Dos and don'ts of personalized marketing

Alexandra Moss VP, Data-Driven Marketing

Mar. 27, 2024

6 Minutes

Personalized marketing has emerged as a critical strategy in today's data-driven market, where understanding and meeting consumer expectations is key to forging meaningful connections. This approach, while not new, has gained unprecedented importance as highlighted by a panel of marketing experts convened by Deluxe in early 2024. These experts shared insights into the essentials of effective personalization within omnichannel marketing, offering a foundation of "dos" and "don'ts" along with practical advice for successfully engaging customers through customized messaging.

But what exactly is personalized marketing? Before exploring the recommended practices, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of this strategy. Personalized marketing differentiates itself by tailoring products, offers, and content to individual customers based on their behaviors and past interactions with a brand. This strategy goes beyond segmentation, which groups customers based on shared characteristics. Personalization seeks to enhance the customer experience on an individual level.

Even if a fully personalized marketing campaign is not currently a feasible strategy for your team, starting with segmentation can significantly improve the impact over generic mass marketing efforts. Deluxe's experts suggest starting with macro segmentation—identifying broad customer segments based on demographic or geographic data—and then drilling down to micro segmentation, which further divides these groups by specific behaviors. The goal is to achieve one-to-one personalization, crafting messages and content uniquely tailored to each consumer's data.

The dos and don'ts of marketing personalization

Kicking off the list of “dos” from the panel is Megan Lester, a direct marketing professional from IWCO with over 20 years of experience in direct mail strategy partnering with leading financial, insurance, health care and retail direct marketers.

1. DO start with what you know (and what can be measured)

For marketers looking to implement or build on personalization strategies, Lester recommends starting with what you know about your audience. This is especially true of acquisition campaigns where past-purchase data is absent.

Referencing a campaign with an insurance client, Lester called out that the simple addition of the recipient’s name to an existing mailer card resulted in a significant lift in response rates.

“You don't always have to start in a very complex way,” Lester concluded. “You can start simply by adding in relevant information to the individual to get a decent bump.”

Measurement and testing are both crucial factors when implementing marketing personalization, not only because of the many variables involved, but also because a lot can be learned about your audience regardless of the success rate.

“You have an opportunity to learn a lot more from losses than you may necessarily learn from what tactics have been winning,” noted Lester. She also pointed out that implementing small, iterative changes to existing campaigns can be just as effective as new innovative efforts. “There's a lot less risk in adding on variables and utilizing some iterative approaches against something you've been mailing for a period of time,” Lester concluded.

2. DO consider generational preferences

The next “do” on the list comes from Nicole Bond, Associate Director of Marketing Strategies at Mintel Comperemedia. Bond specializes in interpreting omnichannel marketing campaigns and providing strategic direction geared toward channel activation and audience engagement.

Personalized marketing has the potential to resonate on a deep, personal level, but depending on the consumer’s attitude toward data tracking and gathering, this strategy may be interpreted as invasive.

“When we're thinking about personalization as a way to communicate with our customers,” Bond began, “We must consider things like generational preferences.” When looking at a consumer’s comfort level with technology – with how the brand is communicating to them and where that message is being delivered – there is a strong connection between consumer preference and how their generation grew up in relation to technology.

Gen Z adults are more likely than any other generation to rank personalization as the most important factor when online shopping.

When thinking about digitally native consumers such as Gen Alpha, Gen Z and younger Millennials, Bond noted their awareness of how personalized marketing works. “They're a lot more comfortable with this idea of tailored connection points from an acquisition perspective,” she clarified. “For example, they are more likely to abandon their cart on purpose to get a discount in return, and they are more likely to know how to curate the ads they get on Instagram. [They are] feeding that algorithm.”

According to research by Mintel Consumer reports conducted in 2022-2023, it was found that Gen Z adults are more likely than any other generation to rank personalization as the most important factor when online shopping. Additionally, over half of Millennial consumers are motivated to share their data if it means securing a better offer or discount.

Older generations, such as Gen X and Baby Boomers, did not grow up with technology in quite the same way as younger audiences. Bond noted that this population tends to agree that social media companies obtain too much personal data. This means that when older audiences receive personalized messages on these platforms, it can make them feel uncomfortable and creates a negative impression of the brand.

