Getting Personal. Why Personalised Communication is King of Conversion

Broadcast messaging and follow-up has turned into a chaotic mess that can only be compared to jamming triangles into circular holes. In fact, this “one-size-fits-all” attitude of mass production and mass marketing is widely regarded as the very root cause of a scientific phenomenon called “Banner Blindness” (the tendency of web visitors to automatically ignore online advertising, even when it contains information that they actually want or need).

For those of us willing to put in a tiny bit of extra effort, this is great news! This “production line” approach taken by most marketers has actually made the general public more responsive to anything that uses a more personal approach – and today, we’re going to look at the three ways you can add some seriously personal touches to your marketing activities, in order to ramp up your results.

“How Nice to Meet You” – The Personalised Introduction

No matter how much you try to persuade me, I simply refuse to accept that a personalised intro is as simple as sticking “Dear Contact.FirstName” to the top of your communication and then hitting that big shiny “Mail Merge” button. OK sure, it was a gimmicky trend that lasted about 12 months back in 2006, but we’re 10 years on from that now – and the ‘tactic’ is getting less and less effective by the week.

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While most companies are using auto responders the wrong way and blasting generic copy down their prospects’ throats, adding just a little personalisation to your very first contact can work wonders. For example:

• Carry on the same headline that the prospect came to your landing page from, especially when split testing multiple LPs. This level of continuity lets the prospect know that they are reading the thing you want to be reading – we haven’t tricked them into it with a gimmicky introduction or click-baity headline!

• Add SMS or postal shots into your strategy – email gets blasted out multiple times a day because it is easy, but using multi-channel welcome messages can help build a stronger connection

“I’ll Call You Later Baby” – The Personalised Follow-Up

Slick native follow-up is essential in a world where people are being exposed to an increasing number of intrusive, untargeted messages. The basis for companies to follow-up should pivot around the central point of relationship and trust building. You need to show your prosepcts that they can trust you to provide a product that delivers based on their desires and needs – not that you’re willing to sell anything to anybody (even if that is true).

Personalised follow-up should be crafted using data and content:

1. Data – The more you know about your potential prospect, the better. Now in 2016 marketing teams aren’t expected to be Mystic Meg, but they can tap into things that are almost as valuable. Using DMP’s you can import data from a variety of sources to build out a better picture of the prospects that has opted in to your communication. On the data spine of each prospect you can look at social, demographic, financial and past behavioural insights to aid in your content follow up.
2. Content – Using the data that has now been appended to your leads, you can (and should) now create more customised content and copy based on the interests of your prospects. This is best done by creating prospect archetypes by segmentation. Then, based on the auto-responder follow up via SMS and Email, you can gauge by clicks which pieces of content are piquing interest, and you can further tailor responses based on these insights.

“I Saw This and Thought of You” – The Personalised Offers

Offers are ultimately where the prospect will convert to a customer. Why? Because people can’t resist a great deal! But if you’re sloppy at this stage, all of your previous hard work could be wiped out in a moment.

By now you should have a few categories of content that your prospects are showing particular interest in. Using this data you should be able to set up custom sequences and landing pages to make offers and suggestions that are ‘oddly’ (read ‘calculatedly’) exactly what they have been looking for.

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