The Rising Value of Personalized Branding

Abstract:
Personalization in today's world is what separates successful brands from those that fail. As long as personalization is in practice, it will always impact customer service, product development, and almost every element of the organization. Businesses are scaling up their customer engagement and retention processes with personalized branding tools. Customer data from online buying patterns, survey comments, social media behavior, website and app engagement, and more have become the most sought-after data entities for businesses. Most brand experts today believe that personalized branding is the future of marketing.

This research article reveals the growing role of personalization in the digital marketing era and investigates how brands of any nature and size can thrive when they start adopting this unique technique for gaining their customer base. The research also elaborates on the top challenges in personalized branding and also suggests tips for reconceiving the personalized branding space for best results. The research also brings out the top trends and major shifts driving the personalized marketing field.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
What is Personalized Branding?
Benefits of Personalized Branding
Why Personalize Branding?
Tips to Personalize Branding
Challenges of Personalized Branding
Personalized Branding Strategies
Tools for Personalization
Now and Then Personalization Trends That Can't Be Ignored.
Key Findings
Conclusion

Introduction

With advanced connectivity solutions, Brands – of any size have the unprecedented opportunity to create emotional connections with their customers. Generating an attachment between the brand and the customers without them noticing leads to brand advocacy, excellent value, better relationship with individual customers, and great positioning in the market. A personalized branding built meaningfully on relevancy, value, and memories can be a great success in creating and retaining customers for a lifetime. Personalized branding has the capacity to solidify your dominance in the market.

Amazon and Netflix are brands that are mastering personalized branding by combining branding and relationship marketing. Today, these brands have been positioned as the top-most service company in the digital economy.

Personalized branding is the process of leveraging analytics to make advertising messages and product experiences feel unique to each customer. Individuals are targeted based on their past actions and interests. Personalized branding entails much more than simply adding the customer's name to a generic branding email sent to all customers. It's all about getting the right word to the right person at the right time with the correct suggestions.

Personalization aims at connecting potential customers on an individual basis. When branding is customized, the right message is conveyed to the right people at the right time, this will add a personal touch to work, but it can also increase revenue.

The study ‘The Rising Value of Personalized Branding’ examines the recent personalization trends, why it is essential to make branding unique to every customer, the challenges, the tools or techniques used to implement successful campaigns, and how to excel in personalized branding. This research also provides detailed information on personalized branding and clarifies the term.

What is Personalized Branding?

Personalized branding is created by combining growing collections of first- and third-party consumer data to produce a robust branding experience derived from an individual's specific behaviors and preferences. Unlike generic brand-focused branding, personalized branding considers specific client involvement characteristics(1).

In personalized branding, the data is obtained from the contacts. This data covers things like hobbies, purchasing preferences, and purchase history, among other things. Personalized branding implements a plan in which businesses employ data collecting, analysis, and automated technology to deliver customized information to recipients.

Benefits of Personalized Branding

Personalization is becoming trendy, and consumers enjoy the services based on their choices and preferences. Here are a few other benefits of personalization that are helpful for both the consumers and brands:

Enhanced and satisfying consumer experience: Customers are willing to share their personal information with the brand to receive something in exchange. With so much customer data available, customers expect brands to protect personal data and provide more tailored experiences when they return. It simplifies their entire client journey and turns the purchasing process from a transaction to a relationship. The customer will grow to trust the recommendations when the connection is built and will be more likely to approach such brands again when they want to meet their requirements.

Increased ROI: It is less expensive as compared to traditional advertising. Personalized recommendations have the potential to encourage clients to spend more. It can boost sales by 10% and provide an 8x return on investment(2). The brand can improve ROI by identifying and responding to each customer's preferred channel. Applying the correct automation technology, marketers can detect which social media channels customers engage with and then automatically follow up across channels as part of an omnichannel strategy.

Increased brand loyalty and consumer satisfaction: Customer happiness matters the most. Personalization helps to gain customers' loyalty. Over 40% of customers like to become repeat clients of a company that provides a personalized purchasing experience(3). When done correctly, personalized marketing helps the customer feel cherished and remembered. Businesses investing time in strategies will get a competitive advantage in brand loyalty and consumer satisfaction.

Consumers Enjoy Attention and Like to Feel Special: Genuine care is crucial in a world when some brands are more concerned with closing a deal than with the enjoyment of their consumers. Customers who feel valued and unique by the brands keep coming back to utilize the services; therefore, personalization is the best way to boost customer loyalty.

