Sebastien is the VP Sales North America of Wedia, a provider of an Enterprise Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution.
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In a world where the average American sees 4,000 to 10,000 ads a day, how can brands stand out from a particularly packed crowd and build customer loyalty?
When Facebook seems to know about conversations you’ve had earlier in the day or when Netflix knows exactly what kind of film you’d be in the mood for tonight, you might feel a bit like Big Brother is watching you. In reality, these are clever examples of brands that have taken the time to invest in personalized content in order to acutely and intelligently create a relationship with their customers.
What is personalized content?
Personalized content is a way of tailoring digital content to an individual through the use of data that a company has gathered about them. This could be in relation to their buying habits, content consumption or interests.
Not yet invested in personalized content? It’s time! In one Adobe survey, 42% of consumers reported that seeing personalized content from a business was “somewhat” or “very important” to them. What’s more, research from Epsilon showed that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience.
Data is the key to personalizing your content.
Brands and companies now have limited time to reel in their customers. The average Netflix user is said to only browse the site for a couple of minutes before deciding whether or not they’re going to watch something. Netflix as such needs to draw them in, and fast. With more than 76,000 micro-genres integrated into the site, Netflix has a pretty good idea of what kind of thing you might be looking for based on what you’ve previously watched and what you’ve searched for.
To add to this, Netflix is able to use data to create the perfect TV show. When they launched “Stranger Things” in 2016, Netflix invested $6 million in each episode, despite the fact that the cast was mainly made up of unknown actors. Why were they so confident? Because viewer data had helped them build the look and feel of the show, helping to make it one of the most popular Netflix series.
Understand your audience.
If you’re going to commit to sending highly personalized content to your audience, take the time to understand exactly who they are. This is where you must make like Netflix and invest in data and analytics.
Some key data areas to focus on include:
• Demographic data. Age, location, marital status and education level can all be key factors when it comes to targeting your audience.
• Contextual data. Consider device or browser type; should you be more mobile or computer-focused?
• Behavioral data (from your site). pages visited, time spent on a page, past purchases. This data will help you follow up with your audience after they’ve left your site through emails or push notifications.
Build a clear picture of your audience.
Collecting key data about your audience, their interests and how they interact on your website through your newsletters or on your mobile app is going to help you build up a picture of your customer. Did they, for example, spend time browsing a selection of green coats only to not complete a purchase through your website? Why not think about putting in place actions like British retailer ASOS, where the website remembers your size and offers you discounts related to your profile? These small, personalized touches to your website can be a crucial deciding factor for consumers whether they hit “buy” or not.
How To Manage Content Creation
Adidas is a brand that has cleverly invested in personalized content. By integrating Salesforce into its site, its homepage changes for each user in terms of copy, images and videos. This personalization extends to their app, which provides users with an exclusive shopping experience based on their style preferences and behavior on the app.
Following the Adidas example, how you manage your content is going to be crucial for how it is distributed to your customers. Tools such as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform can help in not only storing content but organizing, tagging and distributing it. As a disclosure, my company Wedia is one provider of such solutions.
For companies with multiple assets, across different brands and locations, a DAM can be particularly useful in segmenting content for specific audiences, which can then be distributed in a personalized manner. With the ability to integrate specific software such as a Product Information Management (PIM) or Content Management (CMS), a strong DAM solution becomes a “Single Source of Truth” and powers how your content can be used across different geographies and within different, personalized campaigns.
The Personal Touch For Today’s Customer
As we move away from a single approach to content, it is time to get to know your customer. In this way, you can know how to approach them based on their typical shopping behaviors on your channels and deliver personalized content to them, whether in the form of retargeted ads, product recommendations or even a newsletter that may be curated with their interests in mind. With it no longer being enough to simply add your customer’s first name to your newsletter, it’s time to get personal.
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