Perfecting Your Personalization Strategy

I walked into the perfect restaurant. In addition to their standard menu, they allow you to pick your meat(s), your vegetables, your condiments, & how you want it – all to try and please you. They have impeccable service and they actually check up on you at least three times during every meal.

First it is your server, next it is the manager, then it is back to your server before they bring you your check. As usual, it was a wonderful dining experience, superb food, excellent service and tons of variety.

They stay busy, they have a lot of repeat business, & a lot of word of mouth marketing. Their personalized touch offers lots of lessons here for online marketers.

Typically when I first sign up for emails from a company there’s a sense of curiosity about the offers I’ll receive, the more targeted and personalized they become, the more I like it. I love for the company to personalize, to interact regularly and dive deeper through surveys.

You can kick it up a notch by making offers relevant to the consumers browsing and purchases – tie the offers to your web analytics so you can see what categories people are visiting on your site. The more a consumer clicks, the more you know, add purchase data to the mix, and package all of this to create a very personalized approach to email marketing.

There are other companies are on the opposite end of the spectrum, I signed up for emails from a coffee company after purchasing three of their blends. I filled out the paper survey (included in the shipment) telling them which of the blends I liked and didn’t. Unfortunately, I don’t think the results were incorporated into their marketing mix, because I still get the same emails targeting their top blend (which I liked the least)… why ask if you aren’t going to use the information?

So the three things to think about when you think personalization – first, make sure you are grateful your consumer has come to you – thank them for the purchase, & learn as much as you can about them. Next, apply this learning to personalize what you are sending them. Third – be tactful as you ask them for referrals, check up on the consumer – see if they are happy with what you have provided. Do this throughout the lifecycle of their purchase and they will appreciate it. Now, don’t be bashful about asking them for that referral on Facebook.