Addressing the Brand Directly to the Customers: A brand that provides customers with a unique personalized product/service makes it different from what the rivals offer. Personalization, when adopted, helps a brand to outstand in the eyes of the customers; they can easily differentiate the personalized branding. Ray-Ban is one of the leading brands for providing personalized products to their customers.

Why Personalize Branding?

It's not clear why a company should customize its marketing efforts more. After all, it's more challenging to achieve, and personalizing communications too much can risk losing the interest of a bigger audience. The traditional marketer might be perplexed as to why firms are abandoning the old in favor of the new. In simple terms, it began with customers tuning out after years of being bombarded with meaningless marketing messages. Customers nowadays want marketing personalization. Personalization is already pervasive across brands of all sizes and sectors, as they are using varied approaches to offering a more appealing consumer experience. Here are the few brands that are experts in personalization: Louis Vuitton offering consumers customized products, Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign (an offline personalization approach), Spotify's user account customization, Grammarly’s weekly reports, Ralph Lauren, and many more.

Here are a few personalization statistics to know why personalization is crucial:

61% of the buying population expects brands to derive experiences based on preferences(4).
63% of consumers are unhappy by the brands repeatedly blasting generic adverting messages(5).
91% of customers prefer to purchase with companies who remember them and give personalized offers and recommendations(6).
90% of the top brands choose personalization for profitability(7).

Personalization can lead to more revenue generation, higher conversion rates, and more customer engagements.

Tips to Personalize Branding

The first step where personalization begins is providing customers with personalized products or services. Brands while advertising must use personalized website content, personalized video campaigns, reports, and even notification messages can be personalized to create a greater impact on customers.

Here are a few other tips that will simplify the personalization process:

1. Creating customer personas.

A buyer persona is a detailed consumer profile that represents the target audience. Creating a distinct buyer persona is an excellent place to start. This step is critical in personalizing marketing efforts with a clear buyer picture in mind, marketing strategy shifts and will attract more customers to such personalization efforts.

2. Segmenting email list to improve customization.

The most successful way to generate conversions is through email marketing(8). One of the first things to improve the conversion rate is to segregate the email list. Segment the audience in various ways to send them more tailored emails, such as

Segment email lists through buyer personas.
Segments can rely on age, gender, career, geography, and other factors.
Another popular method up until this point has been to send emails based on email openings, which indicates that the subscriber has recently interacted with the company's material.

However, businesses have traditionally used pixels to track email openings, location, and other demographic information that cannot be used for the long term.

Data privacy concerns are on the top these days, and email service providers respond by taking steps to protect their users' information. Creating segments based on purchasing activity is another technique to drive personalization.

3. Personalizing the email subject lines.

The main thing is that the emails sent are timely opened and read by customers.

Here are some ideas for getting customers to open emails:

Use an email analyzer to score the headlines and find ways to improve them.
To accomplish so, start using subject lines to capture their attention. Make subject lines more potent by using strong words.
Place a query.
To get the user's attention, address them by their first name.
Send an email to users alerting them of items left in their shopping cart.
Give them a special discount on things they've added to their wish lists.

Implement these strategies to personalize email subject lines to increase effectiveness.

4. Find out what the customers desire.

Data is required to segment the audience and to provide customized content.

Data can be derived through

Google Analytics and another analytics tool.
SEO platforms
Reports from email marketing
Social media platforms
Advertising campaigns
CRM tools etc.

These data sources will provide insights about all the customers and what they want.

The best source of information is the consumer base. Please inquire about the product features they want, their end goals, and any significant problems. Conduct surveys and provide feedback forms and questions that can help learn more about clients' needs.

5. Usage of artificial intelligence

Using e-commerce integration with the email marketing provider is a brilliant method to automate and develop customization. Because the main focus is to reach a vast consumer base, personalization becomes tough when selling physical things to customers.

Also creating personalized video campaigns that provide results becomes more accessible with so much information at your fingertips. An AI tool can process a large amount of data in a short period(9). Customers will be divided into segments based on their purchase habits, video campaigns, and email exchanges, generated automatically. The data from previous campaigns will then be used by an AI email marketing tool to optimize future campaigns specifying the dos and don'ts.

6. Using more friendly and personalized content

For purchasers, nothing is more off-putting than business jargon and sales rhetoric. Despite this, many business owners continue to write website content, advertising, notification messages, reports, and social media postings, pushing them off. In contrast, some use fancy English or long phrases to appear intelligent. The only effect is pushing off customers and even tarnishing a brand's image.

