content measurements can measure the ROI of personalized experiences

This is the second part of a series about the ROI of personalization. You can find the first part (audience measurement) here.

Even though personalization can be difficult for even the most sophisticated brands it is becoming an increasingly important factor in high-performing businesses.

McKinsey estimates that companies who excel at personalization generate as much as 40% more revenue than those who are average at it.

We examined the measurement of personalized experiences by measuring how customers react to them, individually and within segments. This was the first article in the series.

Next, measure ROI on personalized experiences by looking at how content performs and how it contributes to a particular experience or across the buyer’s entire journey.

Performance of individual and incremental content

Let’s start with the most “zoomed in” view, looking at how each element performs. It is likely that if something doesn’t work at the micro-level, there are issues in the larger picture.

Voici quelques-unes of the methods you can use to assess individual performance:

• What a piece of content, or a channel performs.
• Performance at a specific stage of the buyer’s journey, or by segment of the audience.

A incremental performance approach would require you to look at things in terms:

• Personalization vs. no personalization
• Personalization across multiple channels versus personalization on one channel (or none)
• Performance of a single channel using personalization versus not using personalization.

These are important as personalization requires effort, time and resources. You can find out which areas produce better results than others to make your work more efficient.

Get deeper: How to make personalization easier in an impersonal world

Multi-touch Attribution

Marketers will undoubtedly ask this question, and customers will be asked it a million times.

It’s more likely than not that customers hear about a product or service through five to six channels, but they might only remember one or two. This is because of the constant switching between channels and ongoing marketing campaigns. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that every one of the six channels they were contacted had no impact.

A multitouch attribution model is the next method to measure personalized content’s performance. This model considers all possible customer contact methods and calculates the contribution to a sale for each one.

• One channel’s contribution to the sales.
• The best order of communication to convert.
• Channels with the lowest lift are likely to be more cost-effective and can be removed.
• The best channels for creating the greatest impact are either last- or first-touch.

John Wanamaker once said half of his advertising failed, but he didn’t know which. The truth may be more nuanced than that.

Wanamaker might have discovered that 75% of his advertising contributed towards some type of lift using a multi-touch model of attribution. This is regardless of the individual contributions.

Get deeper: Marketing Attribution: What is it and how it identifies customer touchpoints

Personalization costs

Personalization should not be taken for granted by brands. There are costs to:

• Create content variations
• Multiple versions of automations and journeys can be planned.
• These efforts can be measured.
• All other activities.

However, this doesn’t mean providing personalized customer experiences shouldn’t be possible. You will be able to maintain a realistic and practical approach right from the beginning.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• You will need resources to create the content variations (texts, images, videos, and more) required for personalization.
• Multiple campaigns, offers, and experiences can be managed with the help of multiple resources
• What happens when the details change? To streamline the process, you will need a taxonomy or categorization system.
• Platform costs for personalization, measurement, and analysis.

These things are not meant to discourage you from investing in personalization. It is essential to keep a realistic outlook.

It is important to approach this incrementally to ensure that your employees can easily incorporate the platforms and investments.

Dig deeper: How marketers can prioritize digital experiences

How can we determine if personalization is worthwhile beyond performance?

We’ve discussed how to do it so far. But the question remains: Is it worth it to invest in creating personalized omnichannel experiences?

According to Gartner, 63% marketers last year said that personalization was a problem.

It is also likely that 84% of digital transformation projects fail because of the larger-scale technology and data requirements for multi-channel personalization.

How can we reconcile the potential benefits of personalization with the risks and costs associated with it?

Succession is achieved by incremental approaches that use lean and agile methods like minimum viable products and systems for continuous improvement.

Personalized experiences are the future in marketing and customer service. It is how quickly brands reach this point that can make or break a brand’s position as a category leader.

The post The ROI personalized experiences: Content measurement was first published on MarTech.