Personalise your Business

In the past, achieving a large degree of personalisation on your marketing material was a real challenge for most businesses; however with the advance in technology it is now more cost effective than ever to create good quality print with individual messages.

Think about a recent communication from someone you shop with – grocery store, coffee store, Travel Company.  Did you notice any personalisation based on your recent purchases or transactions?

The key to personalisation is making sure you listen to what your customers or prospects are telling you and ensure that you have a system and process to track this.  It’s like when you meet someone for the first time.  You talk a little of yourself but then you ask them questions and listen to them and make a mental note of what they are telling you – their likes, their dislikes, their family etc.   You may find talking of you a lot easier but it’s not all about you and it’s not going to make them feel that you are interested in then.  Making sure you also keep engaged and with relevant answers and questions will also then build the rapport and from this a level of trust.

When you do this with your customers or prospects it’s about working out what is going to be interesting and then playing it back to them.

Personalisation strategies are successful when they are based on a good understanding of your customer’s needs and then serving relevant, timely and interesting messages and content to them.  The more you put in front of them that is irrelevant or mistimed the more they will disengage from you and your business.

Thanks to advances in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems and other technology all business small or large can now gather the data it needs to offer a tailored and personalised service to every customer

But personalisation is not just a simple case of adding a customer name or certain fields within the top of an email or a printed letter.  It is now possible for us to communicate with our customers about their individual interests and preferences through smart use of gathering the data

There are two trends which have combined to transform our ability to deliver highly personalised messages to clients and prospects – the first of these is the increasing use of digital media and devices which means that we are able to collect a huge amount of data about customers and this data can be used effectively to build a strong picture of each individual customers preferences, behaviours and needs.

The second is the huge development in marketing automation and personalisation tools which makes it very cost effective to use this fantastic data to deliver individually tailored messages and offers that match your customer’s profile.

Within the print industry we have been using personalisation for many years, however previously it was in terms of putting in names and addresses on direct mail.  Now you can personalise almost everything on a printed item – providing the data is clean and accurate.

Along with the names and addresses you can personalise text, images, what’s on offer, vouchers for products they like or have bought in the past. 

By creating a good design and a strategy around where the data will be placed on the page for the relevant recipient you can create an exciting and engaging piece of marketing communication that will work for your business and your customers needs.

However, personalisation doesn’t have to stop at just a one page letter.  Think of prospectus, notepads, mugs, pens, and clothing.

Studies have shown that by also combining an online and offline marketing campaign through websites, QR codes and augmented reality you can boost your online traffic by 57%. 

Print & Digital are very effective partners.

So what data do you have on your customers and how can you now start creating more engaging and personalised marketing material rather than a one size fits all approach?