This document discusses how real-time personalization can be used to create relevant interactions with individual customers. It describes how marketing has transformed from demographic targeting and one-size-fits-all campaigns to a focus on continuous conversations and coordinated, personalized experiences across every channel. The challenges of real-time personalization are also reviewed. Specific techniques are presented for leveraging customer data through personas and 1:1 messaging to customize content for individuals based on attributes like their stage, product interest, and industry vertical. Examples are provided and it is noted that getting started with real-time personalization can be easy using existing CMS and automation tools.
Customer is in the driving seat, they engage on their own terms, across multiple devices, when anonymousMarketers need to provide a systematic and morecohesive experience for customers across channelConsistency is key – across channels, devices, personas with a Data driven strategy
CMO need to make sure they understand and are taking advantage of modern marketing approaches to align with the behavior of today’s buyer and to stay competitive.In particular, marketers need to make a shift from demographics-based marketing to behavior-based marketing, and from batch & blast tactics to continuous relationship-building and nurturing.
Today’s buyer is everywhere — on the web, on social, on mobile, on email. As isolated channels and siloed information converge, so does the idea of the all-important coordinated buying experience.In 2013, the media was fixated on the idea of the “brand story”, where brands deliver a consistent experience across all channels: paid, owned, earned, and shared. Marketers are charged with coordinating this experience, and to do it well, they need a platform specifically designed to drive engagement across every single channel.
“Campaign” is a militaristic word that focuses on the needs of the company, not the consumer. Too many marketers think of their campaigns like a gumball machine: drop a campaign in, customers are supposed to come out the other side. With this mindset, it’s no wonder these marketers are perplexed when they see the declining effectiveness of their campaigns.Let’s face it: the way consumers live, work, and interact with technology isn’t organized around your campaign schedule. We need to be there for buyers, always and everywhere, conducting a conversation that’s customized to her taste and that perpetuates her journey. This means we’ve moved from “seller is in control” to “buyer is in control” and now to the notion of “iterative response”.Marketing today is about coordinated experiences that, like real conversations, are collaborative. In other words, we don’t just talk at a customer; we give her a reason and an opportunity to respond, and adjust appropriately. And for this — you guessed it — we need a sophisticated marketing platform.
In the past few years, marketers have begun to use behavioral data (e.g. web pages and social insights) to be more relevant and engaging than using demographic targeting alone. It’s no wonder: your demographics tell me what you might be interested in, but your behaviors tell me what you are actually interested in.Today, there is more and more information available to help us be more relevant with customers. We live today in what Robert Scoble and Shel Israel call “The Age of Context”. Our mobile devices broadcast where we are and where we are going. Our connected devices spin off even more information;my Nest thermostat knows what time I come home from work.The Internet of Things means marketers have the opportunity to react instantly and in a more personalized manner than ever before.We have what Forrester calls “an ever-widening aperture of customer context” at our fingertips. The right platform can help us better organize and act on that data to drive the right messages (and respect customer privacy).Age of contextIt’s we Information we have at our fingertipsGeneric website is a disorientated experienceEmail is personalized – click on the websiteCan target individuals based on context, to do it well need the right technology
Although some marketing channels like email are individually targetable and personalized, until recently most were not. This was true even for digital channels such as display ads and PPC – even the website was one-size fits all. Think about it: when you send a customer a relevant email, you don’t expect them to hit reply; you expect them to come to your website. But all too often, that customer would see the same generic website as every other visitor.Today, however, buyers demand hyper-relevant communications that speak to them as individuals. Nearly half of the online adults globally are always addressable, and they expect marketers to meet their specific needs — always and everywhere — according to Forrester’s 2013 Interactive Marketing Predictions report.Fortunately, we can now target individuals, based on context and affinity, with more and more channels. In fact, the technology exists to customize what every user sees on pretty much every channel. Today, your website can be as personalized as your email. Even TV is becoming individually addressable: Millennials today spend their entertainment time online and only 44% of their TV watching time actually happens on a television.But to tell a consistent, personalized story across all channels — the ones that exist now and the untold dozens that will continue to pop up from here on out (digital billboards that react as you walk by?) — we need a technology platform that brings it all together.
With email, we know who the person is and able to personalize, now we need to do with web and mobile3 stepsIdentify – Know who is the person (with big data can be more precise in identifying)Customize – experience with relevant content/message/CTASpeed – has to happen in real-time
“71% say that audience relevancy is the main ingredient for content success.” (B2B content marketing trends)67% say content targeted to their job function is more valuable“76% of B2B buyers surveyed prefer different content at each stage of their research process. (Marketing Profs)“84% of marketers say they plan on developing a process to map rich media content assets to buyer journey stage.” (Aberdeen)“59% of companies said they do not have the ability to predict what customers want and deliver those needs.” (Teletech)30% of marketers don’t categorize content by buying stage. (B2B content marketing trends)
Give a visitor who only made it halfway through the check-out process an opportunity to finish that transaction, or upping the ante with a better offer.For companies with longer sales cycles, you might share educational thought leadership with early stage prospects; visitors who are actively engaged in a sales cycle could be shown messages about why your company is a safe choice. With 1:1 Messaging, you can customize who the person is, the exact preferences, lead score, history, relationship with company, stage of sales cycle, reinforce last email seen.1:1 message includes the persona and the behavior:On an account based level if HP come onto your website, this is relevant, but if they go to your careers page (behavior) less relevantSame with needing to know persona and behavior, someone buying babies clothes is not necessary a Mom female mid-age persona, they could be buying a gift, a male buying it.
Marketo Real-Time Personalization is the first and only marketing application that can help you unify conversations across channels and generate personalized digital experiences for every individual customer and prospect. Creating a truly coordinated experience—regardless of whether you send the message to the customer, or the customer comes to you.