AI Marketing

Personalization Pitfall #4: Poor Historical View of the Customer

Blueshift

| October 25, 2016

A person with a walking stick stepping out into the street

In this series, we cover the common pitfalls all marketers face at some point when scaling personalization in their triggered marketing. From emails to mobile push notifications to SMS to display retargeting, the common platforms used today to market across channels begin to lose efficacy when organizations try to personalize their communications to an ever more complex and growing customer base..

Lifecycle marketing is a highly engaging way companies can re-activate or re-engage old customers. Using past interaction and transactions online, companies surface relevant products and promotions through different channels to influence a purchase. Sounds simple enough right? On the contrary having a 360 degree view of your customers over a long period of time and in real-time is very tricky for most businesses and our pitfall number 4.

OUT WITH THE OLD…

An old approach to this strategy has been to remarket to customers based on each item they browsed without taking their historical behavior into consideration. If a customer is browsing patio chairs, hammocks, and outdoor umbrellas, they are probably looking to furnish their backyard. Offering them 5 options of patio chairs might not be the best way to influence a sale.

OVERCOME AMNESIA OF YOUR CUSTOMERS

Your product recommendation engine has to be smart enough to suggest “next best products” or “complete-the-look products” or a product in the same category or brand. Only personalized, smart product placement and recommendations can work to win back customers in the highly competitive market of today.

The key to re-marketing the right way is to connect every piece of user behavior and past purchase in real-time with a deep knowledge of the company’s catalog. Using a holistic customer view, marketers can provide a hyper-personalized story relevant to each user’s context.