Sephora is a great brand example of building customer personalization.
The beauty retailer has 1,700 stores in 30 countries, so imagine the variations among consumer profiles Sephora must manage. Julie Bornstein, EVP, and Chief Marketing and Digital Officer for Sephora, gives much of the credit for the company’s personalization success to its loyalty program Beauty Insider, which enables the brand to convert anonymous visitors to recognizable entities.
Sephora can match the shade to products in the store, seamlessly enabling a more personalized customer experience. Folks, matching shade to products is not simple—there are 110 skin tones in Sephora’s universe.
Without personalization, customer experience is clunky. Customers trying to match products to skin tone must use trial-and-error until they find a match.
It’s a connection that enables us to add value. The math is simple: when people with different assets, needs and views come together, they’re able to produce more than they ever could on their own. Trading goods, skills and knowledge without friction creates a leap in productivity. It might be easier to burn a bridge than it is to build one, but in the long one, bridges are what we need.
When a customer becomes part of the Beauty Insider program, a profile is created that can be accessed through mobile and desktop devices—and through the iPad located at counters throughout its stores.
This connectivity enables Sephora to link, for example, a customer’s skin tone with products for sale within the store. So Brad can find the perfect match for his 3R08 Pantone.
This interactive personalization campaign, by the way, is a boon for both consumers and salespeople, who can recommend suitable products with deeper relevance.
Other personalization success stories include Swisscom, the largest telecom company in Switzerland. The enterprise has been personalizing subscribers’ Web experiences across all its assets.
This type of building isn’t easy, or we’d already be doing all this. We need to demand more of our political leaders, of our CEOs, our entrepreneurs, our investors. We need to demand more of our culture, of our society. And we need to demand more from one another. We’re all necessary, and we can all contribute, to building.
Swisscom relies heavily on analytics to drive personalization campaigns. And it has not been disappointed with results. It has achieved a 40 percent lift from restructuring Web resources toward a more personalized experience for its subscribers and prospects.
Using targeting
You can target nearby customers with special offers. Traffic data enables you to measure the number of clients coming through your door during different time periods, allowing you to properly allocate resources and distribute fliers and coupons throughout the day.
You can then compare activity rates on different offers and even the level of interest customers express to your staff about your initiatives.
If your business has a mobile app, you can use behavioral data to send push notifications to users in your vicinity that entice them to head your way. Ask users to allow the app to pull location, travel, and purchase data to enhance their customer experience, then use that information to tailor offers to their circumstances and preferences.
Outback Steakhouse uses geolocation data to woo potential clients away from competitors. The company has established geo-fences within five miles of its own buildings and 10 miles of its competitors, placing ads on location-based apps to showcase promotional offers. Outback saw an 11-percent conversion rate increase with these geo-targeted campaigns.
Starbucks has utilized geofencing, which is where you can set a virtual boundary around a specific location, like a store. Once they cross that set geofence, people with the Starbucks app receive a location-based notification highlighting a coupon or offer and reminding them there’s a Starbucks nearby.
This kind of personalization inspires more engagement and brand loyalty and provides the ability for any business to make national campaigns hyperlocal.
The key to encouraging more customer loyalty on social media is to make your fans feel like they matter. Whether you have 1,000 or 10,000 fans, each one should feel special.
A simple way to take a personal approach on a daily basis is to sign off on posts and comments with your name. Another method is to literally personalize your product or service for fans.
Coca-Cola fans can personalize and share a virtual bottle of Coke and Heinz ran a promotion that gave their fans and customers the opportunity to add a friend’s name to a soup can and send it to him or her.
While there’s nothing wrong with rewarding regular engagement from fans, the key to appreciating your social media community as a whole is to reward fans based on the quality of the interaction, not the quantity.
Remember, a fan who comments once, but leaves very detailed feedback (for example, a testimonial, suggestions or visual post), is just as valuable as someone who comments 40 times on posts.
Involve and reward your entire social media community with offers, such as unique discounts, contests, and bonuses or sneak previews.
GoEnnounce gave away exclusive “Welcome to College” gifts to the first 50 high school seniors who posted a photo with their college acceptance letters.
Surprise Customers
Add to your customers’ experience on social media by finding ways to create surprise and intrigue.
One option is to surprise fans with a random act of kindness. For example, reward your community with a discount code when you reach 20,000 fans.
Also, send fans who go above and beyond in adding value to your company, product or service a handwritten note and gift.
When a young fan submitted a dragon drawing to Samsung to impress the brand, the company not only replied back with a great drawing of a kangaroo on a unicycle but also took things one step further.
Samsung sent the fan a Samsung phone, which included a case customized with the dragon drawing. Now that’s what you call a surprise!
Share Your Values
A study published by the Harvard Business Review, which surveyed over 7,000 consumers, found that of those who had a strong relationship with the brand, 64% had said the number-one reason was shared values.
Since fans on social media tend to be more loyal to a company that shares their beliefs, share updates not only around your products or services but also posts that exemplify the core values of your organization.
Toyota supports non-profits with their “Cars for Good” campaign. People voted and the top 100 non-profits were all awarded with a Toyota car or truck.
If your company has a strong view on a particular topic or issue, share it with your community. This does not have to be limited to issues within your niche.
When your fans and customers relate to your core values, they’re more likely to stay loyal to your company and cause.
Most email marketers have made a habit of greeting recipients by name in their emails, but not nearly as many have started implementing subscriber names into the creation itself.
This can change both the look and feel of an email and create a more seamless experience. FreshDirect, for example, sent out a deal that was personalized with the subscriber’s name front and center in the creative.
This builds an immediate connection between customers and brands that can prompt engagement and loyalty.
The Knot
The Knot, a premier wedding planning, and media company know that wedding plans and gifts are different for every couple. By adding subscriber names and individual wedding dates to the products within each email,
The Knot helps customers visualize what each product could look like without even going to the website.
The business also ensures higher click-through rates by optimizing the emails for different devices and positioning a “click-to-call” button accordingly on mobile screens.
Warby Parker
Months ago I became fascinated with Warby Parker, a company that sells prescription glasses and sunglasses online, and last weekend I finally got around to ordering a pair of lenses. I received an email a few days later.
The brand immediately got points for using my first name, but the email goes above mere typical personalization methods.
- It’s written by a real person in a personable, casual style. It’s starkly different from the automated “ORDER RECEIVED” or “ORDER SHIPPED” emails slapped with the tragically impersonal and cold “do not reply” message I usually receive after purchasing something online.
- It gives me a brief yet informative update on the status of my order.
- It lets me know who to contact should I have any questions.
- It’s friendly, helpful, courteous, and gracious all at the same time.
The email added a welcome and much-appreciated personal touch to the whole purchasing process.
The bottom line
Brands are not built through gimmicks or sleight of hand. The consumer can not be fooled for long. Great companies build great brands by valuing their customers and wanting to make their lives better in some way.
In the end, despite all the gimmicks and tricks that gurus use to sell books and seminars, it comes down to one simple equation: Brand Value = the value of promises kept. Everything else is just optimizing efficiency.
