Personalisation: Seeking simplicity
There is an understandable dread that fills marketers when faced with the creation of 1-1 relevant customer experiences, especially when a customer base might comprise millions of individuals at various stages of life and relationship with a brand
Personalisation at scale is genuinely an imposing challenge
Consider the customer base of a retailer, bank, utility, media provider or insurer; diversity is rich across demographic measures with services being delivered at a relatively universal level - Imagine this diversity as a relatively static latitudinal dimension with customers holding these traits more or less permanently. So far so complex. Further, we need to consider the lifetime evolution of customer relationships over time which have a longitudinal character, shifting and altering. These two dimensions together provide a seemingly endless set of scenarios to anticipate and respond to with relevant experiences.
Where can simplicity be found in delivering personalisation at scale?
Two dynamics have proven particularly effective in our work to date to focus efforts on personalisation which delivers exponential results without overwhelming our resources:
- Identifying high volume binary experiences - Where large groups of customers should only receive one of two (sometimes slightly more) messages
- Identifying high value engagements, often negative stages or 'torch-points' for customers where enhanced relevance leads to more effective resolution
Intuitively you are likely to know business areas which fall into the above categories and some light business cases will help support allocating resources. Personalisation as a raw concept is overwhelming but these simple rules enable the concentration of attention and activity.
Examples of these experiences by category are:
- Customer vs. Prospect treatments (high volume binary experiences)
- Product or product category recommendations (high volume binary experiences)
- Contact us or customer service torch-points (high value engagements)
- Retention or welcome back programmes (high volume binary experiences)
- On-boarding programmes (high value engagements)
- Prospecting or cross/up sell campaigns (high volume binary experiences)
- Post-purchase and delivery/installation (high value engagements)
Where have you explored similar or differing personalised experiences? It would be great to hear of how others are attacking this subject and further approaches to focussing resources on value, results and outcomes.
All opinions are my own.
I think this is very helpful, I was looking on how some simple combinations would make the biggest impact on homepage, pricing and features and I see that with some basic rules and selecting 2-3 personas and 2 buying stages we can create a large variety of personalized pages with little effort. Thank you!
Love this topic, and one I have often pondered in the past. I agree with your approach and would add: - identifying high volume / low effort targeted experiences. (Eg. email triggers based on browsing or other behaviors are relevant across categories and easy to deploy. I’m also a fan of recommender systems for this reason. Therefore, honing in on the most scalable vehicles & targeting rules and communicating to internal stakeholders which they should leverage for best results) - identifying growth categories that would benefit from a more targeted experience. As companies grow by expanding their offering into new areas, personalisation programs and technology can play a key role in delivering more relevant experiences for customers outside of the existing offering