We all like a personal touch, but that doesn’t mean we want a pillow with our face on, from that distant relative with an addiction to Etsy. When done right, personalisation can be a game-changer; boosting engagement and driving prospects through a decision journey. But here’s the thing – if it feels forced or downright “creepy,” personalisation can seriously backfire and send your prospects running for the hills.
The secret to effective personalisation? Making it feel authentic, relevant, and totally unobtrusive. In fact, the best personalisation often flies under the radar, seamlessly connecting with your audience without them even realising it.
So where does personalisation really shine? When it’s used in account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns. An ABM approach is about sales and marketing joining forces and working together to understand the unique needs, pain points, and goals of each account or cluster of accounts. With this deep understanding, topical content can be crafted by marketing, and followed up by sales; creating an authentic relationship and making the tailor-made approach feel well-intended and valuable.
Imagine this: a salesperson is alerted to a prospect who has already engaged with several personalised touchpoints in an ABM campaign. They reach out to the key decision-maker at the account with a unified personalised message that speaks directly to their unique challenges. They reference specific pain points that the ABM team uncovered through their research and offer a solution that feels like it was made just for them. When these tactics are applied the likelihood of a eureka moment significantly increases.
When done right, ABM personalisation feels deliberate and authentic. It’s not about using sneaky tactics or invasive data collection. Instead, it’s about building genuine relationships and showing that you truly understand and care about your customers’ success. It’s personalisation with a purpose.
So, how do you actually go about personalising your content? The obvious approach is to include names and logos, and whilst this can be effective it’s possible to be more subtle. Consider the conversations you have with a best friend, full of hidden nuances from shared experiences. It’s possible to apply this in marketing too, and it’s all about leveraging the right data. We’re talking intent data, behavioural insights, firmographics, and psychographics – the whole 9 yards. By creating modular content blocks that can be mixed and matched based on rich data, you can generate unique, highly relevant variations for each target account. It’s like having a content buffet that’s tailored to everyone’s individual tastes!
Now, you might be thinking – personalising content for each and every account sounds like a ton of work. But fear not, because artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are here to save the day! These tools allow you to personalise at scale, analysing massive amounts of data to predict what content will hit the bullseye with your audience. Accompanied by natural language generation (NLG) it’s possible to create marketing copy quickly and efficiently. Just remember it’s essential to keep a human eye on things to ensure your AI-powered personalisation stays on-brand and on-message.
Hyper-personalisation is already yielding results, McKinsey states ‘Companies that excel at personalisation generate an impressive 40% more revenue from those activities than average players’ [1]. To be truly successful it’s important to keep testing, keep iterating, and always consider privacy and data usage. If you can find that sweet spot where personalisation enhances the customer experience without crossing any lines, you’ll be well on your way to building the deep, lasting relationships all organisations crave.
Citation
1.https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-value-of-getting-personalization-right-or-wrong-is-multiplying