Personalise Your Content In Your Digital Marketing Campaigns
Content Personalisation – Ever wonder how some organisations are managing to get ahead in these challenging times? Our market space is rapidly changing as the pandemic has accelerated companies’ digital communications strategies by an average of 6 years and businesses seek new ways of engaging with customers in a digital-first world. Customers today have come to expect digital experiences that are relevant to their needs.
A survey by Accenture showed 91% of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that recognize, remember and provide them with relevant offers and recommendations.
In the B2B space, buyers are bombarded with irrelevant content. Highly tailored, B2C-like experiences can generate significantly higher levels of engagement.
Marketers can achieve this through content personalisation, using a combination of historic data and predictive analytics to engage more meaningfully with audiences wherever they are on the journey. Google has found that customers are 40% more likely to spend more than planned when their user experiences are highly personalised. They’re also actively encouraging organisations to invest in optimising their customer touchpoints by changing the search algorithm by May 2021 to reward websites that provide a greater on-page experience with higher organic rankings.
Simultaneously, there’s been an explosion in marketing data over the past few years. Deriving actionable insights from your data can be a challenge when you have a growing number of sources across an increasingly complex ecosystem of systems and digital marketing tools.
Image Source: Salesforce Insights
With so much data available, only 49% of marketers say they have a completely unified view of potential sources, which makes it challenging to take action.
According to the CMO Council, although 78% of marketers agree that they should lead a data-driven customer strategy, only 7% of them say they can actually deliver real-time, data-driven marketing engagements.
So what data is most useful to deliver the personalised digital experiences customers demand? How can you reach your audiences with consistent and engaging content marketing wherever they are in their digital journey? And how do you prioritise your limited marketing resources to move towards these goals? Read on to find out.
Using data to inform digital marketing
Building a relationship with your customers and earning the loyalty necessary to gather the data you need to personalise content requires a long term approach. The more accurate and relevant data you gather, the more tailored you can become with your outreach.
Simply collecting information from various sources isn’t enough: where the magic happens is when you unify, analyse and generate actionable insights from that data. The most effective marketing strategies are based on continuous experimentation to find the right combination of relevant data points that enable organisations to create content that resonates with target audiences.
Internal data sources should include:
- Web analytics
- Social media analytics
- CRM systems
- Product or platform user analytics
- eCommerce history and shopping patterns
- App engagement
- Email engagement
- Customer surveys
- Advertising and other paid marketing activities
There are many ways to enrich that data by combining it with external sources. This type of information helps you gain a deeper understanding of specific markets, trends, consumers, demographics, geographies and industry sectors that matter for your business.
Examples of external data sources include:
- Keyword research through a tool like Moz or SEMrush
- Google trends
- Business statistics
- Market research
- Industry reports
- Publicly available data from government agencies and non-profit organisations
- Insights from your business partners
Applying marketing data to achieve your goals
Once you’ve listed out all your potential data sources, it can seem rather overwhelming to prioritise which ones to focus on.
A first step should be to map out what’s most critical to reach your specific marketing goals. Other considerations include time to market, budget and potential opportunity impact.
There will always be multiple interactions with your brand prior to any commercial engagement or purchase, making it equally important to understand how to connect the dots between your various data sources to derive insights as customers move along their journeys.
How you use your data will be unique to your organisation and its business goals. Here are a few combinations of sources you can experiment with to achieve specific outcomes:
Common digital marketing goals | How data can help achieve these goals |
Get more qualified inbound leads | Conduct keyword research against your user personas combined with social media analytics and integrate these findings in your content marketing strategy |
Help grow customer lifetime value | Combine product engagement and other customer data to create content that demonstrates the value your product or service delivers (money saved, the outcome achieved, increased growth, etc.) |
Improve paid activity conversion rate | Retarget audiences who have already visited your website with relevant sponsored content when they visit other websites |
Increase email campaign engagement | Tailor email subject lines, content and landing pages to specific user personas based on market research, web analytics and Google trends |
81% of consumers say they expect businesses to both understand them and know the right moment to approach them.
It is therefore critical to use your data to engage your customers with the right message at the right time on the right channel. That’s where content personalisation can step in to help you stand out amongst the noise.
Increasing customer engagement through content personalisation
The average person receives 121 emails a day and interacts with thousands of ads. Incorporating content personalisation throughout your digital touchpoints can increase engagement at every stage and improve loyalty. Customers who feel that your brand genuinely meets their needs are more likely to both make the initial purchase and continue to come back for more.
