Gartner predicts that organizations that excel in personalisation will outsell companies that don’t by 20%.
Personalisation in marketing has been around for quite some time now. It began with replacing “Hello Customer” with “Hello Ritu”, but it has come such a long way that it is not called personalisation anymore, the term is Hyper Personalisation now.
What is hyper personalisation?
Now, brands send me marketing messages that are specially crafted for me. They come as emails during weekends when I check my mailbox, and as app push notifications during the lunch hour, because that is when I check the notifications on phone. The brand knows what kind of clothes I like and sends me recommendations that suit my taste. During the first week of the month, I get reminders about stocking up on groceries that I might have run out of, based on my past purchases. The brand knows me well, and shows that it cares.
This is hyper personalisation.
Hyper-personalisation is taking traditional personalisation several steps ahead. Hyper personalised marketing uses all forms of customer information – demographic and profile data, browsing patterns, geographic location, purchasing, and real-time behavioural data across multiple channels and touch-points, derives insights, and tailors the marketing content, products, and services to fit each and every customer’s wants and needs.
Why is hyper personalisation so important today?
81% of consumers want brands to understand them better and know when and when not to approach them.
Until a couple of years ago, demographics and behavioural-data based segmentation was the most capable tool that enabled marketers like you to go beyond cookie-cutter marketing and deliver personalised treatment to their users.
But today’s customers are tech-savvy and better informed than ever before. Overwhelmed with the marketing clutter, almost always distracted, and pressed for time, they expect brands to convey exactly the message they want or need, each time they are sent a marketing communication. And, every time your content fails to resonate with your user, you miss an opportunity to engage him, provide a bad customer experience, and hence put your relationship in danger.
In other words, what really matters for today’s customers is, a hyper-personalised customer experience. As per cmo.com, 42% percent of consumers they would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience, and 52% would pay more for a speedy and efficient customer experience.
How can you deliver hyper personalised customer experiences?
In the most simple words, if you know “what has happened”, and identify patterns in the behaviour, you can predict “what will happen” and then decide “what should be done” to get the desired outcomes. In other words, you can deliver hyper personalised customer experiences through Artificial Intelligence (AI) marketing.
AI and Machine Learning is all about understanding those patterns from data, derive meaningful insights, and create personas. You can also learn to deliver hyper-relevant, hyper-personalised content experiences to these personas.
For example, with basic personalisation, you would send an email by using the customer’s name in the subject line, but powered with AI-based insights, you can send a hyper-personalised email about an offer based on an item he recently browsed on your website. You can also optimise the subject line and sending time to increase the chances of response.
How does AI-enabled hyper personalisation work?
Customer data is the fuel for AI. Just like a child learns from instructions and observation, and starts differentiating between right and wrong by deducing references from the past, AI engine feeds on the historical customer data and trains itself to understand and predict the customer behaviour.
Based on the profile data, social interactions, and behavioural data of the customer, AI derives patterns – why he/she responded to an offer, why/when he clicked an email or SMS, his preferences, likes and dislikes. You can then base your marketing efforts on these insights. Hence, data is at the centre of any AI-based marketing strategy, and only when the data is connected, pulled from across channels, devices, and data sources, can you start to extract real value of AI-based personalisation.
Source: Statista
To be able to have a truly unified view of the customer, it is crucial to integrate all technologies and platforms that collect customer data. The more tightly the systems are connected, the more effective will your AI system be.
How does AI enable hyper personalisation?
AI leverages your customer data to group them precisely into granular segments, as precise as a segment of one. Once you have such fine target base, you can begin to create personalised content, deliver it in a targeted way, and help drive engagement. The following are some ways in which AI enables hyper personalisation:
- Predictive MarketingOne of the most important aspects of hyper personalised marketing is the ability to understand what the customer is likely to do next. This empowers you to mould your marketing strategy to achieve the maximum results.AI-based analysis (say RFM), can tell you if the customer is about to churn, is going to make a purchase, or needs a little nudge to move down the funnel. These powerful insights enable you to stay a step ahead and deliver a relevant experience.Netflix’s long list of suggested movies and TV shows is a fantastic example of a personalized user experience, which is powered by AI. Check out this list of 10 amazing Predictive Customer Experience Outcomes Powered by AI.
- Tailor-made contextual contentHyper personalisation is all about enhancing opportunities to customise the marketing that fits the needs and preferences of your users, and target them at the right point in their journey.With AI insights and tools, you can utilise the behavioural and real-time customer data to produce highly contextual and relevant communication. For instance, AI can analyse factors like customer demographics, current geographic location, the time of the most frequent purchases, and their preferences in communicating with businesses, etc. and provide you with a better picture of how to communicate with them.While content is extremely important, it is useless if it doesn’t have any context. In other words, hyper-personalization helps content marketers become more proactive about communicating with their target customers because their content will be much more contextually relevant.
- Personalised and real-time customer supportToday’s customers look for instant response and resolutions to their problems. Real-time customer support is the biggest thing customers look for in a good personalised digital experience.With the increasing customer base and their expectations, it is not possible to offer this kind of service at scale. And enter AI chatbots!This automated tool gives the impression of talking to a real customer service executive in real time, answers basic questions, tracks and fulfils orders and helps in solving simple issues.All your users can have their own personal assistant who can remember and utilise the implicit and explicit customer information from earlier conversations, and thus learn their individual preferences and situations.Gartner predicts that by 2020, the average person will have more conversations with chatbots, than with their spouse. While this can be heartening and concerning at the same time, the fact remains that chatbots are the thing now.
- Accurate Attribution“Most marketers really use reporting, not true attribution,” says Matt Scharf, Integrated Marketing Analytics at Adobe.To assess the performance of your efforts, attribution is very important. Understanding the complete purchase path of the customers, knowing which marketing channels are driving revenue, what kinds of content drive conversion, engagement and retention, is crucial as well as challenging.With so much customer data flowing in from multiple sources, it is humanly impossible to connect all the dots. This is where modern AI attribution models come in. Using AI services to go beyond traditional attribution methods, you can determine how effective each touch-point is at driving the business KPIs, and then calibrate your marketing strategy in hyper-personalised ways. If you know what works for whom, you can treat each user accordingly.
Also Read: Smartech Bolsters its AI-Powered Personalisation Solution to Help Digital Brands Boost Conversions by Upto 13%
Conclusion
AI, undoubtedly has immense potential to drive engagement and conversions for your brand. It is AI-driven hyper personalisation only which will bridge the gap between physical and digital worlds, and separate successful businesses from failures.
To summarise, the whole game revolves around getting a diligent grip over your data, embrace the capabilities AI-based data analysis brings along, apply them and keep adapting yourself continuously. Staying relevant is the key to long-lasting success.
Do you want to know how Smartech’s AI-driven cross-channel marketing automation and analytics platform can help you deliver high-quality customer experience through hyper personalisation? Get in touch with us today!
