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Luxury Has Evolved. It’s Now An Immersive, Deeply Felt Experience

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By R. Daniel Foster,

Feeling good is the new ultimate status symbol. Brands now prioritize emotional storytelling and personalization, using neuroscience, high-touch hospitality and biohacking.

The second Gilded Age? It’s not quite as gilded, at least on the outside. In recent decades, luxury has evolved from a surface transactional experience to one focused on longevity, wellness and intense experiences. Consumer values have driven the shift, especially among younger generations. They’ve doubled down on authenticity, sustainability and meaningful connections.

Emotion is the engine behind luxury’s new branding. Far from hedonist escapism, this kind of indulgence targets the psyche. When it’s most successful, it burrows deep, evoking nothing short of wonder.

Brands are increasingly building such experiences into products and services. They target “the science behind awe—that feeling you get when you’re standing in front of something bigger than yourself,” says Alex Hawkins, director of strategic foresight at the Future Laboratory, a consultancy marketing firm with offices in London, New York, São Paulo and Melbourne.

Luxury’s New Feel Good Aspirational Model

To further his point, Hawkins refers to Dacher Keltner’s book, “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.” Keltner examines the effects of awe on human well-being, creativity and social connection, citing research and anecdotes. Moments of wonder—triggered by nature, art, spirituality and connection—deepen a sense of belonging.

Pair that with high-end amenities delivered with a consummate service model, and brands hit the sweet spot of what today’s luxury consumer searches for.

“Feeling deeply is becoming a form of luxury,” Hawkins says. “Feeling good, rather than just looking good, is aspirational.” The concept is explored in the report, New Codes of Luxury: Longevity & Wellbeing Strategies, created by the Future Laboratory in collaboration with the Together Group, a collective of creative consultancies.

Keltner and others say experiences are more memorable if associated with potent feelings of joy or wonder. Recognizing this powerful—and lucrative—trigger, brands have shifted to emotional storytelling when conveying a sense of identity.

Louis Vuitton was among the first to recognize how crucial a deep emotional connection is to a brand; the company launched its Travel Book collection in 2013. Artists are commissioned to capture the essence of cities through artworks that are compiled into high-end books. Congolese painter Chéri Samba, for example, captured Paris with his deeply hued surreal images. His work is now in the Paris-based Foundation Louis Vuitton, which promotes the arts, located in a Frank Gehry-designed building.

The striking building and the museum are additional ways Louis Vuitton extended its reach into the arts, linking profound emotional connections to its brand.

Luxury Scents Now Tell Stories

“Personal fragrance is another interesting example,” adds Hawkins. “It’s now being positioned as a wellness tool, not just as a beauty product. Scent is incredibly evocative.” Brands use scents to trigger specific emotions and stimulate certain parts of the brain for a desired effect, he says.

Such scents link to trends in ritual and mindfulness practices: meditation, yoga and sleep routines. Or they enhance moods, and claim to reduce stress or tighten the ability to focus.

One example: Diptyque’s “Les Mondes de Diptyque” candle collection. The five candles (from tree moss to orange blossom scents) represent “a tale transformed into scents … telling of secret and miraculous places, of nature and culture, working as one to captivate the senses,” according to the product’s marketing copy.

The Parisian company elevated the simple task of lighting a candle to a higher plane: “Light a candle and feel the beauty of the world.” French perfumer Olivia Giacobetti creates the scents and Italian designer Cristina Celestino designs the oval glass containers. The candles are priced at $285; refills cost $123.

The New Codes of Luxury report cites “the total experience” that purveyors of luxury aim to conjure for consumers. “Beyond owning goods, consumers want to enter curated worlds that resonate on a personal and cultural level,” states the report. Those worlds are nearly always associated with brands. Over three-quarters of luxury consumers highly value being part of a brand’s community, according to the Global Wellness Institute.

That trend is perhaps most striking as seen in branded residences, which are gaining in popularity. While luxury hotels lead the market, haute fashion houses (Fendi, Cavalli, Armani) and top-notch automotive brands (Aston Martin, Bentley, Porsche) have built towers that lure customers with high brand loyalty.

The branded residence trend accelerated in 2020; the industry is now valued at $66 billion worldwide, according to Luxonomy, which studies luxury trends. Dubai and Miami are hot spots, although Asia has seen an uptick in interest.

A Well-Lived Older Age Is Now A Luxury Status Symbol

Having a luxurious, deeply-felt lifestyle is one thing. But extending the pleasure into older age marks a new signifier of privilege, according to the New Codes of Luxury report. “Surging interest in longevity is rewriting the luxury playbook across beauty, health and hospitality,” states the report. The trend largely involves integrating such service as spas, wellness facilities and food and beverage venues into personalized programs.

