Dione feels customers continue to evolve and that they’re now expecting much better experiences from brands. Organisations who deliver and develop strategies that help attract, engage and keep customers loyal, are going to be the ones who remain competitive in the long run.
AI and personalisation play a part in that strategy and improve the experience by meeting customer expectations. Brands who, on the other hand, don’t meet customer expectations by recognising the benefits of these tools, will find themselves falling behind or, worst-case scenario, going into receivership.
Everyone’s talking about AI right now, but what are the benefits? For one, AI helps us analyse large volumes of data and identify meaningful patterns at a much faster pace. In doing so, it gives us the capability of tailoring content and products to audience needs, by changing in real time and adapting to the user.
Another example is a recommendation algorithm that highlights bestsellers and what's trending. These types of strategies work well across the full sales cycle and from a customer perspective because it results in the customer finding what they're looking for or being inspired to purchase additional products. Because of how quick and easy that journey is for the customer, it's more likely the brand will achieve a sale.
At Transform, we’ve applied a similar approach with our automotive clients, by showing customers owning a particular model of car what accessories other customers with the same model have purchased. That, in itself, adds to the customer experience whilst also helping the brand achieve more sales in the long run.
Hyper-personalisation is all about combining data sets. This often means linking behavioural data to transactional and geodemographic data, because things like a customer’s dwelling, household composition, and income all help brands have a much deeper understanding of that person. These types of insights allow organisations to delve deeper into what their customers’ preferences are, thereby creating content with a voice that truly speaks to that individual's needs and desires.
By catering your communication specifically, hyper-personalisation allows business to be even more relevant and timely whilst hitting their objectives of attracting new audiences, keeping the existing one and maximizing opportunities. Data is the currency that allows you to be able to do that.
It’s another tool that can help brands understand customer behaviour. All the potential and future value of that customer - from a lifetime value perspective as well as predicted future order value -allows you to leverage insights to fully tailor and prioritise plans and campaigns around a customer’s spending habits. From a customer perspective, it means communication at the right time, about the right thing. From a brand perspective, it means continuously attracting, keeping and growing a customer base.
As an example, for one of our automotive clients Transform built a repurchase model which helped recognise who was in market, and what they were in market for, based on their previous behaviours. This model allowed us to direct them down that sales funnel and into the dealerships for hot leads, whilst also segmenting the datapool into warm and colder leads to be nurtured through CRM. We were then able to put it into a campaign where we've got a treatment versus a non-treatment control where certain individuals don't receive the targeted campaign. That’s how we were able to see uplift and prove the value of sending that CRM form to a particular individual at a particular time versus not doing so.
Instead of doing multiple CRM campaigns, how do we serve one-to-one marketing using particular data points to add that personal touch? With dynamic content you can fill content with info(e.g. for automotive campaigns, their proximity to a dealership) that's relevant to the recipients. This allows you to elevate your marketing efforts, tailoring it to your customers’ preferences and creating effortless personalised experiences without maximum resource or effort to deliver.
Dynamic content is essentially about building one email campaign but having multiple versions of it. If one customer is interested in a red vehicle and another in white, it allows the company to respond to that; thereby making each recipient feel as though a newsletter is fully personalised to their desires. In this way, hyper-personalisation and dynamic content often go hand in hand.
Customers crave tailored experiences; they want that one-to-one and to feel like brands understand who they are and what they desire. To get ahead companies must be able to embrace the benefits of all of these tools - like AI, predictive analytics, hyper-personalisation and dynamic content - to solidify customer connection.
If you're starting out on your AI journey and want some more hands-on advice on where to start to avoid some of the pitfalls we’ve discussed above, we have just the thing. On the 30th April, we’re running our half-day Transform Academy “AI Fundamentals 101”, to share an overview of our experience in running AI projects, bust some myths and give some practical, interactive insight into creating AI use cases for your business. For more details on what you can expect from the session, click here.
To allow attendees to actively participate in this F2F workshop, spaces are strictly limited - if you'd like to join us or to suggest someone from your team, email us at transformation@transformUK.com.
