PERSONALIZATION TO INCREASE CUSTOMER VALUE: BEST PRACTICE EXAMPLES

As we saw in the previous post, one of the most recommended tools to create customer value around your product offer is to make use of personalization. I will tackle personalization from an online perspective.

In a study by Janrain, it was found that 73% of consumers were fed up with being presented with irrelevant content. According to US marketers, the value of marketing automation goes beyond the top of the funnel. It also improves the performance of almost every other stage of the buyer’s journey. The infographic below, from Marketing Automation:Popular Tools & Trends, explains additional benefits associated with personalized marketing automation and customer relations.

As stated by Jose Perez in his post: How personalized marketing can increase your eCommerce sales, the key to personalized marketing is to create messages and actions tailored to the visitor based on their previous viewing and purchasing behaviour.

Having all this reasons to implement personalization in our company in order to increase customer value, how can we deliver personalized messages to our customers?

-       1. Requesting an email address after the visitor has displayed some intent to buy. It can be used to send them an automated email inviting them to look at the items they have in their shopping cart or email them with top sellers based on their last transaction. According to Experian’s 2013, personalized emails generate on average 6x more revenue than non-personalized email and recommended products automatically generate 46% more revenue than products that we select.

-     2. Personalized product recommendation engines. Amazon is making use of this tool in a very effective way. One option is to show items that have been frequently viewed, considered, or purchased with the one the customer is currently considering, but they also employ a method based on browsing history.

According to a MyBuys study of more than 100 top Internet retailers, recommending products in the shopping cart based on a user’s purchasing or browsing behaviour resulted in a 915% increase in conversion rate.

3. Modify website on real time, based on customer behaviour. This tool, commonly known as behavioural targeting, allows to modify the website to target different types of users (new users, users who have completed more than 3 purchases in the last month, unregistered users, etc). After a certain behaviour has been observed we can modify the website in the following ways (display a pop-up with specific content for specific visitors, a pop-up to capture unregistered user mails, replace existing web content, add or delete items).

The brands that will truly personalize the customer’s experience are those that take a hybrid approach to the above solutions. The combined approach of predictive intelligence and customized customer journeys will definitely increase engagement and drive sales, making brands industry leaders.

BEST WAYS TO DELIVER HIGHER CUSTOMER VALUE

When the customer perceives that a product is of a great value the willingness to pay a price premium increases, and again, we are not just talking about money. After searching several sources I made my own list of the 3 best ways to deliver higher customer value:

1. Personalization

With personalization we mean that the more personalized the experience, the happier the customer. Personalized marketing are messages and actions tailored to the visitor based on their previous viewing and purchasing behaviour. 

According to a study from the University of Texas, with personalization we feel more in control because we are getting something tailored to us, but also personalization can help reduce our perception of information overload. For example, when we know that certain product features have been tailored to us, it provides a higher level of engagement as we will be presented with the characteristics we were looking for. In short, personalization is an effective tool to create a closer relation between the company and the customer, increasing therefore, customer value.

2. Efficient Customer Service

A study by Zendesk found that consumers rank customer service higher than price to stay loyal to a brand. Such a statement should make every company aware of the importance of coming up with consistent multichannel approach, incorporating email, social and a call centre, but being present is just not enough. It is essential to have a proactive approach on every channel and the main objective is solve customer’s problems delivering value. In an ideal situation customers should end the conversation with the customer service team thinking that what started as a problem ended as something beneficial.

Having an efficient customer service is one of the pending subjects for the majority of companies in the market. In a bid to reduce costs many companies make it extremely difficult for customers to speak to someone on the phone and instead force people to get in contact via email or a web form. This damages the overall customer experience, and therefore diminishes customer value.

3. Storytelling

According to Zideate, an online site where marketing concepts are explained, storytelling is a marketing tactic based on the premise that people remember information better when it is told as a story rather than presented as a list of facts. The main reason for it is that, stories evoke an emotional reaction on the audience. Marketing campaigns that arouse an emotion response are more likely to be remembered even when the public is not interested in the product. The perceived customer value can be enhanced by using storytelling as a less obvious form of persuasion. The audience will be willing to pay more for the product as they perceived it of a high value because of the story attached to it.

Conclusion

There are many more ways available to improve customer value. After researching several sources I detected the above forms of delivering a higher customer value as the most used ones. I would like to deepen my knowledge in the following posts, so I will try to find best practice industry examples for each one of them.