Recent research has found that:
- Customers are 2.1x more likely to view personalised offers
- 80% of companies report seeing an uplift since implementing personalisation
- Personalisation can increase marketing spend efficiency by up to 30%
Dynamic content personalisation enables marketers to automatically change the content your users see based on how you have segmented your audiences and other database-driven signals.
Customer data points that should be used for audience segmentation will include:
- Gender
- Age
- Location (city, country, region)
- Device (smartphone, tablet, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, etc.)
- Visitor frequency
- Date and time of day
- Referring URL
- Campaign activity (through UTM codes)
- Email and landing page engagement
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) paid advertising engagement (Google Ads / Google Shopping, Facebook ads, Instagram advertising, etc.)
- Purchase history
You can use a combination of these criteria to engage very granular segments, such as:
France + iOS + local holiday + returning visitor = segment A
Australia + Android + local holiday + new visitor = segment B
Benchmarking the impact of content personalisation
Once you’ve segmented your audiences, here are a few ways content personalisation an support your online digital marketing strategy:
Common digital marketing goals | How content personalisation can help |
Accelerate customer acquisition | Deliver tailored offers to specific geographies or provide a targeted audience with content at time-limited intervals |
Increase website revenue influenced by email marketing | Create emails that are highly relevant to customers’ previous experience with the brand (purchase history, frequency of website visits, content consumed) and correspond to their demographic data |
Improve content conversion rates | Vary calls to action based on previous content consumption and CTA engagement, guiding the user through a specific path |
Reduce bounce rates and increase time on page across website | Dynamically display different content based on the user’s device, language, geography and prior engagement such as return rate |
Generating marketing ROI by reaching customers with relevant content
A company that does personalisation very well is Amazon: every one of their customers has a personalised homepage based on their browser history and purchase history, creating a curated shopping experience. 35% of what consumers purchase on Amazon now comes directly from these personalised recommendations. Also, even if there’s no pre-existing customer profile, website visitors around the world are automatically served content in their native language and currency according to their location.
Many other companies are experimenting with how to increase engagement through content personalisation. Zumba Fitness used a personalised video to grab the attention of instructors for their annual convention and saw the click-through rates increase from 5.4% in the control message to 21% in the personalised message – at 50% it was the highest click-to-open rate they had ever achieved.
Less conventional data points can sometimes be the most effective when it comes to creating individual messages that resonate with your customers. Pet retailer Doggyloot gathers data based on their customers’ dogs’ name, breed, size, gender and birthday. Personalising emails based on the size of dog led to click-through rates 410% higher than the company average and dog birthday related promotions contribute up to 16% of their daily total revenue.
People, markets and the world we live in are constantly evolving. Experimenting with personalisation enables you to precisely determine which messages resonate with your audience segments. New emerging technology enables you to optimise content across the customer journey, powered by machine learning with automation that delivers a human approach at scale.
Centralising digital experiences to optimise the customer journey
Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) provide a solution to the fragmented data landscape many marketing and IT teams struggle to integrate in order to effectively deliver personalised content for their customers. Gartner defines a DXP as “an integrated set of core technologies that support the composition, management, delivery and optimization of contextualised digital experiences.”
DXPs are an evolution of the standard content management system (CMS) approach to organising content, data and other media for your digital window to the world. They enable you to:
- Personalise content and user experiences across every digital touchpoint
- Track and analyse user behaviour to inform data-driven decision making
- Conduct experiments to continuously improve engagement rates
- Create and manage omnichannel content, removing the burden of manually creating and distributing content multiple times for different customer touchpoints
- Limit IT complexities with a single “central nervous system” for all internal and external user experiences
- Automate workflows between teams, systems and across the organisation, reducing time spent gathering data so you can focus on deriving insights and driving results…and much more!
In 2019, RedBull Media House consolidated all their web properties, omnichannel and global content onto one platform. As a media company, their main goal was to increase web visitor engagement and content consumption on their channels. By getting their entire marketing and content production team collaborating on the same data through the same interface, they dramatically improved their operational efficiency to produce more targeted content at scale. These newly streamlined processes delivered a consistently engaging, personalised experience for their users across every digital touchpoint.
The results? An uplift of +66% average time on page, +150% page views and +230% video views.
