The Benefits of Personalised Marketing: Statistics, Data and Examples

Personalisation is a powerful marketing strategy; it enables brands to connect with their audience on a more personal level, improving customers’ experience, and making business more profitable. In fact, 80% of companies report seeing an uplift since implementing personalisation tactics.

Customers clearly have a preference for brands who listen to them, understand them, and pay attention to their specific desires and needs. Research shows that 63% of consumers are highly annoyed with the way brands continue to blast generic advertising messages their way.

Furthermore, in today’s competitive world, personalised communications are not only appreciated; they’re expected. According to a new report from SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers say they will only engage with marketing messages that are tailored to their interests, with 78% of U.S. internet users saying that personally relevant content from brands increases their purchase activity.

Personalisation works…but is difficult 

Creating personalised marketing and experiences has everything to do with good quality data. Collecting, analysing, and effectively using information about consumer demographics, interests, and behaviors helps marketers create campaigns, content, and experiences that resonate with their target audiences.

As reported by Accenture, 91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.

Personalisation also provides marketers with measurable ROI (Return Of Investment). Most marketers (90%) reported a measurable positive impact from their personalisation efforts, 58% saw an improvement of more than 10%, while 15% had more than 30% improvement.

But it is not easy. Marketers are certainly dealing with some challenges, and data is the top of the list. Only 32% agree that marketers are getting personalisation right and, according to The Clear Path to Personalization report by Forbes Insights and Arm Treasure Data, 48% of marketers recognised data quality as a leading roadblock to effective personalisation.

But despite the challenges, the vast majority of organizations (97% to be exact) plan to maintain or increase their personalisation budgets in 2020, and 85% believe the tactic should be a bigger priority in their organisation.

“Share a Coke” campaign 

The Coca-Cola Company is known for its innovative marketing initiatives. In 2014, The brand launched its “Share a Coke” campaign, in which the company replaced its iconic name with one of the 250 most popular American names and nicknames such as “bestie”, “star”, “BFF,” or “wingman” on the label.

By putting the consumers’ identification on the bottle, Coca-Cola appealed to the consumer’s value of individuality and desire for human connection.

“For teens and Millennials, personalisation is not a fad, it’s a way of life. It’s about self-expression, individual storytelling, and staying connected with friends. ‘Share a Coke’ taps into all of those passions,” said Stuart Kronauge, Senior VP Sparkling Brands, Coca-Cola North America.

Consumers were encouraged to find bottles with names that held personal meaning to them, share them with friends or family, and talk about their experiences on social media using the hashtag #shareacoke.

People shared more than 500,000 photos within the first year alone and Coca-Cola gained 25 million new Facebook followers that same year, making #shareacoke a number 1 global trending topic on social media. The successful campaign helped to increase soft-drink sales by 2%, raising Coke consumption from 1.7 to 1.9 billion servings per day.

Since then, the “Share a Coke” campaign has constantly expanded. In 2015, the company increased the personal names represented from 250 to 1,000; and in 2018, Coke turned their now-iconic name labels into removable stickers that could be fastened to clothing, cell phones, notebooks, and other items.

What is your brand currently planning for its personalisation initiatives, and are you also factoring in multicultural audiences? We would love to talk and fuel your content development.