Partner Content
Personalization isn’t a new concept, yet many marketing teams still struggle with where to start and how best to leverage it within their company.
One-to-one customer experiences are often associated with personalization, but in reality there are varying degrees of personalization. If you try to jump right to one-to-one customer experiences, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed. It’s best to start small, gather insights, and continuously optimize over time. It’s similar to preparing for a marathon. If you’ve never run one before, you would likely start out with a shorter race before preparing for the full 26.2 miles. In other words, you'd follow the “Crawl, Walk, and Run” approach.
Personalization is not any different. As with any achievable goal, there are small steps you can take that will build up to your objective.
“Crawl” personalizations are ones you can start with immediately from a content and data standpoint. These are generally low effort (meaning general, easily collected data and personalizations that can be ongoing), of varying impact, and with fast results.
Some examples of crawl personalizations are:
“Walk” personalizations will usually require additional content and more data collection for further defined segments. These are medium to high effort (data that may require multiple visits and additional content creation), with medium to high impact.
Some examples of walk personalizations are:
“Run” personalizations will require additional content, more personalization events, and more data for further defined segments. They are high effort (requiring data collection and integration from other systems, moderate to extensive content creation, and more research and manpower to build and execute rules) with high impact during an extended period of time.
Some examples of run personalizations are:
As you see, there are a number of approaches to creating personal experiences for your audience, and one-to-one personalization does not necessarily have to be your primary framework. Every company’s level of personalization needs will be unique, and not all organizations have the internal structures and processes in place that are conducive to one-to-one personalization.
Making a customer feel like the content you provide is relevant to their unique situation is what personalization is all about. Yet, many customers share a common set of characteristics that can help to define your personalization strategy. So, as you start out with personalization, focus on segmenting customers into groups based on similar needs and creating experiences around those needs. You’ll gain valuable insights and can optimize your marketing and content strategy based on those broad customer segments.
Acquia’s Personalization Maturity Model can help you define realistic personalization goals. This Maturity Model is designed to help you realistically assess your personalization goals based on several factors that will be unique to your company, such as:
We encourage teams to take an in-depth assessment of their organizations, including the internal structure, the resources available, and the level of commitment, to set realistic goals for personalization. Teams do not need to strive for an omnichannel, predictive, one-to-one personalization strategy if this is not the level of personalization your organization currently requires. Instead, it is important to find the level that’s right for your company and set achievable objectives that can be built upon over time.
We’re here to partner with organizations in their personalization efforts. Take the first step toward achieving your personalization goals by checking out our e-book, “Fast Track Your Organization's Ability to Deliver Personalized Experiences.”
This blog was originally published in 2019 and has been updated to remain current.