convert. In retail, for example, we know that first-time shoppers are 9x less likely to convert than a repeat customer.
So what does all this mean for the bottom line? Well, increasing customer retention rates by just 5% could increase profits by anywhere from 25% to 95%.
For a real-world example, take a look at adidas. Personalisation helped them gain a staggering 1,189% increase in sales driven by an email that included Personalised Video. The video featured personal race data and even footage of individual runners in the Boston Marathon — so runners received their own, bespoke (and highly shareable) highlights reel. The campaign also drove over 80,000 visitors to the company’s web properties and immense social buzz.
By focusing on personalisation marketing, adidas was able to achieve a much greater return on investment than if it had sent a generic email to runners.
Personal details can also be leveraged to improve routine communications with your customers, which should be a key goal in any retention strategy. When sending billing information, for example, American Water made sure their message was filled with useful information that was personally relevant for each viewer.
Ultimately, you probably know your current customers far better than you know your potential customers (and if not, there’s something very wrong going on…), so personalising your retention strategy should be far easier than personalising your acquisition strategy. However, it is exactly this wealth of data that can sometimes be overwhelming.
Marketers often find themselves aiming too high in an attempt to leverage all they know about their clients. This may be right for certain use cases, industries or companies but certainly isn’t right for all. Getting personalisation right doesn’t always mean personalising as much as you can.
Sometimes, a better ROI can be achieved by lighter personalisation that leverages easily-accessible data and allows campaigns to launch quickly, rather than through more complex personalisation projects that may never get off the ground.
Boost Revenue With Personalised Upselling and Cross-Selling
Personalisation doesn’t end at acquisition and retention.
According to a recent survey, more than half of consumers (63%) expect personalisation as a standard of service and believe they are recognised as an individual when sent special offers. That means you better be providing tailored recommendations and personalised offers in your upselling strategy.
Strategic upselling and cross-selling techniques can lead to a boost in revenues by selling more to the same customer while also improving the customer’s experience. Take Vodafone’s upgrade campaign below, for example.
Rather than sending out generic advertisements for the new iPhone, the brand created Personalised Videos that addressed each viewer by name and outlined the specific benefits they’d get if they upgraded. It’s a strategy other telecommunication companies are adopting too. Results so far include as much as 3x higher conversions compared to benchmarks.
By effectively personalising the upselling and cross-selling experience, you can make sure that the customer chooses the right product for them. And that means you get a happier customer while driving revenue.
Getting Ahead With Personalisation
Personalisation has redefined marketing and the way we reach customers at every point of the lifecycle. Personalisation may sometimes be tricky to implement, but technology makes it easier. For example, our Next Generation Video Platform lets you launch Personalised Video campaigns in a matter of days, and our clients have seen impressive ROI simply by making personalisation more engaging through the immersive, visual medium of video.
In short, personalisation means happy customers, more efficient and effective use of your marketing dollars and, ultimately, a major boost to your revenue. Across the board personalisation of your marketing efforts should no longer be an option, but an imperative.
If you found this useful and you’d like to learn more about how to make personalisation work for you in this fast-paced and ever-evolving marketing landscape, we invite you to download a free copy of our ”9 Ways to Personalise Video Content” ebook. If you prefer to talk one-on-one with a Personalised Video pro, we’re here for you. Reach out anytime to schedule a call.