An example: Geneva’s Mandarin Oriental, which partners with CENAS, a Swiss sleep centre. Guests can sign up for polysomnographic tests that diagnose sleep disorders. After analysis, they receive write-ups and consultations that help maximize sleep and energy levels.

Biohacking is a fancy term for lifestyle modifications that include cutting down on alcohol or coffee, incorporating intermittent fasting and strapping on devices that monitor body functions. According to Nova One Advisor, which reports on market research, the market is valued at $16 billion and is expected to grow 20% each year through 2030.

“EXQ Equinox” is a prime example of a biohacking service, offered by Equinox fitness centres for an annual fee of $40,000. The program includes more than 100 trackers for such biomarkers as hormones, nutrients and metabolic conditioning. Personal coaches skilled in health, sleep and nutrition also advise clients.

‘High-Touch’ Hospitality Is The New Standard

Hyper-personalization has become the new standard of exclusivity in luxurious experiences that target emotions. More than 75% of customers now expect personalization when interacting with brands, according to Zendesk, a data collection firm. Brands that deliver are 70% more likely to cash in on brand loyalty, according to Deloitte.

An example: the Ritz-Carlton Residences, Estero Bay’s “Experience Studio,” which caters to guests’ varied and minute tastes. Guests are matched with teams dedicated to fulfilling most any desire: catered meals, private boat excursions with a storytelling captain at the helm, an anniversary dinner on a private balcony, or just a dog walker.

Many luxury brands now combine high-touch with high-touch as they integrate AI into product recommendations that cater to guest preferences. Hotels excel in the field, but fashion houses—Gucci, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton—have also leveraged the technology to deliver signature offerings.

Feature Image Credit: Photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images.

By R. Daniel Foster

Follow me on LinkedIn. Check out my website.

R. Daniel Foster conveys the essence of art and culture for a global audience. Based in Los Angeles, his articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles…. read more

Sourced from Forbes

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How To Use AI for Personalized Marketing in 2025

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By Florian Fuehren

What if I called you Ryotaro? Odds are, you’d either be super pleased that someone pronounced one of the rarest first names on Earth correctly, or very confused why someone used that name to address you.

And if you’re thinking that we’re just fishing for the strangest imaginable example of customer interaction gone wrong in a customer journey far, far away, then we must set your world view straight.

Even one of Germany’s biggest magazine publishers famously made headlines by sending marketing messages to all clients opening with, “Dear Zero!” Not because Zero is the most common name in Germany, but because they didn’t set up their email marketing platform correctly.

This just goes to show that personalized marketing was already challenging before artificial intelligence (AI). Now, with many enterprises trying to create the sense of a one-on-one conversation while also scaling their efforts with generative AI, it’s even harder. Let’s see how you can achieve that.

Why Personalization Matters in Marketing

Ah, content personalization — the noble art of making consumers feel like a brand truly sees them, hoping they won’t notice that a marketing campaign doesn’t have eyes.

I’m not saying this to be snarky but to make a point. And that’s because your take on AI-driven personalization will very much reflect your brand values. Some brands will try to mine customer data like 19th-century gold diggers. That’s the reason you browse hiking boots once and are then haunted by them across every device you own, as if your phone is subtly judging your commitment to the outdoors.

Yes, brands try to benefit from the data they collect about consumer behavior. But while some will seem like the creepy neighbor, others actually use their customer data platform to build relationships beyond the next business transaction. And that’s what we mean when we talk about the user experience.

If one of your customers regularly buys running gear and shares the marathon training routes stored in their fitness app with your community, suggesting a pair of running shoes could be genuinely useful. The recommendation feels relevant, timely and aligned with their interests.

If someone buys a single screwdriver for a quick home repair, and suddenly every ad they see is for power drills and woodworking courses, your AI-driven personalization can feel completely off the mark. You may believe you’re marketing to a professional carpenter while you’re really annoying a student who just tried to fix a loose cabinet handle.

Plus, the level of personalization clients expect is changing. While it used to be enough to put a name tag (hopefully not “Zero”) into your email copy and be available, the pandemic has made us all… well, spoiled. Nowadays, we don’t just expect solutions, but personalized engagement and a customer experience tailored just to us. In fact, 81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience.

Unless you want to sound like Grandpa bragging about going viral on Facebook with a Minions meme, it’s time to update your digital marketing strategy to create true rapport with your clients while boosting ROI.

