Personalisation At Scale: Targeting Audiences With People-based Marketing

In this opinion piece, Indy Khabra (pictured below), national managing director at Amnet ANZ, explains power of the the people-based marketing equation, and also reminds marketers that they cannot afford to take data for granted.

We are all talking about it. We all want it. We are all trying to get it. It’s that one-to-one personalised messaging delivered to addressable, scaled audiences in the moments that matter. It’s hard and takes significant investment in time and resources, but we’re closer than ever, and true people-based marketing is now within reach.

According to a McKinsey report, delivering personalised messaging provides improved customer experiences and proven business results.

“It can boost total sales by 15 to 20 per cent, and digital sales even more while significantly improving ROI on marketing spend across marketing channels,” the report said.

Consumers are immersed in the digital world with mobile, gaming, personal assistants and wearable technology. We’ve entered the era of audience-driven advertising, where consumers are demanding relevant, timely messages wherever they’re engaging across their digital ecosystem. But the consumer experience has been degraded as a result of the digital era, turning people from living-thinking-decision making humans to generalised, anonymised recipients of endless display ads and email campaigns.

People want to be treated as humans, not another anonymous recipient of a general – and often irrelevant – marketing campaign or advertisement. They’re willing to provide brands with their data, but it’s a value exchange that should deliver personalised communication in return.

Some of you may remember when you could walk up to the local pharmacist if you had a cold. They knew your family and occupation, they knew about your last holiday when you came back with a terrible sunburn…they knew you as a person and asked you how you were doing. That personal touch dissipated quickly with the explosion of ubiquitous digital advertising capabilities, but we can marry the two by adding identity and programmatic media to the equation to deliver people-based marketing.

People-based marketing assembles disparate data sets such as first-and second-party data; device IDs; data from Amazon, Google or Facebook; and agency bespoke data segments to build a single universal ID. By harnessing this connected, single view, programmatic media buying drives real-time personalisation at scale, delivering relevant messages in decision-making moments.

Today, the sheer amount of data available enables us to take the experience of the local pharmacist and connect that to the digital world with relevance and personalisation. Companies that are navigating the digital wave with success are those who understand the value of data and leverage digital connections to understand a 360-degree view of their customers while using those insights, behaviours and customer signals to better engage with personalised messaging. By listening to their customers, brands are creating bespoke experiences, products and offerings that create higher conversion rates, overall lifetime value and brand loyalty.

We can’t afford to take data for granted. In providing brands with their data, consumers are engaging in a barter of sorts – they’re saying, ‘I want you to know who I am, what I like, where I go in exchange for communication that’s relevant to me’.

“They expect consistent experiences and to be remembered across all interaction and engagements,” according to a Salesforce whitepaper.

“Fifty-two per cent of consumers say they’re likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t make an effort to personalise communications to them.”

In order to harness data exchanged as consumers engage with brands, marketers must move beyond the cookie and take a true people-based approach. By leveraging addressable audience planning and insights platforms, marketers have the ability to target real audiences with personalised messaging that can be activated in a programmatic fashion to deliver people-based marketing with greater scale and ROI.

As the connected economy evolves, we must meet consumer wants and deliver value on the inferred agreement made upon the exchange of consumer data. Delivering consistent and engaging experience to customers can only be done through smarter use of data, technology and expertise. When it’s done right, this provides benefits to the consumer and drives real business outcomes for brands.