Write friendly content for personalization. This is a great approach to see if the content comes across as welcoming. Another important piece of copywriting advice is to read it aloud. This will ensure the content is appealing or not.

Referring to readers in the second person is another approach to make the content sound more personal. Refer to customers as 'You' in the material to communicate with them. It will help to connect with audiences easily.

7. Create landing pages that match.

Once the subscribers have opened the email list, they must clinch the deal and increase sales by creating effective landing pages. Make sure the links in email copy lead to dedicated landing sites with content that matches the email's theme, tone, and images.

Apart from all the technical techniques, the power of personalization should not be overlooked. Personalized content and landing pages have been demonstrated to enhance conversions significantly(10).

Challenges of Personalized Branding

Although personalization's value is rising, there are hurdles for personalized branding, just as with any other marketing strategy. Data-driven customization is considered the most challenging approach to execute by over two-thirds (63%) of marketing influencers(11). There are hurdles for personalized branding, just as with any other marketing strategy. Let's look at a few of the most common barriers:

Choosing the suitable algorithm: The common issue with personalization is that it relies on obsolete technology that isn't mobile-friendly. Unfortunately, many marketers have difficulty finding a sophisticated personalization engine that satisfies their requirements. Data gathering and automation are critical components of personalization success, requiring an intelligent algorithm. The primary channels used to drive data are Analytics and Customer surveys.

Allocation of time and resources: Personalization requires the correct software and a dedicated workforce. Many businesses are willing to invest the time and resources needed to implement an effective tailored marketing plan. Companies must have the staff, funding, and time to establish an efficient, customized marketing plan. Although automation can help reduce personalization time and labor costs, people must still be involved in the overall project.

Businesses must understand how willing customers are to provide their data, collect it, and send customized messages. They must also maintain a functioning track directed to the most effective channels. That is something that only a good workforce can do. Ensure that the marketing team has enough resources and that algorithms aren't handling everything.

Creating a Single Customer View is a process that involves putting together a single customer view. By collecting together their customer data into a single unified customer profile and looking for similar threads across channels, marketers may obtain a better picture of who the consumer truly is. However, studies reveal that marketers have difficulty connecting data to specific client profiles(12).

Intelligent channel segmentation isn't just for show; it improves performance. Unfortunately, many marketers are still unable to get beyond simple segmentation techniques. In reality, 85% of brands say that their segmentation relies on broad segments and primary grouping(13).

Regulations and restrictions are becoming more stringent: While numerous studies suggest that customers anticipate and value tailored interactions, mishandling personal data has made it evident that consumers are increasingly concerned about how their data is acquired and used(14). Customer private data collection and use of such data are being scrutinized, substantially influencing personalized marketing methods.

Accurate and transparent data: The critical element of personalization is following a customer-centric approach. That begins with transparent, ongoing communication to gain a complete and accurate picture of customers and what they want. If brands are prepared to put up the effort, personalized marketing can succeed. It's not only about gathering data; it's also about ensuring that the data is correct and obtained in a transparent manner that customers can trust. Marketers must be flexible and pivot in the ever-changing landscape of data restrictions and consumer comfort levels. Personalization may pay off handsomely if marketers keep the client at the core of their efforts and are ready to stay in the long run.

Personalized Branding Strategies

"Rome wasn't built in a day." Thus the same concept goes along with personalization. Great things take time to establish, and success does not come right away. It's time to make personalization tactics perfect(15). The following points should be considered while creating a personalized branding strategy:

1. Assemble a team to lead the charge. A group of trained individuals is necessary to establish and monitor a personalization plan, including

A highly experienced tech staff.
A 24/7 support desk to assist and get customer feedback.
A team of expert strategic campaign designers.

Ensure the efforts align with broader business goals by working with senior mentorship and a foolproof plan to provide quality content.

2. Comparing, evaluating, and implementing data using a personalization engine: Choosing a good content personalization engine can compare the existing data to others that claim to offer something of more value than existing. Implementing this type of solution is usually simple by requiring only a few lines of code on the WebPages. Then start recording data, such as clicks, time on site, abandoned shopping carts, transaction history, etc., and customers should receive relevant content recommendations from the personalization system as soon as possible. Then the next step is analyzing the performance of the content personalized through the personalization engine.

