Customer Experience 2020: Personalization is Key

By Gary Ballabio On May 16, 2019

If content is still king, personalization may well be its queen. Personalized marketing is hardly new, but it has evolved greatly over the last few years thanks to the power of rich media content and technologies like AI and machine learning. Brands that deliver dynamic and personalized shopping experiences see improved engagement and customer loyalty in today’s uber competitive and noisy digital landscape.

According to Salesforce research, 6% of e-commerce visits that include engagement with AI-powered recommendations drive an uptick in 37% of revenue.

What Amazon did early on by serving up suggestions based on similar purchasing patterns, your own and those made by people like you, was incredibly effective and yet seems almost rudimentary now.

The real opportunity as we move forward is a personalization of content that greatly improves the individual experience, creates an authentic connection and drives conversions. Brands have a real opportunity to create a story, to interact, and to personalize — especially as shopper expectations for digital and in-store shopping continue to rise. Customers want to feel valued and understood and personalization can go a long way in delivering both.

We are constantly inspired by the ways in which brands can build and nurture stronger connections through dynamic and personalized content. Here are just a few examples of brands doing personalized content best:

Adidas Locker Room in the UK, Belgium and Germany offers customers the ability to create uniforms for soccer teams — from youth players to pro teams. Users can with just a few clicks personalize jerseys, shorts and socks with logos, names and by team color.

Aaron Brothers, owned by Michaels Stores, allows its customer framing customers to easily drop their images, including photos and artwork, into a variety of frame options so they can view and approve before placing the order online. And within just a few hours the completed order can be shipped or ready to be picked up in store.

Personalized videos can provide a great opportunity for brands to engage with consumers and help create viral social campaigns. Pringles engaged with fans by inviting them to upload their own videos that were then automatically integrated with the brand’s stock video footage with personalized overlays. Once edited, the personalized videos could be easily shared with friends and family within Facebook and other social media channels.

Increasingly personalization is becoming a core component of the most engaging user experiences.

It’s an exciting time for marketers with seemingly endless opportunities to improve engagement through personalized content campaigns — and the technologies to make it easier than ever before. Before long, what seems novel now will be commonplace and companies will continue to improve the ways in which personalized experiences can be created and delivered.