The Challenges of Truly Personalized Content and How AI Can Shape the Customer Experience

In a perfect world, every brand’s marketing team would send each of us a hand-crafted letter on gilt paper the moment we so much as think of their product, and immediately stop sending those when we lose interest.

Alas, that day will never come, because it’s just not practical.

That means, you as a company have to figure out what type of customer data you’ll want to collect to inform your AI personalization. For truly innovative offerings that deviate from those of your competitors, it could even mean walking your clients through the process, explaining how an AI agent might use certain data points.

No matter if you’re running a young startup or an established corporation, though, some of the challenges of a personalized marketing campaign will remain similar (with differences of scale):

  • Data collection: Gathering accurate user data that’s meaningful for your niche and product can be challenging due to fragmented data sources, incomplete profiles and tracking limitations.
  • Segmentation: Defining meaningful audience segments requires balancing granularity with practicality while avoiding overfitting or inaccurate product recommendations (Hello, drilling tool!)
  • Data privacy policies: Adhering to evolving regulations such as GDPR and CCPA complicates data usage, storage and compliance enforcement across different regions.
  • User consent management: Ensuring transparent op-in/opt-out processes while maintaining a seamless user experience can be technically and legally complex.
  • Scalability: Delivering real-time, hyper-personalized content at scale demands significant computing power, well-planned automation workflows and a robust infrastructure regularly auditing those processes.

Tough challenges, but AI applications can actually help address them. Where previously, content marketers could only rely on templates and name tags, AI-driven automation can help businesses optimize personalization and customer engagement to a degree that feels more organic and spontaneous. Think of it like the difference between a generic reference to your last purchase in an email and a personal chatbot assistant who anticipates your needs and guides you through the buying journey.

That’s not to say that AI-powered personalization is 100% superior and bots will never make a mistake. The difference is that, what used to be “Dear Zero” can now be an elaborately formulated suggestion. So even beyond traditional marketing formats, AI can enhance interactions in areas like chatbots, shopping cart messaging and recommendation engines. But getting it right also demands thorough preparation. A power drill is a power drill, even if you sound like Tolstoi.

How AI Enhances Marketing Personalization

So, you’ve seen the light. You’re ready to recommend a double-shot espresso machine to a client because they just bought a high-performance alarm clock and the comfiest weighted blanket — and you just want to give them a fighting chance. How exactly does AI help you personalize at scale? Here are some pointers:

  • AI-driven segmentation: AI can analyze customer behaviour patterns and segment audiences more precisely and faster than you ever could. Yes, you should still check the results, but in the meantime, you’ll benefit from micro-segmentation, ensuring hyper-relevant messaging.
  • Predictive pricing strategies: Think of how Netflix suggests shows before you even realize you wanted to watch them. Machine learning algorithms can anticipate customer needs based on past interactions, positioning yours as the company that “just gets clients.”
  • Dynamic pricing strategies: With AI, it’s easy to adjust pricing in real time based on demand, browsing history and purchasing patterns. This not only helps you create personalized offers that convert faster; products that feel uniquely personalized also unlock premium pricing.
  • Omnichannel personalization: Surprise, it’s not fun to enter your basic information in a quiz embedded in an email campaign, only to repeat the cycle on social media and in a voice assistant. With AI, you can provide a seamless experience across multiple touch points.
  • AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants: While they require some prep work, these tools can engage customers in meaningful, personalized conversations, resolving simple queries in real time, so your service and sales reps can focus on more challenging cases.

Tools and Strategies for AI-Powered Personalization

If all of this sounds great but slightly overwhelming, don’t worry. There are numerous AI tools designed to simplify personalization for businesses of all sizes. Here are a few to consider:

  • Chatbots: Tools like ChatGPT, Botsonic or Zapier Chatbots can provide instant, personalized interactions, ensuring customers receive relevant recommendations and support.
  • Dynamic content platforms: Tools like Adobe Sensei and Dynamic Yield enable marketers to create hyper-personalized web and email experiences based on real-time user behaviour.
  • AI-driven customer relationship management (CRM) systems: Platforms like Salesforce Einstein and HubSpot AI enhance CRM with predictive insights and automated personalization.
  • contentmarketing.ai: Brafton’s AI-powered content marketing platform helps businesses craft personalized content strategies and flesh out the copy for everything from press releases to white papers.

To kickstart your AI marketing efforts effectively, follow these practical steps:

  1. Prepare your data: Ensure you have a structured, compliant and clean dataset to feed into AI models for accurate predictions.
  2. Train AI algorithms: Fine-tune AI models based on historical data and user interactions.
  3. Test and iterate: Continuously monitor AI-driven campaigns and adjust them based on customer response and feedback.
  4. Scale personalization efforts: Start with small test groups before rolling out AI-driven personalization across larger customer segments.

