Marketers are now living in a world where personalization and convenience are required in order to turn a website visitor into a brand enthusiast.
In fact, 86% of consumers say that personalization impacts whether or not they make a purchase, according to CMO.com. From bricks-and-mortar retailers to e-commerce giants to independent local stores, there’s no denying that personalized engagement can play a huge role in helping marketing teams reach their campaign goals.
Marketers are well aware of the need for personalization. Adobe reports that more than 82% of marketers view personalization as a crucial element to e-mail communication. Yet many are struggling to figure out how to make an otherwise automated process more personal and engaging, relying on static segments and basic demographics. There is a clear disconnect in the digital data sea of social media identities, newsletters, customer information, purchase orders, social shares, product reviews and customer service requests. With many companies storing this information in inaccessible data silos, this disconnect is keeping brands from engaging with their customers on a more personal level.
Simple demographics, such as location, birthday or gender, offer only a one-dimensional view and don’t provide insight into customer behavior. Layering in purchase history helps to create a more complete view, but this two-dimensional view still doesn’t paint a full picture of preferences, needs and opportunities. Frequency of visits, purchase volume, social shares, product reviews, returns and calls to customer service are gathered and analyzed by company departments individually, but brands completely overlook the need to combine this information. Such integration is vital to creating a 360-degree view of your audience. In order to drive meaningful, more personalized marketing campaigns, CMOs need to break down internal department silos that are perpetuating this sea of data fragmentation and create real-time, actionable consumer segments from that unified data to simplify the personalization process. Here’s how.
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Stefan Koenig is cofounder and CEO of Hull, a digital marketing software company based in Atlanta.