ROI of personal experiences: Process measurements

This is the third part of a series about the ROI of personalization. The first (audience measurement) can be found, and the second (content measurements can be found.

Let’s now discuss how brands can personalize their content and audiences.

The process measurements look at how personalization is done, their efficiency and how they can be improved.

We will:

• Three aspects of personalization are covered.
• For brands who want to invest in 1:1 omnichannel experiences, do a reality check.
• Consider the viability and cost of doing so.

Alignment across teams is key to great personalized experiences

Misaligned organizations that have disengaged their internal operations will have trouble offering seamless personalized experiences outside to customers. Let’s take a look at how this works in real life.

• Siloed marketing departments, where the “ecommerce” team doesn’t interact with the “email team” often.
• Siloed departments where engineering, data, and marketing all could exist on different planets.
• Silos are product teams that support widget A in a different way than widget B.

Some organizations combine all the above to make it more difficult. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t start with the low-hanging fruits. You should focus on building bridges where there is the greatest potential benefit and commonality.

If the processes for creating mobile app content and email campaign content overlap, you can start there. It won’t be able to provide omnichannel personalization immediately, but it can help you build consistency and, most importantly, a case for why greater coordination and collaboration is needed within your organization.

A key step towards creating personalized, holistic customer experiences is breaking down silos and increasing coordination within your organization.

Get deeper: Managing unpredictable situations: Marketing, sales, and operations are aligned

Hypotheses are tested to eliminate anecdotal noise

Marketers have opinions about the effectiveness of personalized experiences in driving engagement and conversions. Problem is, many opinions about personalized experiences are based on anecdotal evidence and less scientific.

We need to counter this by running true tests. These include:

• A hypothesis is our assumption.
• A null hypothesis is a hypothesis that cannot be proven to be true.
• A threshold of statistical significance which justifies further testing or investment.

Also, welcome back Statistics 101.

The best way to determine the effectiveness of your personalization in this way is to do a true A/B test, where the “A” variant provides all users with a generic message/offer/experience and the “B” variant personalizes it. You will see the effectiveness of your personalization efforts if you have statistically significant data.

This should also be examined in several dimensions. You can personalize more or less. Depending on the extent of personalization required, the cost of delivery — whether it is time and/or hard costs — will vary. It can be costly to create endless customer imagery. However, it can be very cost-effective to do database lookups once the initial rules have been established.

Regardless of how extensive you personalize, creating an environment of validation and testing will ensure that you are focusing on the right things and cutting through the noise that hinders teams from greater success.

Get deeper: Why testing can be a powerful tool for marketers

Feedback loops and continuous improvement

However, rigorous testing can only be as effective as the process used for incorporating the results of the tests into the workstream. This requires an ongoing commitment to improve and optimize personalization efforts. The feedback loop and governance are two of the most important pieces.

You must first create a feedback loop. This loop will take your learnings (including your tests) into consideration and connect the people and platforms who rely on them.

I have worked with many organizations that excelled at creating detailed reports about what happened, where it was and to whom. However, didn’t have a way to convert those results into actions or changes for the next time.

They had an impressive library of reports and charts. Their efforts were not improved beyond anecdotal sharing and lucky guesses of what made it into the reports.

You also need to have a set process in place that allows you to adapt and change by taking feedback into account, but not too fast. This will prevent your customers and internal teams from becoming confused by the inexplicable.

A governance model that allows for personalized customer experiences is a key part of this. It’s not about being quick. A good governance model is better.

• Transparency and consistency.
• You should move at the right speed in order to adjust your personalization efforts.
• Avoid too much change, which could overwhelm your team or cause inconsistency for customers.

Feedback loops, governance models, and standardization of your ability to improve customer experience and maximize the ROI from personalization efforts will help you systematize and standardize your ability.

Get deeper: Leadership buy-in

Are lagging organisations able to catch up with the leaders?

You may be thinking, “This sounds incredible!” but it is simply impossible to achieve in such a short amount of time. The leaders in personal experiences don’t want the laggards behind them.

Large brands might have trouble with product or departmental silos. Some brands are smaller and less able to afford the infrastructure and resources required to accomplish this task. It takes investment to set up systems and platforms that provide personalized customer service.

The truth is, companies that are behind in the game must catch up, despite all the difficulties. Every day, the gap between leaders and laggards continues to widen. Leaders will continue to be able to use the knowledge, platforms, and processes that they have gained from testing (and even their mistakes) in order to make themselves more valuable.

In other words, you shouldn’t be deciding whether to offer more personalizedization. It is about how you bridge the gap between yourself and your competition. All while maintaining profitability and not disrupting any external audiences (customers or partners) or internal (employee) teams.

This is why an iterative, incremental approach works best. You can use a strong prioritization model to help you identify which initiatives will have the greatest impact on your business and customers, while minimizing the impact on resources.

Personalization ROI measured

To get a true return on your investment in creating and delivering personalized customer experience requires a holistic view of all audiences, channels, and processes.

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