Risks of Using AI Tools in Personalized Marketing and How To Mitigate Them

Just like any other tool, AI isn’t good or bad in itself, and it’s not without its pitfalls. Just as you can use a hammer to drive a nail into a wall or smash a window, AI also comes with risks, including:

  • Data privacy concerns: Collecting and using personal data without transparency can lead to distrust and legal repercussions. Develop a detailed AI strategy to protect your intellectual property, and make sure you discuss how business partners are approaching AI as well.
  • Algorithmic bias: AI systems can inadvertently reinforce biases, leading to exclusionary or inaccurate personalization. Plan for human supervision and intervention at every step, so the ease at which AI can scale your efforts doesn’t turn into a horror scenario.
  • Over-reliance on automation: Yes, it’s fun to have your personal butler, but relying too heavily on automation can cause lazy thinking and result in impersonal and even tone-deaf messaging.

AI is not just a futuristic tool. In time, it’ll become an essential component of every modern business strategy. By leveraging AI’s capabilities, your brand can move beyond cookie cutter personalization and create truly individualized experiences that foster deeper customer relationships.

That said, you should never lose sight of your responsibilities as a business. Marketers who prioritize transparency, ethical data practices and human-AI collaboration will find themselves ahead of the competition in delivering engaging and truly personalized marketing experiences. Everyone choosing the easy path will only put their customers in a HAL 9000 situation — an AI that takes personalization a little too far, refusing to let customers opt out while eerily insisting, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Note: This article was originally published on contentmarketing.ai.

By Florian Fuehren

Florian Fuehren is a Senior Writer at Brafton in Germany. Before becoming one of Brafton’s first German writers, Florian has worked as a ghostwriter, editor, and lecturer. When he’s not brooding over puns for the SaaS or Web3 niche, he likes to go jogging or maltreat his drum kit.

Sourced from Brafton

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4 Hallmarks of Today’s Best Email Marketing Strategies

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By Chad S. White

Less personalization in your email marketing strategy? You heard that right.

The Gist

  • Optimizing campaign frequency. Adjust email frequency based on engagement. Send fewer emails to less-engaged subscribers while increasing opportunities for highly-engaged ones.
  • Increasing revenue with automation. Automate key lifecycle moments. High-performing campaigns like cart abandonment and welcome emails drive the majority of email marketing revenue.
  • Personalization pitfalls. Less can be more. Overpersonalization diminishes brand voice, so dial back on variations to maintain a unified experience.

Succeeding at email marketing requires constant iteration and evolution with an eye on gradual improvements. This iteration happens in an environment of continual change, with some of those changes requiring adaptation and some merely presenting distractions.

Experienced email marketers know that a good email marketing program has an active mailable list size that’s growing and contributes positively to their business’s success metrics, with good open and click rates just being table stakes. A good program also has a spam complaint rate of under 0.1% (which is what Google and Yahoo expect) and an inbox placement rate of 95% or better.

Those characteristics are hallmarks of a good email marketing strategy. But what about the hallmarks of the best ones? Here are four key characteristics.

Table of Contents

Streamlining Email Frequency to Maximize Revenue

Since I entered the email marketing industry nearly 20 years ago, email frequencies have steadily increased, and they’ve paused only briefly in the wake of the introduction of Mail Privacy Protection. The relentless drumbeat of a “more email equals more money” strategy has led us to this point, where many brands are seeing declining engagement rates and increasingly frustrated subscribers, which threatens program health.

Because of that, elite programs are reassessing which subscribers receive which campaigns. They’re sending fewer campaigns to their less engaged subscribers and more campaigns to their more engaged subscribers.

This not only improves their deliverability and program health by increasing engagement rates and reducing opt-outs, but it also increases revenue because it gives their more engaged subscribers additional opportunities to engage.

Related Article: 7 Factors That Determine Email Deliverability

Use Automation to Drive Email Marketing Revenue

Welcomes, cart abandonment and other automated campaigns are the most productive emails teams can send. Their return on investment far exceeds run-of-the-mill broadcast promotional campaigns.

It’s that outsized productivity that allows roughly 15% of brands to generate the majority of their email marketing revenue from their automated campaigns, which typically represent less than 5% of their overall email volume. Through the steady launch, maintenance and optimization of automations over years, they’ve been able to automatically address key moments and points of friction in their customers’ lifecycles.

If you want to achieve this and you’re unsure if you’re addressing all the moments that matter for your customers, take a look at this checklist of automated campaign ideas.