Amazon uses AI and ML to deliver a wide array of personalized product recommendations and re-ranks products based on personalization preferences.

Even NETFLIX, the B2C streaming giant, runs A/B tests, AI, and deep learning to develop suitable movie suggestions for users.

Data collection, analytical skills, and the development of customizable websites are all critical to a business, but they are most effective when they are fully integrated.

3. Data collection but keeping people's privacy in mind. Remember to consider what data is most beneficial to track and concentrate on to provide the most incredible possible experience to the consumers. Customers demand tailored experiences, but many are hesitant to expose their personal information to the public(16). Brands must remember to follow acceptable personalization, and they must not deal with information that is too sensitive for the customers; this can be offensive to them.

For example, when Target, the American department store chain, used predictive analytics to predict pregnancies, it didn’t go well. Target’s analytics and automated systems sent baby coupons to a teenage girl, leading to a fiasco for the company. It brought negative publicity to the company(17).

Who would customers prefer to trust?

A business that only includes the line "We respect your privacy" at the bottom of emails.
A company that gives a clear explanation in its welcome email of how they will use such information, what customers will receive in return, and how they can opt-out if they wish.

Customers are more likely to put their faith in the second company. As customer relationships with the company grow and they keep their commitment to offering customers high-quality personalized material solely, their trust will grow.

4. Customer segmentation: The data collected from customers must be organized based on:

Consumer buying patterns
Spending levels
Demographically
Least or preferred products

It is unnecessary to consider all the parameters; companies can always choose the best segment depending upon the nature of their business, choose wisely, and send relevant messages to the customers.

When Loft, the online clothing retailer, rolled out its Loft Loves Teacher campaign, it received positive feedback from the unique customer base that Loft was targeting. Loft offered a 15% discount to teachers, and by doing it, the company could also successfully target students who checked Loft’s online store out of curiosity(18).

5. Choosing the relevant channel for personalization: When it comes to personalization, the next question pops up in mind: where to begin? Numerous platforms can benefit from personalization, such as targeted emails, webinars, and landing pages (we will discuss this topic further in our research). It just totally depends upon the customers are spending their time. Figure out the best channel based on data analyzed(19).

Tools for Personalization

The most challenging personalization aspect is scalability(20). Emails can't be sent to each consumer by hand. However, here arises the use of the appropriate instruments. Here are some tools for providing targeted information to the audience:

Analytics platform: Analytics platforms let marketers collect data that they may use to generate personalized branding. Marketers can use an analytics platform to capture behavioral data such as page views, email sign-ups, and more. Marketers use behavioral data to generate customized campaigns. Some popular platforms include Google Analytics, Heap Analytics, and Crazy Egg.

CRM Software: CRM serves as a central repository for customer data. This implies that whatever information is collected about potential consumers, such as their name, email address, or order history, can be saved in this hub. CRM software allows observing who interacts with the organization and marketing campaigns. When integrated with the rest of the marketing stack, it'll allow other tools like a post-click landing page platform to feed prospect data, provided to an email marketing platform to help customize the emails more effectively.

Data management platform: The platform collects data from many sources before sharing data with digital ad buyers and publishers. Marketers who want to construct personalized advertising campaigns using user data may find this helpful.

Age, household income, surfing patterns, purchase behavior, demographics, location, device, and more are examples of user data. The data management platforms may then examine the performance of those segments and help with campaign optimization in the future.

The platform for post-click landing pages: A post-click platform is an essential tool required; with its usage, everything can flourish, and without it, things can fall apart. This is the best option to acquire customers' data right now; otherwise, personalization cannot excel. It's also the most effective tool for moving clients down the funnel to the next level.

Unlike conventional web pages, post-click landing pages are meant to get customers to take action – to join up, download, buy, and so on. Post-click landing page platforms assist in building and controlling these pages quickly and at low costs. Scaling post-click landing page development with manual coding uses up way too many resources because every post-click landing page must match the ad it comes from to maximize personalization.

Email marketing platform: Email marketing platforms are becoming a vital part of every marketing technology mass, as the channel ensures big profits for enterprises. It is not something out of the box, as email addresses are the standard information given by all the customers. According to a recent study, personalization is directly linked to the number of emails opened(21).

The majority of people opt to be contacted via email. Brands may send a free birthday email to customers on the mailing list using simple data like name and birthday. It may appear basic and even pointless, but customers increasingly appreciate brands that treat them like the individuals they are rather than the money they have. 71% of consumers tend to open and read brand emails because they are personalized(22).