Boost Your B2B Sales By 20%: The Shift Toward Personalisation in Lead Generation
The B2B landscape is constantly evolving, driven by changing buyer expectations and advancements in marketing technology. One trend that has recently proven transformative for businesses is personalised marketing. In a world where corporate decision-makers are bombarded with generic and lacklustre pitches, personalisation has become the key to breaking through the noise and building genuine connections.
When we talk about personalised marketing, we’re going beyond simply using your recipient’s name in an email — we’re talking about tailoring content, offers, and interactions to match the needs and preferences of your target audience.
In this comprehensive blog, we’ll explore the growing trend of personalisation in B2B marketing, why it’s essential for lead generation, how to implement it effectively, and the benefits you can expect.
Delivering a B2C Experience with a B2B Expectation: Why Personalisation Is Important in B2B Marketing
B2B marketing in 2024 is all about understanding who you’re talking to. In a world of information overload, businesses are desperate to cut through the noise. Personalisation is the key to capturing attention, building relationships, and driving results. Let’s explore this in more detail below:
1. Shifting Buyer Expectations
B2B buyers today expect a consumer-like experience when interacting with brands. Research has shown that 73% of B2B buyers refer to work with businesses that offer personalized interactions. This trend stems from the growing influence of B2C experiences, where personalisation is already a standard. B2B decision-makers are more likely to engage with content relevant to their unique challenges and goals.
2. Trust and Credibility
Building trust is mandatory in B2B sales. When a brand takes the time to understand its prospects and deliver tailored solutions, it demonstrates a commitment to meeting their specific needs. This personalisation builds trust, positions your business as a valuable partner, and establishes credibility — three key factors that influence purchase decisions.
3. Improving Lead Quality
Generic, one-size-fits-all marketing can attract leads, but those leads may not be the right fit for your business. Personalisation ensures that your outreach is targeted, which improves lead quality. By speaking directly to potential clients’ pain points and goals, you attract leads more likely to convert and become long-term customers.
How to Implement Personalisation in B2B Lead Generation: Our Top Five Tips
Need a little push to get started? As digital marketing experts, we understand what makes a persuasive and powerful B2B marketing strategy. Our top five tips will help you implement effective personalisation strategies and drive better results:
1. Leverage Data Collection and Analysis
Data is the foundation of any successful personalisation strategy. To effectively tailor your communications, you need to collect and analyse data from multiple sources, such as CRM systems, website behaviour analytics, and social media interactions. This information helps you segment your audience and create detailed customer profiles or buyer personas.
Our tip: Use tools like HubSpot or Salesforce to manage data and gain insights into lead behaviour. These platforms offer integrated data collection and analysis features that make personalising your marketing efforts easier.
2. Segmentation for Targeted Campaigns
Segmenting your audience allows you to group leads based on specific criteria, such as industry, job role, company size, and stage in the buyer’s journey. This allows you to create targeted campaigns that resonate with each group. For example, content aimed at C-level executives should focus on strategic benefits, while content for mid-level managers might emphasise practical solutions.
Our tip: Implement dynamic content in your email marketing or website that changes based on user behaviour and segment to maintain relevance and engagement.
3. Personalised Content Creation
Once you have segmented your audience, the next step is to create content that speaks directly to their needs and interests. This can include personalised email campaigns, case studies relevant to their industry, or webinars addressing their pain points. Personalisation in content can be as simple as addressing the recipient by name or as sophisticated as creating a tailored video message.
Our tip: Invest in content management systems that support personalisation, such as Marketo or HubSpot, to automate content delivery based on user behaviour and preferences.
4. Use AI and Machine Learning
AI and machine learning play a crucial role in automating and scaling personalisation efforts. These technologies can analyse data at scale and predict user behaviour, helping you tailor your communications more effectively. AI-powered chatbots can also engage prospects in personalised conversations, qualify leads, and pass them on to your sales team when they’re ready to take the next step.
Our tip: Implement AI tools like Drift or Conversica to enhance lead engagement and provide personalised interactions around the clock.
5. Personalise Follow-Ups and Nurture Campaigns
Lead nurturing is a critical part of B2B lead generation. Personalising follow-up emails, whether they are reminders for a demo or educational content based on past interactions, can make a significant difference in maintaining engagement. These tailored touchpoints keep your brand top-of-mind and show your prospects that you understand their journey.