Reducing Personalization for Stronger Brand Voice

That’s not a typo. I do mean reducing, not increasing. That’s because the best programs have already overdone personalization, and, yes, that is a danger. They’ve realized that in their email marketing strategy, they’d squeezed out brand messaging, diminished their brand voice and undermined their ability to create common brand experiences. So, they’ve started to dial back on personalization a bit.

Last year, the brands that bragged about sending out more than 100,000 variations of email campaigns will most likely be the ones to realize they overdid it to the detriment of their brand and throttle back this year.

Maintaining or Increasing Email Marketing Budget

A bizarre thing is happening. During 2024, many brands deprioritized high-ROI marketing channels and shifted budget to lower-ROI advertising channels, according to Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend Survey.

“In these tough times, CMOs are prioritizing investments that have demonstrable impact,” said Ewan McIntyre, VP analyst and chief of research for Gartner for Marketers. “However, there’s a mismatch between the channels CMOs are investing in and their perceived impact.”

Given instability among social networks and increasing privacy protections, there have never been more reasons to invest in building larger first-party audiences and gaining more first-party data. The best email marketing strategy recognizes this imperative and continues to invest in strong subscriber relationships and retention programs.

Looked at this collectively, the first two hallmarks focus on delivering more campaigns to your most engaged subscribers and best customers, while minimizing fatigue for less engaged ones. The last two hallmarks, on the other hand, are centered around preserving your brand.

Where is your organization on its journey toward achieving each of these goals?

Core Questions Around Email Marketing Strategy

Editor’s note: Here are two important questions to ask about email marketing strategy.

What are the best ways to increase email marketing revenue without sending more emails?

The key is to target more engaged subscribers with tailored campaigns. Brands should segment their lists to send fewer emails to less engaged subscribers while sending more frequent and relevant emails to their best customers. By doing so, they can improve engagement rates, reduce opt-outs and increase revenue. A strong email marketing strategy focused on segmentation and smart targeting is crucial for maximizing ROI.

How can automation impact email marketing revenue?

Brands that focus on automated campaigns like cart abandonment, welcome emails and re-engagement emails often see higher returns on investment. These types of emails can drive a lot of revenue, even though they may account for less than 5% of total email volume. Implementing an effective email marketing strategy with automated workflows allows brands to address key moments in the customer lifecycle, and it reduces manual effort while increasing revenue generation.

Feature Image Credit: Kristina Tripkovic

By Chad S. White

Chad S. White is the author of four editions of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Digital Experience Agency, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle. Connect with Chad S. White: 

Sourced from CMS Wire

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Seasonal Email Strategies: Stand out on Black Friday & Cyber Monday

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By Chad S. White

Holiday email promos need a little dialling up — and dialling down — on standard tactics.

The Gist

  • Email relationships. Previous engagement boosts holiday email performance, increasing subscriber interaction and revenue during Cyber 5.
  • Social proof. Highlighting top search terms and popular products in holiday emails can inspire and guide subscriber purchases effectively.
  • Clear messaging. Simplify holiday email content with clear, direct messaging and seasonal imagery to capture hurried subscribers’ attention.

Everyone wants to have their seasonal email strategies stand out during the Thanksgiving-to-Cyber Monday time period, called Cyber 5. And for good reason. Based on an examination of email campaign performance among retailers and ecommerce brands using Oracle Responsys, campaigns sent during the Cyber 5 weekend routinely generate the highest revenue per email for the whole year — by far.

However, marketing emails aren’t ads. They’re not about shouting the loudest, flashing the brightest colours or being the most sensational or shocking. They’re also not about abusing trust with misleading or vague copy.

There are two components in the battle for holiday email marketing attention.

 

A black mailbox adorned with a festive holiday wreath stands on a white post in a suburban neighborhood, symbolizing the importance of a well-crafted holiday email marketing strategy to capture customer attention and boost engagement during the festive season.
Ready for your inbox invasion through Cyber 5?Lana on Adobe Stock Photos

 

Seasonal Email Strategies: Half the Battle for Attention

The truth is that the battle for attention during the Cyber 5 is already half won long before your Black Friday or Cyber Monday campaign arrives in inboxes. That’s because seasonal email strategies are relationships, so previous engagement has a major impact on future engagement. If your email program delivers value to lots of subscribers during August and September, then they’re much more likely to engage during the holiday season. And the more frequent and substantial that engagement is, the better off you’re likely to be.

ZeroBounce research recently confirmed this, finding that 47% of people say they open a brand email not because of the subject line, but because that brand always sends them good emails.

