Per­son­al­iza­tion, the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try’s favorite buzz­word, is once again being tout­ed as a key area for brands to up their game in the upcom­ing hol­i­day retail peri­od. And with good rea­son. The lat­est research reveals promis­ing stats about the ben­e­fits of per­son­al­iza­tion – mar­keters who have adopt­ed per­son­al­iza­tion tools are already expe­ri­enc­ing sig­nif­i­cant uplift. How can per­son­al­iza­tion make the dif­fer­ence this hol­i­day sea­son?

Ear­li­er this year, Brand Attrac­tion from Enriched Inter­ac­tion, pub­lished by the CMO Coun­cil, revealed some promis­ing stats, includ­ing:

• 56 per­cent of mar­keters con­sid­er per­son­al­ized con­tent to illic­it high­er response and engage­ment rates.
• 47 per­cent found per­son­al­iza­tion led to more time­ly and rel­e­vant inter­ac­tions.
• And 43 per­cent believe per­son­al­iza­tion con­verts more cus­tomers.

A sim­i­lar study by AutoPi­lot found that con­sumers are four times more like­ly to respond to a mes­sage if it con­tains a per­son­al­ized offer, and also that 49 per­cent of con­sumers expect com­mu­ni­ca­tions that are rel­e­vant to their inter­ests. For those who have start­ed address­ing per­son­al­iza­tion, the results are already start­ing to speak for them­selves. In “Web Per­son­al­iza­tion: How big (and small) com­pa­nies are increas­ing con­ver­sions and boost­ing reten­tion”, pub­lished by VB Insight, ana­lysts found that 87 per­cent of mar­keters using per­son­al­iza­tion have seen a lift of “at least 5 per­cent” on the met­rics they con­sid­er most impor­tant. Even more impres­sive­ly, 39 per­cent of these mar­keters saw increas­es of at least 20 per­cent.

Personalizing For The Holidays

In the hol­i­day peri­od, when the lev­el of con­sumer spend­ing peaks, per­son­al­iza­tion becomes a cru­cial ele­ment of retail suc­cess. Meyar Sheik, CEO of omnichan­nel per­son­al­iza­tion plat­form Cer­tona, shared his insights on the mat­ter:

“Retail­ers can­not escape the lev­el of influ­ence dig­i­tal retail has had on con­sumer behav­ior over the last few years, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. Dur­ing this most crit­i­cal shop­ping peri­od, when con­sumers are inun­dat­ed with end­less prod­uct choic­es, offers, and pro­mo­tions, per­son­al­iza­tion is the dif­fer­en­tia­tor that sets a retail­er apart from the com­pe­ti­tion, and in doing so empow­ers them to reap the ben­e­fits of all their hol­i­day plan­ning.”

Andrew Smith recent­ly posit­ed here on Momen­tol­ogy that “con­tent shock” or “the emerg­ing mar­ket­ing epoch when expo­nen­tial­ly increas­ing vol­umes of con­tent inter­sect our lim­it­ed human capac­i­ty to con­sume it,” is in dan­ger of becom­ing a real­i­ty for con­sumers. Per­haps part of the prob­lem is that a large amount of con­tent is cre­at­ed for mar­ket seg­ments and demo­graph­ics, not for indi­vid­ual users. “By tai­lor­ing inter­ac­tions to each shop­per, it cuts through the noise to engage shop­pers and move them through the pur­chase process, which in today’s world usu­al­ly involves mul­ti­ple chan­nels,” Sheik said.

How Can Personalization Make The Difference?

Per­son­al­iza­tion enables a much greater lev­el of engage­ment with Christ­mas shop­pers, and mar­keters should look for oppor­tu­ni­ties, via tai­lored offers or oth­er­wise, to cap­i­tal­ize at a num­ber of moments. As Sheik said “offers are a fun­da­men­tal ele­ment of hol­i­day plan­ning, and retail­ers should focus on lever­ag­ing indi­vid­ual cus­tomer behav­ior and con­text to deliv­er the right offer at the right time.” Sheik shared three exam­ples of where brands can look to put per­son­al­iza­tion prac­tices in place:

1. Lever­age pre­vi­ous browse behav­ior to per­son­al­ize home page rec­om­men­da­tions.
2. Up-sell­ing and cross-sell­ing with relat­ed prod­ucts and acces­sories on cart pages.
3. Slot­ting rec­om­men­da­tions aligned to offers across pages to increase order con­ver­sion.

Sheik added:

Behav­ioral data should be lever­aged. Either for sim­pli­fy­ing dis­cov­ery, syn­the­siz­ing behav­ior with key­word mod­el­ing to visu­al­ly per­son­al­ize cat­e­gories and rec­om­men­da­tions with­in a type-ahead search drop down menu, or for real-time behav­ioral dri­ven rec­om­men­da­tions that guide shop­pers through each page of your m‑site and web­site, or dynam­i­cal­ly deliv­ered with­in email.

Emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy and plat­forms are open­ing up new oppor­tu­ni­ties to imple­ment data and per­son­al­iza­tion in all ele­ments of con­sumer ecom­merce jour­neys. Ulti­mate­ly, if brands get the align­ment between per­son­al­iza­tion and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence right, they can enhance con­sumers’ online shop­ping expe­ri­ences – and will soon­er reap the ben­e­fits.