Businesses want marketing teams to make their brands stand out. At the end of the day, they want revenue. Naturally, they want a brand reputation that drives sales.
They give you a budget, a bunch of directions, and it's get-set-go time. However, marketers often get stuck in the generic marketing loop.
“Let’s make an OVC, get some influencers for social media marketing, make some reels, and an article here and there,” and the perfect marketing plan is ready.
Unfortunately, generic ways of marketing create some buzz in the short term but wind down in the long term. The problem isn’t the quality of the content or the dedication behind it.
Then what?
Consumers today demand relevance. This sounds very cliche, but they need brands that speak to them directly. If you can’t deliver it, the bounce rate increases. You need to think out of the box in terms of delivery. In what better ways can you reach your consumer?
Hence, we have arrived at the age of hyper personalization. And AI personalization is leading the charge.
What is Hyper Personalization?
It’s not just about writing your user’s name in the outreach email. Hyper personalization leverages AI and machine learning to go beyond and deliver customized texts, product recommendations, and user experience at an individual and not a mass level.
Traditional methods relied mostly on broad segments. However, hyper personalization focuses more on an individual’s time, behavior, location, and mood.
Think of Instagram’s new blend feature. Blend allows you to create a shared feed of reels within DMs with a friend or groups. The reels that you see are recommendations based on the activities and interests of everyone in the blend.
The strategy is great in the sense that all of us share reels with people in DMs. Instagram was smart enough to leverage it using content personalization and drive engagement.
Another familiar example is Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly.’ Spotify creates and curates playlists according to individual tastes. This is hyper personalization at play.
Why’s Everyone Hyper about Hyper Personalization?
McKinsey says that personalized marketing can reduce customer acquisition costs by 50%, while increasing marketing ROI by 10-30%.
Their reports claim that personalization has become more important post-pandemic because users switched to a lot of brands during COVID-19. Which means loyalty is increasingly becoming a thing of the past.
Furthermore, 60% of shoppers are likely to become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience.
Hyper personalization, especially personalization in ecommerce, drives ROI, loyalty, and retention. Not to mention, it fulfills customer expectations.
The Impact of AI Personalization
The rule of thumb is that AI makes everything better and more efficient.
1. Real-time Data Processing
When users are interacting with your website or content, they are leaving data behind. Some important data points include -
- Where do they click when they enter the website?
- How do they linger?
- Do they select something only to drop it from the cart at the last moment?
These are all crucial to marketers. AI personalization helps you process this data and respond quickly with targeted messages.
2. Forecasting
AI studies customer movements. So, it knows what a customer might want next. It essentially pushes products and relevant website sections to customers based on their purchase and browsing history.
3. Automated Content Personalization
No matter how creative or efficient you are, it’s physically impossible to come up with unique content ideas to keep up with the market. What’s more difficult is creating millions of versions of the same email or ad for individuals.
So, you look towards AI to save the day. Using AI personalization, you can create variations of content tailored to individual preferences, starting from email subject lines to banner ads.
Use Cases of Hyper Personalization using AI Across Industries
1. Ecommerce
Hyper personalization ensures personalization in ecommerce, a highly dynamic and competitive field. Customers always feel that the user experience is solely tailored to them because of AI chatbots, dynamic product suggestions, promotional offers, and real-time price updates.
2. Email Marketing
Imagine collecting thousands of leads, making a real nice Google spreadsheet, and typing personalized emails for all of these leads manually. I bet the next thing you’re thinking about is quitting.
Redundant tasks often tire you more than the difficult ones. With AI personalization, you can say bye to batch-and-blast and craft better outreach or follow-up messages that connect with your leads.
3. Website Experience
AI-driven landing pages adapt depending on the person visiting the website. So, what customer A views may vary from what customer B views because of their behavior, geographic location, and time.
4. Content Marketing
There’s a reason why private communities, discord channels, or subscription-based newsletters are becoming more popular. Because the days of mass marketing are over.
Users want exclusivity. They want to be a part of a community and want content that provides genuine value. Meaning the importance of your content marketing strategies has increased.
To provide the best value, you need to understand what your user wants or what issues they are facing. Content personalization identifies these wants and then recommend blogs, videos, posts, or case studies that can help the user.
Wait a Minute
Yes, hyper-personalization is great and can benefit your business. But there are some pitfalls you should be aware of -
- Remember the difference between relevant and invasive. Customers might see too much personalization as creepiness.
- Be completely transparent and ethical about your data collection policies. Give users control.
- Garbage in, garbage out. Your content personalization strategies will be as good as your data. So, be aware of bad data.
Hyper personalization is all about making users feel important and heard. Ongoing AI developments point that voice and facial recognition and emotion-based personalization will soon be making the headlines.
So, better to invest now and invest in the long term.
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