Personalization is more than tailoring a message to reflect audience data, such as age grouping. “It's just as important to consider where we are reaching these consumers, making sure that we're having a conversation with them in a personal way that adds comfort to that interaction with our brand,” Bond concluded.

3. DO have a personalization pulse check

Whether marketing personalization is part of your strategy already or you are wanting to bring the conversation to your team for the first time, there’s value in a pulse check. “When we think about personalization,” Bond continued, “It must continue to innovate – for that to happen, every stakeholder within your company, within your brand, within your product line, must be on the same page.”

When having conversations about personalized marketing tactics, Bond recommends going over these questions with your team:

What is our current personalization strategy?
What data are we working with, and what data is missing?
What elements of our strategy can be personalized?
How can we personalize content to deliver a stronger brand experience?
What is our goal? What are we trying to achieve?

At the end of the campaign, Bond recommends revisiting these questions, exploring what went well and what needs further refining. “Taking this pulse-check approach will help everyone in the room get on the same page,” said Bond, “not only when it comes to incorporating personalization today, but also in continuing to find new ways to improve personalization in the future.”

1. DON'T discount emerging technologies

Patrick Grosserode, the third and final panel expert, kicked off the list of “don’ts” by warning the audience not to discount how emerging technologies are changing the way we consume media. Grosserode, who holds an impressive 20-year career in marketing services, currently co-owns CS3 Marketing, an agency serving the financial services industry. He noted that, when considering the potential of emerging technologies, putting personal biases aside could open the door to new possibilities.

“25 percent of people that have internet access use TikTok,” Grosserode began. “The average TikTok user is on for 18 minutes in a sitting, 55 minutes a day.” Regardless of individual opinions about TikTok, Grosserode made it clear that this level of exposure should not be breezed over.

“There's something there with the next generation,” Grosserode said. “Put your bias aside and understand how to use that data, what these consumers are looking for and how you can put your brand in front of them.” Similarly, he spoke to the influx of personalized heath tracking technology as an example of opportunity.

“Apple released their Watch shortly after [2015], and it totally changed the way that people thought about wearable technology,” noted Grosserode. “I'm not necessarily suggesting that we need to market checking accounts to somebody's wearable – but what I am saying is don't sleep on the fact that Apple just released the Vision Pro and it's going to change the way that people consume media into the future.”

Finding creative ways to implement personalized marketing is an exciting challenge that marketers must tackle to be successful. “What the health and fitness trackers did was just put a lot of data out there,” concluded Grosserode. “What we do with that data is up to us.”

Consumers don't operate in a silo. They're not just having conversations with your brand - they're exposed to thousands of ads and thousands of touch points across every single media channel that they're on.

2. DON'T build a personalization strategy with blinders on

To close out this list of have-nots, Nicole Bond highlighted the value of perspective. “Have insight into what your competitors are doing, and know what your consumers are exposed to,” Bond recommended. “Consumers don't operate in a silo. They're not just having conversations with your brand – they’re exposed to thousands of ads and thousands of touch points across every single media channel that they're on.”

When building a strategy or incorporating it into existing campaigns, personalized marketing should function as a differentiator for your brand, your products, and your services. What can happen, Bond noted, is that brands will use the same personalization tactics as their competitors, resulting in all-too-similar messaging.

“Creatively, that touch point looks the same as everything else our consumer is already exposed to,” said Bond. “That luster of personalization is going to fall to the wayside, and it's going to get lost in this sea of sameness.”

Standing out from the crowd is especially crucial when the campaign’s goal is acquisition. To highlight that a brand’s offer is more unique than others on the table, Bond recommends going beyond the tactics shared by your competitors. Instead, consider the message as a one-to-one conversation with that consumer. “We want to make sure that when we use personalization, it is something that differentiates our brands, our products, and how we communicate with our customers and prospects.”

Taking personalized marketing to the next level

By using this list of “dos” and “don’ts” as a guardrail, personalized marketing can create deeper connections to your customers, driving higher engagement rates and increased loyalty. But leveraging digital tools and analytics to create tailored messaging is only half the battle. First, marketers must have the right information – that is why having the right data partner is vital to your messaging getting seen by the right people at the right time.

DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING