The Rise of Digital Marketing Personalization
Shane Snow once said, “important people may be busy, but the same principles for winning their trust and attention apply to the most to the least busy person you’re emailing. Be personal, and do your homework.” After all, if the former Cofounder and Chief Creative Officer and now Boardmember of Contently and the architect of Snow Academy is telling us that we need to pay attention to our audience and focus on being more personal when reaching out, then we should listen.
According to Epsilon Research, “80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand which provides personalized experiences”, and there is no other company in the world that has single-handedly profited more off of their use of personalized marketing than Amazon, which according to MarketWatch is officially a 1 Trillion dollar company. Therefore, if there is any doubt that personalization doesn’t work, you should erase that from your mind like the 2019 film Cats, which is recorded as one of the worst-reviewed films ever, therefore save yourself the anguish. Yet, if you want to build a closer relationship with your audience, it might be worth understanding what digital marketing personalization means and how Amazon has mastered this art form.
What is Digital Marketing Personalization?
To put it quite simply, the art of personalization is the study of your audience’s habits and preferences so that you can market the product of interest at the right time with the right person. Therefore, mastering personalization requires your brand to retain as much knowledge of your audience as possible to surround them with as much relevant interest as possible. For example, in a study by Smarter HQ, “70% of millennials are willing to let retailers track their browsing and shopping behaviors in exchange for a better shopping experience”. Therefore, younger generations are passionately expressing that they prefer brands to take a more personalized approach to their shopping experience that matches their likes and interest, which has propelled brands to take a more in-depth look at their audiences’ buying patterns and preferences, increasing its chances of purchase and brand affinity.
Mastering Personalization
It almost seems like a quest for world dominance, and Amazon is definitely is heading in that direction, and, like any empire, giving the people what they want seems to be in popular demand. Therefore, in order to kick up Amazon’s next phase of domination in 2018, Amazon Personalize came to fruition. As addressed by Amazon, “Amazon Personalize is a machine learning service that makes it easy for developers to add individualized recommendations to customers who use their applications.” Therefore, as a brand, you may use Amazon to sell your products. You can feed Amazon your target demographics, and they can use Amazon Personalize to provide them with recommendations of your product array, increasing opportunities for engagement and purchase. As a brand, this is extremely important, and for consumers, this ver ideal. After all, if I am a Wilson Tennis loyalist at heart and Wilson knows that individuals like myself that are more propense to buy Wilson racquets, then Amazon Personalize does its job to not only provide those necessary ads on my Amazon page but provide alternate Wilson products I might want to buy as well increasing exposure to products I like and therefore secure more sales for Wilson. Therefore, as stated by Salesforce, “69% of business buyers expect Amazon-like buying experiences — such as personalized recommendations.”
In conclusion, the world we live in is much more interpersonal than before, and as individuals, we are much more comfortable with brands that provide unique and customized experiences to its audiences. Therefore, feeding our natural urge to engage with what we like, seems to be on the menu, and it’s ordered quite frequently, which is why brands that adopt personalization with such precision like Amazon are in the business of world domination or close to it.