In my book, “Email Marketing Rules,” I call this the zero stage of an email interaction. This is why sender names are more powerful than any subject line you can come up with. Your sender name brings to the surface all of your subscriber’s feelings about their recent interactions with your brand. If those feelings are positive, it leads to positive results.

The Other Half of the Battle

The rest of the battle is about your seasonal email strategies themselves. But here, brands sometimes have misconceptions, in part because subscribers behave differently during the holiday season. Consumers have different goals than the rest of the year, and they’re also generally much more pressed for time in the inbox, in part because they’re receiving more campaigns.

Here are some tactics to dial up and to dial back on during the holiday season to maximize performance.

Dial Back Personalization

Personalization is perennially among the top email marketing trends. And new opportunities that are fuelled by customer data platforms and advanced AI are likely to keep it at the top of marketers’ to-do lists for years to come.

However, during the holiday season, subscribers are (mostly) shopping for others, so the zero- and first-party data you’ve been collecting all year isn’t likely to be very useful for tailoring messages.

Dial up Social Proof

Instead of focusing on what each subscriber did months ago, focus on what your customers are doing collectively now. In your email campaigns, highlight:

  • Top site search terms, so subscribers can understand and be inspired by what others are looking for.
  • Most browsed product categories, which encourage subscribers to explore categories they haven’t shopped recently or ever.
  • Most social buzz, such as likes on Instagram or pins on Pinterest.
  • Most purchased products, which is probably the ultimate barometer of popularity.

Dial back Interactivity

Interactive emails bring common web experiences into the inbox, enabling product carousels, tabbed interfaces, hotspots and more. However, interactivity typically isn’t worthwhile during the holiday season because subscribers are in such a hurry. It’s also tough to do because it increases production times when marketers are creating more campaigns than ever.

Dial up Clarity

Even more than usual, clear and simple wins during the holiday season, because people are in such a hurry. Front load your subject lines with the most important words, and pay extra attention to your message hierarchy, ensuring your most important message points stand out from your less important ones. Especially if you’re promoting a strong offer (and I hope you have plenty of those), you don’t want to undermine it by having cluttered messaging or an overly busy design.

Dial up Scarcity

When something is in low supply or likely to sell out, let subscribers know. If you’re able to include real-time inventory numbers for the products featured in your emails using live content, that can be powerful.

But don’t fake it. Your most loyal customers will see that you’re lying to them if you perpetually claim something will sell out and it doesn’t or, worse, you’re faking real-time inventory numbers by manually including them. And it’s your most loyal customers that you can’t afford to offend.

Dial up Seasonal Imagery & Content

Let your subscribers know you’re in the holiday spirit and hope they are, too. Consider:

  • Adding holiday imagery to your header, including snowflakes, holly leaves or sparkles.
  • Add a “Holiday” or “Gifts” link to your navigation bar.
  • Add a gift services footer that highlights gift guides, gift return policies, gift wrapping options, order-by deadlines and other important holiday details and policies.

Dial up Automation

Triggered campaigns are likely the silent heroes of your holiday season. They’re quietly rescuing abandoned carts, following up on product category interest, notifying customers of back-in-stocks, welcoming seasonal subscribers and more. And their ROIs are through the roof.

Before the holiday season arrives, have a plan to ensure your triggered emails perform their best. If nothing else, make time to review and QA your automations, checking for out-of-date language, broken images and broken links. But also, consider adding seasonal imagery and content blocks to these emails, just like you would to your broadcast promotional emails.

The Big Picture

If you’re anything like our retail and ecommerce clients, you’re already well on your way to planning your seasonal email strategies, including your Black Friday and Cyber Monday emails.

But as you do that, recognize that the email experiences you create and the value you deliver to subscribers over the next couple of months will have a big impact on how your seasonal email strategies perform.

By Chad S. White

Chad S. White is the author of four editions of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Digital Experience Agency, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle.

Sourced from CMSWIRE

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How B2B marketers can adapt to a privacy-first world

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By Allie Kelly

Need for precision marketing amidst the cookie apocalypse

For years, B2B marketers have used the data and technology at their fingertips and leveraged cookies to target the right people at the right time. Yet, the reliance on third-party cookies and the consequent data privacy concerns have spotlighted the fragile balance between personalization and privacy. A growing number of people are concerned about how much of their online activity is tracked—72% feel almost everything they do online is monitored by advertisers or technology firms, while 81% believe the risks associated with data collection outweigh the benefits. The message is clear — the future of B2B marketing lies in respecting and protecting user privacy.