Our tip: Schedule personalised follow-ups that reference previous interactions or specific interests expressed by the lead. Using automation tools can ensure these follow-ups are timely and relevant.
Five Benefits of Personalisation in Lead Generation
Lead generation is the heart and soul of any marketing strategy. If you’re looking to blend personalisation with your lead generation efforts, you can look forward to the following five benefits:
1. Higher Engagement Rates
Personalised content leads to higher engagement. Emails with personalised subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened, and tailored web content can boost sales by up to 20%. When prospects feel that your messaging is relevant to them, they are more inclined to interact with your brand.
2. Improved Conversion Rates
For any business, the goal of lead generation is to convert leads into paying customers. Personalised marketing increases conversion rates by addressing specific pain points and presenting tailored solutions. When a lead feels understood, they are more likely to take action, whether that’s signing up for a webinar, scheduling a call or making a purchase.
3. Enhanced Customer Experience
Personalisation improves the overall customer experience by creating more meaningful interactions. B2B buyers appreciate brands that offer content and solutions that align with their needs, and this positive experience can influence their decision-making process. Improved customer experiences also lead to higher retention rates, turning one-time customers into long-term partners.
4. Better ROI
Personalisation can maximise your marketing budget by focusing efforts on the leads most likely to convert. Targeted campaigns yield higher-quality leads, which means that the resources you spend on lead generation yield a better return on investment. In fact, businesses that use personalised marketing can see a 20% increase in sales opportunities compared to those that do not.
5. Strengthened Brand Loyalty
Personalisation fosters stronger connections with your audience, which can lead to enhanced brand loyalty. When businesses show they understand and cater to their client’s unique needs, they build trust and encourage repeat business. This trust is especially important in B2B relationships, where long-term partnerships are often more valuable than one-time transactions.
Overcoming Challenges in Personalised Marketing: What You Need to Know
While personalisation offers many advantages, it also presents challenges, such as data privacy concerns and the complexity of implementing personalisation at scale. Here’s how to tackle them effectively:
- Data Privacy Compliance: Ensure your personalisation strategies comply with data privacy regulations such as GDPR. Implement transparent data policies and obtain consent before collecting or using personal data.
- Integrating Data from Multiple Sources: Use data integration tools to consolidate information from various platforms and create a unified view of your customers.
- Balancing Automation with a Human Touch: While automation is key to scaling personalisation, a human touch remains essential for building trust. Combine AI-driven personalisation with thoughtful human interaction to strike the perfect balance.
- Scalability of Personalised Efforts: Implementing personalisation at scale can be challenging, especially for businesses with a large and diverse customer base. Tailoring content and communication for thousands of leads requires significant resources and careful planning.
Start with a segmented approach to gradually expand personalisation without overwhelming your resources. This allows you to scale efficiently while maintaining quality.
Partner with Experts for Effective Personalised Marketing
While implementing personalisation can be demanding for marketing teams, the benefits far outweigh the challenges. By embracing personalisation, you can foster more meaningful relationships with your customers and achieve better business outcomes.
If you’re looking to give your business a competitive edge, why not partner with the experts?
As a leading Australian digital marketing agency and top Australian SEO agency for proven search results, Online Marketing Gurus crafts data-driven, personalised marketing strategies that resonate with your target audience and help you achieve your business goals. Our dynamic team of over 200 digital marketing professionals is dedicated to helping you attract and convert high-quality leads.
You may also want to review:
How To Get More Leads By Using Artificial Intelligence / AI Lead Generation | A Beginner’s Guide to Lead Generation Strategies The Make An Impact | Australia’s Best Lead Generation Agency
Ready to revolutionise your B2B lead generation and Content Personalisation?
What next?
Once you’ve identified all the different ways you can use data and content personalisation as part of your marketing strategy, how do you best leverage your limited resources for maximum impact? If you find it challenging to get a holistic view of digital marketing performance, you’re not alone: only 5% of CMOs say they are able to confidently determine the bottom-line impact of data-driven engagements, primarily due to fragmented and disconnected systems.
Want to get your hands on a complimentary digital analysis to help you become a truly data-driven marketer? The Altis Impact Analysis provides marketers with a full breakdown of their existing digital marketing approach, along with recommendations on best practices regarding performance, automation, A/B testing, analytics, audience segmentation and personalisation.
Get in touch with the Altis DXP team – an OMG Partner – to find out how our Impact Analysis could help you achieve your digital marketing goals.