Three out of four consumers like it when brands personalize offers and messages, according to the Aberdeen Group. But only 13 percent of companies personalize their mobile experience for users, eConsultancy/Monetate reports.
While that seems like a head-scratch in a time when vegans are still getting meatball sandwich offers, there are reasons why brands aren’t consistently delivering the individualized goods.
“We have to realize how complex that problem is,” Sean Lyons, Global Chief Digital Officer, at international communications firm Havas, told me in an exlusive interview for my new book, The Art of Mobile Persuasion http://www.amazon.com/Art-Mobile-Persuasion-Transforming-Relationship-ebook/dp/B0100RS81K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434858180&sr=8-1&keywords=art+of+mobile+persuasion.
“Think about how well you know your close friends and how preferences adapt and change over time. Could you predict with great certainty what they may want at a certain moment? Maybe only your closest friends.
“We have really high expectations for the capability to personalize communications but it's a very complicated thing. It's a mix of both a trail of data and also the feeling that I have right now, my mood. That we're not factoring in. There are going to be a lot more mistakes made with personalization, the wrong people targeted. That's part of the evolution of it.”
There is proof that personalization works today. In one of the most significant successes, a major wireless carrier utilizes individualized service to tackle that industry’s deadly disease: churn – the rate at which customers leave a business behind.
A custom welcome video, powered by Seattle mobile marketing and advertising technology firm Vehicle, is the very first point of communication with a new customer. Sent to mobile devices, this personalized welcome video acknowledges and thanks the unique subscriber for his or her business and summarizes the details of the account and what to expect when the first bill arrives.
As a result, the carrier has seen:
· Significant reduction in churn (customers leaving in the first 30 days), saving tens of millions of dollars
· A decrease in calls to customer support
· The highest recall of any other touch with the customer (over 50 percent measured at 90 days post-video delivery)
· Significant increase in revenue (ARPU or average revenue per user and lifetime value)
But other brands are flailing in their personalization efforts. Why? One reason is that many marketers are running in double-time to collect data, but aren’t being smart when it comes to using it.
“There needs to be a specific need that benefits the customer,” Jonathan Stephen, who drove innovative mobile programs at JetBlue, told me for The Art of Mobile Persuasion. “We should not be selfish in our endeavors to reach customers. I think we get very greedy with big data.
“If possible, we want to know what our customer had for breakfast. We want to know how many sugars that they put in their coffee and if they used Splenda or Truvia or whatever. There’s this grasp for data and the funny thing is people (marketers) find out that they don’t even know what to do with that data.”
Some are selling it. But others are using it to nurture relationships that are yielding more loyalty and sales.
The upshot?
Delivering on a more one-to-one basis is both mobile marketing and mobile advertising’s big hurdle and its largest opportunity.
(article first appeared on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/06/24/personalization-is-mobile’s-big-hurdle-and-large-opportunity/)
