Ninety-four percent of businesses state that personalization is critical to their current and future success according to the Realities of Online Personalisation study from Econsultancy and Monetate.
While there is little doubt that personalization will be one of 2015's hottest topics, it is important that Web professionals use this tactic holistically - from implementing technologies that will create more relevant website experiences for site visitors to crafting personalized marketing experiences for every stage of the customer journey. For help with the latter, read below to discover three fail-proof personalized marketing tactics (and the providers who offer the services) that brands should consider trying this year:
One way marketers can create a personalized experience for prospects at every stage of the customer journey is with personalized video. SundaySky offers a SmartVideo solution that does just that. With SmartVideo, brands can deliver personalized, real-time video experiences to better engage customers.
"Leading advertisers are using SmartVideo to reach prospective customers in order to maximize purchases and drive incremental revenue throughout the acquisition cycle," said Jim Dicso, chief revenue officer for SundaySky. "These marketers are using their own high-quality data to inform and personalize the video marketing experience, in real time and at scale. As a result, the business achieves performance advertising objectives and brand engagement by delivering the right SmartVideo story to the right customer at the right moment in time."
It is important to note that SundaySky also came out with a self-service solution in 2014, dubbed the SmartVideo lifecycle marketing platform. With this platform, marketers can create engaging and personalized videos for a customer's lifecycle through a self-service SmartVideo console.
Mobile app usage soared in 2014, with a report from Flurry revealing that 86 percent of the time spent on mobile devices is spent using apps. To get a better return on investment from apps, however, marketers may want to consider leveraging a solution like URX to better connect content across devices.
With URX, companies can partner with apps to show relevant advertisements within their own app or to advertise their app to relevant consumers in other apps. For example, say a customer books a trip to New York through a travel app. That travel app could partner with an event ticket app to show an advertisement for an upcoming Beyoncé concert in New York. If the consumer clicks that ad, URX will use deep linking to direct the consumer to the place in the event app where they can purchase the tickets. On the other hand, if the consumer doesn't have the event app downloaded, URX will take the user to the app store where they can download the app and then direct them to the place in the app where they can purchase the tickets.
According to URX CEO John Milinovich, the company uses a variety of factors to make sure native advertisements are as relevant as possible within apps, including the types of apps a consumer has downloaded on his or her mobile device, the date and time, the consumer's geographical location and the context of the app that the consumer is using. While all of these factors are important in delivering relevant ads, the context of the app the consumer is using is particularly significant. For example, delivering an ad for a gaming app to a consumer who is reading an article about travelling to Hawaii just because the consumer has other games downloaded on his mobile device wouldn't provide the most relevant experience. Rather, an ad for purchasing plane tickets would be a better choice for this situation, which is why context is such an important personalization factor.
Aside from delivering personalized videos and mobile ads, marketers can also deliver personalized messages to the inbox. In fact, an Experian Marketing Services' study reveals that personalized messages generate six times the revenue per email than non-personalized messages.
One way merchants can get more personal within the inbox is by leveraging technology solutions like EA Rainmaker, which enables marketers to deliver triggered emails based on weather conditions. With this technology, marketers can create triggers that automatically deploy emails to customers in areas where pre-defined weather conditions are going to take place. For instance, a merchant can set up a campaign for a "snow boot sale" to deploy in Chicago for the first snow of the season. When this message is delivered to consumers it is more likely to stand out in the inbox because it is personalized based on the consumer's specific location and weather pattern.