Successful relationships with clients and potential clients are built on loyalty which is earned through increased engagement driven by making messages directly relevant to your audience. This is prevalent in digital marketing but often overlooked on print.
With 75% of consumers now expecting personalised communications, creating connection and ownership is something big brands are capitalising on. If you recall Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ marketing campaign; over a thousand different names were printed on their bottle labels and in excess of 150 million of these bottles were sold (which was actually called ‘Project Connect’ initially). Along similar lines, in 2018, Nestlé launched brand your own Quality Street tin where customers could personalise the label as well as the contents of the tin.
It’s all about figuring out what your customer really wants, anticipating their needs and delivering experiences tailored to their lifestyle, interests, activity, and even future intentions.
Benefits of personalisation
Customers are more likely to purchase from personalised offers. You can personalise from the very start of the customer journey with a name and address, right through to individually tailored marketing pieces.
Making your printed communications resonate with individuals builds trust and loyalty which in turn drives sales. Creating a direct connection with your target audience through a name or content specifically targeted to them makes people feel validated and understood, improving their overall experience of your brand so they are far more likely to make an initial purchase as well as repeat purchases.
It is important to remember that quality data is at the core of successful personalised communications. Good quality data and analysis gives you insight into who your clients and potential clients are, and what they really want so you are always certain that your targeting is accurate and you can be quicker to react to possible future trends, meaning you stay ahead of competition.
Types of personalisation
Realistically, personalisation is much more than just a name and address – even if that is all you know about your audience you can still look at basic targeting on location, if location is a factor you differentiate on. For example, national brands such as a gym or supermarket with local or regional campaigns where a campaign might include location-based offers or local maps and directions.
Delving a bit deeper, information on the basic demographics of your audience gives you an opportunity to target specific groups within your audience, based on various factors including age, profession, income level or family situation. So, a national hotel brand might look at targeting one group based on child friendly holidays, another on spa breaks and another on luxury, premium holidays.
Using variable imagery to deliver individual messages on a national campaign would work really well in this example, mapping data on different groups in your audience to deliver personalised messages and relevant imagery relating to the different needs and interests within the groups.
Personalisation also supports marketing to generate repurchases of similar products or services. Where you know what your clients purchase and when, you can use this data to directly target your marketing activities to them, for example, many retailers target based on past purchases of their products and services.
Special print personalisation
There are some additional, simple ways you can use print to enhance your personalisation strategy, through foiling or other special finishes.
Advancements in technology and ongoing investment mean we now have the capabilities to create a range of personalised printed options that were previously unavailable.
Using a special finish to personalise a diary or notebook or other promotional items for a client or prospect and sending to them with a personalised greetings card, for example as a Christmas engagement campaign or on a more individual level for birthdays or to recognise a promotion works very well and recipients often take to social media to share their name in lights which is a fantastic way to support PR. We all love to feel special after all!
If you would like to increase your ROI by making your campaigns more personal, we can help. From planning your campaign and developing the creative to data mapping, if you would like to have a chat please get in touch!