History Of Personalization:

Back in the day companies required salespeople to interact with their customer’s wants, needs, interests, and beliefs.

The environment has changed drastically over the years.

Employing people is too expensive, and it does not make sense because the digital generation wants to interact with your company through digital channels.

Employing people to scale is not a practical business model anymore.

So the million-dollar question is, "How can we personalize customer experiences that scale?"

Well, machine learning is the best answer.

The Present & Future Of Personalization:

Personalization does not have to stop with simple recommendations either like the example of Netflix or Amazon, it can go much further!

At the beginning of the internet age, there was no personalization, everybody got the same information on the webpage.

Slowly we moved the templates where the blanks could be filled in at the right spots, like your name or other personal details making it appear like personalization.

In the next phase, we were able to identify segments of customers who behaved like you and then made offers that are similar to people in the group.

We then moved to use loyalty cards, where the customers swipe their cards so that the company can understand their buying patterns and offer customized products in response to that.

When mobile phones become common, we used location and other data to offer personalized ads to customers to entice them to shop at a neighborhood store or eat at a local restaurant.

Finally, we have come to a point of using face recognition to unlock phones.

We could potentially use computer vision to analyze all the pictures that you’ve taken on your mobile phone, classify them, and then create categories a complete profile of you that even you may not be aware of.

Computer vision and machine learning might conclude that you like to spend time with your family, you have a sweet tooth, and you like bicycles, because the pictures on your phone capture that information, or the AI system might conclude that you like to watch movies, play soccer.

Okay, so now as I mentioned it is time for my insights on personalization!

My Insights:

Data Is Never Enough: Never hesitate to collect data and be sure to be relentless in analyzing and reading into the numbers and projections. It all starts and ends with data. You need the data to understand your audience’s behavior better. It will even help you create a data-driven hypothesis, which can further be A/B tested to optimize for the greatest results.

Team Work Makes The Dream Work: Do not shy out on involving as many people as you can to analyze the data. Everyone perceives data differently, so be sure to make the most of the resources available. Even sharing your finding verbally and taking another opinion can be the factor that makes it or breaks it.

Generate Customer Personas: I cannot emphasize this enough, “Understanding Your Customer Is Everything!”. Day-by-day customers are looking for an all-digital platform to be smarter and recommend to them what they like to see.

"91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them." - Accenture

So put your heart and soul into humbly studying and understanding your customer’s needs.

Map Out Journeys: This is another extremely crucial aspect of personalization. To succeed in personalization, once you have a thorough understanding of your audience, you have to take a deep dive into the psychology of where, how, and why you communicate with them. Set your objectives as per your KPIs at that moment. Whether it be for creating awareness, building interest, invoking consideration, or making a decision, be extremely scientific in your approach.

Stalk Your Prospect Before Outreach: Training your sales team to go through all of your prospect’s social media profiles and having humanized understanding of their personality and interest, can help draft more personalized outreach emails or messages. Stop being robotic!

Conclusion:

Creating a digital human touch along with a blend of artificial intelligence can play a huge role in optimizing the customer experience. The next time you’re considering weaving one of these techniques into your marketing strategy, keep in mind the goal of each, and at what stage of the customer journey it will be most effective.

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