Nothing spells out successful business more clearly than high profit margins and happy customers. With so much competition in the business world today, both of these initiatives can actually be pretty difficult, as a company needs to put in a lot of effort to outperform others in the industry. Customers have so many options in the modern marketplace that a business must highly prioritize their customer’s experience from beginning to end of the sales pipeline. There are two main strategies that must take precedence if a company is to succeed: maintaining brand consistency and hyper-personalization of all interactions to the customer’s preferences.
Starting off with brand consistency, there seems to be a lot of confusion for most companies to even define what their brand really is. A brand extends far beyond a mere logo or slogan- it embodies everything about a brand’s public reputation. It can include the value statement of a company, the way they advertise, even how the shopping experience is designed for customers. It is important that every single one of the business channels be aligned with the same voice, whether it is through social media, their website, emails, or even their brand new chatbots.
However, a lot of companies are currently missing this mark. A whopping 90% of businesses are producing content with inconsistent branding. This can be a huge problem for the business, as it can create marketplace confusion with other competitors, slow down the sales cycle, and hinder the ability to generate sales leads. Their bottom line might suffer as well, with 23% of revenues being lost from inconsistent branding. On the other hand, 88% of surveyed businesses had their revenues grow by at least 10% when they focused on providing more consistent branding. Perception is everything in the business world, so it is important to make building a positive one a priority.
Hyper-personalization has emerged as one of the most successful strategies for companies big or small. This term refers to using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to diagnose a consumer’s personal preferences and then deliver a personalized experience when interacting with their brand. AI relies upon data such as browsing and purchasing history to determine which audience segment the consumer might fall into, and then deliver specific ads or product recommendations in turn. There are several stages in the personalization process. Single message email is the first, but a personalization strategy is fully mature when a company is able to create predictive personalization. Each stage corresponds to a higher revenue generation.
90% of consumers have reported finding these personalization methods to be more appealing, meaning they are more likely to engage with and convert to buying from a brand. Several companies have found this research to be proven true. For example, 80% of Netflix users are watching the shows and movies that are being recommended to them by the platform, rather than using the search bar to find entertainment on their own. Amazon has experienced a 35% higher conversion rate on products that they are advertising using hyper-personalized marketing emails. Starbucks has seen a threefold increase in their incremental revenue when offering in-app personalized recommendations for food and drinks.
Some of the world’s biggest brands have found that a blend of these two strategies have resulted in some pretty astounding statistics. easyJet launched a personalized email marketing campaign where they sent out over 12 million emails that were written according to each customer’s history with the brand. In turn, 7.5% of customers made a flight booking in the following 30 days. Cadbury also used hyper-personalization and brand consistency to make specific ad videos for each type of user profile. 90% of viewers watched their personalized videos until the end, which is an incredible feat considering the low attention spans of the general public when it comes to advertising.
One of the most impressive efforts when it comes to hyper-personalization is Spotify’s Spotify Wrapped marketing campaign run at the end of every year. It revolves around releasing each user’s listening stats throughout the calendar year, condensing a list of their favorite artists, songs, and genres into a cohesive summary. Users are then able to post their stats to social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. By generating a lot of social media buzz, Spotify is able to gain new users and ultimately increase their revenues. Other companies stand a lot to gain by learning from these impressive companies.
Source: BrandGuard