Here’s What Effective Personalization Across the Buyer’s Journey Looks Like

How many of us can say we interact with our customers, with personalized communication, throughout the entire customer journey?

As the Director of Lifecycle Marketing at FullContact, I can tell you firsthand — creating a one-to-one relationship with a customer or prospect has moved beyond the occasional birthday email. Using first-party data isn’t enough to complete a full picture of your customer in a way that can help you create a meaningful relationship with them.

Ironically, 60% of marketers struggle to personalize content in real-time, yet 77% believe real-time personalization is crucial. Are you able to provide value to your customers before and after their transactions? Without understanding their needs through each part of the funnel, you won’t be able to position yourself as a viable solution to their problems.

With accurate, real-time audience data insights, you’re communicating with customers on a one-to-one level throughout every step of the funnel. Increasing personalization in more channels can increase overall consumer spending by  500%.

But for many organizations, customer insights are trapped in different platforms across various departments. This is a problem that marketers know all too well with more than half of marketers (55%) saying they don’t have sufficient data and insights to drive effective personalization, while 69% say their customer data is stored in three or more systems.

A true identity graph, one that relies on contact data fragments that are connected and constantly updated, can help marketers personalize their efforts at scale. Getting real-time updates to first-party data and supplemental publicly available data to round out the affinities, interests, topics, and relevant data points for your customers help create actually actionable insights. In fact, it can enable truly personalized communications throughout the entire customer journey.

So how does this work?

Awareness or It’s nice to meet you, [Name]!

Using PR and social media, print ads, radio, TV, or word of mouth introduces potential customers to your brand. With audience data insights, you can get a glimpse into what publications your ideal customers are consuming. These insights can help you decide where to spend your marketing dollars inside niche markets with expert targeting.

You can leverage the thought leaders in your organization to provide great content, advice, and opinions to further awareness of your brand. Drift is a company who does this well, using video on their personal LinkedIn pages and presenting at conferences with bold presentation titles that give the audience a great sense of both their brand and their product offering.

Interest or [Name], I know how to help you.

Once people are familiar with your brand, you can provide even more targeted messaging that addresses their pain points. Use AI tools or personal landing page experiences like Intellimize to show relevant content to the people who visit your website. Serve valuable social or digital ads through retargeting for people who have shown interest in particular pages on your website. Segment your email lists using interests, affinities, or job title data to create nurture streams.

Consideration or [Name], here are the results you can expect using my product/service/solution

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then metrics tell an entire story. Having customer stories that show tangible results in multiple verticals, will help potential customers identify just how much you can grow their business. Use insights like job title and other firmographic data to engage with prospects in your list who can identify with your success stories. Testimonials, customer reviews, and use cases can help paint the picture for prospects as well and prove your solution works. 

Purchase or A million thanks, [Name]!

At the time of purchase, transactional data is captured and becomes part of the complete customer profile for an individual. Whether you take advantage of a special offer, a discount from a friend, or visited a brick and mortar store — this information can be used to engage with your customer. Thank you emails, add-on packages or products, or special offers to upgrade can all be informed with transactional data.

Retention or [Name], are you using our product in this way too?

After the purchase, your customer still needs support. How-to videos, access to a community forum, and support articles are all great ways to show your customer you want them to get the most of your product. When you continue communicating with your customer, you’re showing them you want them to succeed, even after you’ve made the sale. Use audience data insights to share other ways they could be using their product or invite them to engage with other customers who are using your product in new and different ways.

Advocacy or [Name], share this code with your friends to get 20% off!

Social data is a great way to figure out the influence of your customers and who you could turn into a brand advocate. Influencer marketing has become a big buzzword for marketing campaigns that look to engage a niche market. However, even though some influencers have a better reach, they may not be a great advocate for your brand. Considering that 92% of consumers turn to people they know for referrals above any other source, for an authentic ambassador, you can look inside your current database. Social data from identity resolution can show you the number of followers and reach your individual customers have. You can invite them to help promote your brand on their social networks, blogs, or newsletters.

A single customer view to personalize, segment, and message to customers on a one-to-one level is an attainable strategy for marketing teams. Engaging with an identity resolution provider and an easy-to-integrate dataset can enable informed messaging throughout the entire customer journey.

Do you find yourself constantly choosing between large-scale communications and personalized campaigns? It doesn’t have to be this way. You can get the best of both worlds.

By leveraging the power of identity resolution, you’ll gain a cohesive picture of clients and prospects (even though they may interact with your brand from multiple devices throughout a buying cycle). Then, armed with this data, you’ll be able to create customized communications at any scale.

Watch our webinar, “Identity Resolution for Personalization at Scale”