Google‘s 2020 announcement to block third-party cookies by 2024 sent shockwaves through the industry, compelling B2B marketers to rethink their approach to user tracking and targeted advertising. And while Google has once again delayed the phase-out timeline, it serves as a stark reminder that the end of third-party cookies is near, and organizations must use this extra time to adapt to a privacy-focused landscape. The cookie deprecation delay offers a critical opportunity to explore sustainable marketing practices while underlining the need for a strategic pivot.

Allie Kelly, Chief Marketing Officer at Intensify.

A privacy-first approach

While the end of cookies may seem daunting, many emerging technologies and strategies can help maintain effective and ethical audience targeting while meeting evolving privacy standards. With a clear understanding of the changing data privacy landscape and a focus on compliance, here’s how marketers can prepare for the imminent phase-out of third-party cookies, often referred to as the “Cookie Apocalypse,” ensuring marketing programs remain effective:

Prioritize first-party data

The deprecation of third-party cookies elevates the importance of first-party data — data collected directly from interactions with customers and prospects. This includes everything from contact information and purchase history to user behavior on an organization’s website. Leveraging zero-party data, information that customers willingly share, will also become increasingly crucial. By offering value in exchange for data through ebooks, webinars, and free trials, businesses can build a rich, consent-based data repository.

Implementing a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can further help organize and analyse this data, fostering personalized marketing initiatives and enriched customer experiences.

Expand intent signal coverage

Some intent data vendors are adjusting to the cookie-less world by using alternative identifiers to monitor buyer research activities and behaviours. This broader spectrum of buying signals allows B2B marketers to capture a more comprehensive view of intent, facilitating targeted lead generation and digital advertising. Building comprehensive identity graphs that integrate multi-source intent signals can significantly enhance the quality of intent intelligence at our disposal.

Stay informed and compliant

The landscape of data privacy regulations is continually evolving. Staying abreast of regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is imperative for compliance and maintaining consumer trust. Regular training sessions on privacy practices for your team can go a long way in avoiding pitfalls and demonstrating your commitment to user privacy.

The future is intent-driven

As the digital marketing landscape shifts towards a cookie-less world, intent data emerges as a crucial asset for targeted marketing. With the delay in Google’s cookie deprecation timeline, it’s clear that marketing leaders must proactively adapt to the evolving environment. Traditional targeting methods, like IP-based strategies, are becoming less reliable, with 80% of marketers expressing doubts about their ability to reach the right audiences programmatically, and one in three citing wasted ad spending as a significant concern.

To navigate this change, B2B marketers are turning to AI-powered solutions that merge multiple sources of intent data to pinpoint in-market accounts with remarkable accuracy. This precision allows for more effective targeting and ultimately leads to improved conversion rates and accelerated sales pipelines. Intent data helps determine an account’s research stage and key topics of interest, enabling marketers to deliver personalized, relevant ads to specific personas within prioritized accounts. This shift towards AI-enabled, intent-based targeting not only offers a higher return on investment but also aligns with growing demands for privacy and compliance. By focusing on first-party data, expanding intent signal coverage, and embracing AI-driven identity graphs, marketers can create more resilient and sustainable marketing strategies in a world that’s rapidly moving beyond third-party cookies.

Building a future-resistant marketing strategy

The “Cookie Apocalypse,” demands a strategic and proactive approach to future-proof marketing strategies. Organizations must first undertake a comprehensive assessment of their current systems and data collection practices to identify their reliance on third-party cookies. This evaluation helps gauge the potential impact of digital and privacy regulation changes and guides the development of a flexible strategy that addresses both immediate and long-term challenges.

Collaboration with existing vendors is a crucial step in understanding their preparedness and exploring alternative solutions that comply with upcoming privacy norms. This process requires an innovative mindset, encouraging businesses to tap into new tools and technologies that align with the evolving privacy-focused digital landscape. By fostering a culture of collaboration, organizations can leverage external expertise while exploring adaptive strategies to ensure compliance and operational continuity.

Ultimately, the goal is to build a resilient marketing framework that not only survives but thrives in a post-cookie world. Staying informed about industry trends, engaging stakeholders, and maintaining flexibility are key to ensuring business success in this new environment. By embracing the shift towards a cookie-less future, businesses can position themselves for sustainable growth and a more privacy-conscious marketing approach. This strategic evolution will not only help organizations navigate the transition but will also set them on a path toward a more innovative and adaptable future in digital marketing.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro’s Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Feature Image credit: Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva from Pexels

By Allie Kelly

Allie Kelly is a Chief Marketing Officer with over 20 years of experience in both B2B and B2C companies. Currently, she holds the CMO position at Intensify.