Tag management platform: When people visit the website, by using marketing tags, information is collected. These small pieces of JavaScript are inserted into the web page's code. That tag is activated when a visitor completes a specific action. The drawbacks of using these tags are that they're time-consuming, difficult to manage, easy to forget when they're no longer needed, and can significantly slow down a web page.

Using tag management software such as Google Tag Manager can add, delete, and update all tags from a single location. It also means that the page's loading won't be slowed by tag after the tag because the Google Tag Manager code is only needed to be added to the website's back-end.

Demand-side platform: A demand-side platform is software that allows marketers to buy mobile, search, and video ads from publishers who list their inventory on a marketplace.

Demand-side platforms enable programmatic advertising when used in conjunction with supply-side platforms. These platforms allow advertisers to manage their ads across multiple real-time bidding networks, rather than just one, such as Google Ads.

The technique of purchasing and selling adverts with software and then releasing them contextually based on complex algorithms is known as programmatic advertising.

Most online advertising is done through programmatic means such as real-time bidding and direct deals.

Now and Then Personalization Trends That Can't Be Ignored.

Customers are increasingly being approached "one on one" by brands. Brands will have a better opportunity of developing personal ties with their customers as technology evolves. They are more likely to build deeper, longer-lasting relationships after only a few interactions, as 1:1 personalization becomes the norm rather than the exception for those in need or needing something unique from brands(23).
There is an increasing trend in mobile customer experience personalization due to developments in mobile personalization technology, and most consumers utilize their mobile devices for shopping(24). Brands have been focusing on web customization up until now. Personalization, on the other hand, is not limited to the web. Email and smartphones are examples of different touchpoints. The next focus will be mobile alerts, SMS, and in-app mobile user experiences.
"Image recognition capabilities" is one of the most popular personalization trends right now. Consumers will design their appearance using this technology by searching for comparable or matching products and appreciate the detailed recommendations. Image recognition is becoming more popular, and it will become more widely used soon. More than 50% of consumers are ready to share information to get personalized discounts on products(25).
For years, businesses have used artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver customized client experiences. More brands will invest in artificial intelligence and machine learning for personalization in the future. Furthermore, enterprises are likely to develop inventive ways to leverage these technologies outside the typical use, giving customers even more power over how they interact with brands online.
The tendency in the digital world is to give users more control over their data. As a result, businesses may need to switch to a consent-based, opt-in model to gain client trust and loyalty. As a result, ensuring that the clients have a positive, personalized experience while preserving their faith will be critical.
As technology advances and data sets grow, personalization will spread into longer client journeys. This means that marketers will build individualized experiences for customers throughout their journey, rather than only at crucial points like when they first visit a website or make an online purchase. 74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized(26).
Adoption of omnichannel personalization(27). Brands must have a presence across various channels to create unique omnichannel experiences that will revolutionize the customer experience.
Personalization for anonymous visitors is the next step in the evolution of personalization, and it will be a prominent trend soon. Because not everyone registers into their account while visiting a website, anonymous visitor personalization is critical. Only a fraction of users log in to their accounts.

Key Findings

Personalization involves a process where customer data from online buying patterns, survey comments, social media behavior, website and app engagement, and other sources are considered valuable.
Personalized Branding is all about reaching out to the right customers at the right time and with the right offering.
Most consumers are willing to share information on products they like to get personalized discounts.
The top brands choose personalization for profitability as more and more customers are ready to pay more for personalized services/ products.
Personalization can lead to more revenue generation, higher conversion rates, and more customer engagements.
Personalization helps to gain customers' loyalty.
Using AI with the email marketing tool is a brilliant method to automate and develop customization.
Choosing a good content personalization engine can compare the existing data to others that claim to offer more value than existing.
Generally, customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized.

Conclusion

As customer expectations and marketing technologies improve, the shift towards personalized branding will become increasingly crucial for brands. Customers demand personalized communication, an improved experience, and consistency across all platforms. The personalization for each customer can be achieved by choosing the correct automation technology.

So, the future of personalization has arrived! It's fast-paced, with multichannel marketing, email customization, and first-party data strategies in abundance.

It's the right time to start paying attention to these trends and incorporating them into the marketing strategy. Because they'll only continue to grow in relevance, providing brands and publishers with increasingly more advanced tools and techniques. Those who embrace the future now will be better equipped for tomorrow's future.

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