Sourced from techradar.pro

 

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3 Ways to Personalize Your Marketing for Higher Engagement

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BY JOY GENDUSA 

Use these three key tips to successfully incorporate personalization into your marketing.

In the early 2000s, Starbucks made writing customers’ names on cups a standard. Every time you ordered a drink, the barista would make sure your first name was written right on your grande mocha latte.

However, no one would have guessed that this simple, personalized gesture by Starbucks would become the next viral meme. With millions of different names to nail down, errors would surely be made. The problem was that some misspellings weren’t just a little wrong, they were very wrong — so wrong that the internet loved it.

Personalizing every drink seemed a daunting task, but the payoff was worth it — even when you factor in those viral flubs. Snapping a photo of your morning Starbucks is still an Instagram mainstay to this day, regardless of whether they get your name right.

Starbucks cashed in early on something people intuitively crave: personalization. A recent study on consumer engagement found that 86% of consumers feel personalized experiences increase their loyalty to a brand, while 66% said they would quit a brand if their experience wasn’t personalized.

Here are three ways you can incorporate personalization into your marketing without having to ask, “How do you spell that?”

1. Address every prospect by first name using dynamic or variable data

Luckily, computers are much more reliable than the human hand when it comes to spelling names. You can add prospects’ first names to mailers and emails to grab more attention and make a longer-lasting impression.

Leveraging someone’s first name is a good step toward creating a personalized experience. One study found that personalization in marketing, including naming, can significantly improve brand attitude and purchase likelihood without being perceived as intrusive.

Hopefully, you’ve already crafted emails using dynamic first-name codes that automatically substitute each recipient’s name into every email. You can also incorporate first-name tags into your subject lines for an added boost.

In the specific case of direct mail, research shows that most people prefer personalization. One study found that the response rate to direct mail increased by 135% when it was personalized by the recipient’s name and was in full colour. When all factors were combined — meaning name, colour and database information were personalized to each recipient through something known as variable data — the response rate went up even higher to 500%.

When you add that on top of the fact that studies put direct mail’s response rate at 500-900% better than other advertising channels, you have a powerful tool for boosting your bottom line.

The key with personalization is creating a personal connection without coming off like you are invading their privacy. Any information that you use should be either public record or first-party, provided directly by your customers and clients. Once you have the data, put it to good use with personalized messaging.

2. Target prospects based on context and interest rather than demographics

Marketing trends will have you targeting buyers like a game of Guess Who. Is my ideal customer a man or a woman? Are they older or younger? Do they wear a hat?

Demographic-based targeting focuses on who you want as your customer — but not the why or when behind the customer’s own experience.

But we can flip the script with contextual targeting, which focuses on the why and when of delivering ads. For example, with contextual search, a person who looks up “landscape lighting ideas” will see an ad about that same topic in their feed. This allows shoppers to find you faster.

You can also use geotargeting and a little creativity to find people likely to want or need your product or service. For example, if a woman often visits an organic grocery store or vitamin shop, she might respond well to other types of wellness products or services. A gym could target her and offer a month of free membership or a free yoga class at a studio.

The future of this digital marketing strategy anticipates prospects’ needs before they even start looking to fulfil them.

3. Automate responsive triggers that will personalize the customer journey without extra workload

Personalization is a great way to get prospects interested and even lead them straight to a sale, but what if their attention gets lost along the way, or you want them to bring them back for repeat purchases?

Automated marketing can help fill those gaps. Using the same example from above, a woman who is focused on wellness may see a yoga studio’s ad and visit their website to learn more. That is certainly a win. However, how do you get her to return to your website if she leaves without converting? Realistically, only a fraction of your website visitors will convert, after all.

Retargeting ads are an obvious answer that is hopefully already in your arsenal. Personally, when it comes to re-capturing attention, I’m for pulling out all the stops — and that means leveraging the high response rate of direct mail. Using a relatively new technology called direct mail retargeting, you can automatically retarget unconverted website visitors offline. With retargeted mailers, the woman in the above example would receive a mailer offering her a free yoga class within 24 hours of a website visit.

Abandoned shopping carts are another way to funnel interested buyers to a close. Send emails or postcards to prospects who put items in their cart but never followed through with a purchase.

Your message could say, “Forget to check out? Come back — we have a special offer just for you!”

The type of automation you put in place will be based on your specific industry. Take some time to think about actions and behaviours that could trigger a mailer or digital ad, and you’ll be on your way to a future of business growth and success.

BY JOY GENDUSA 

ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK® CONTRIBUTOR

Founder/CEO of PostcardMania. Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998 with just a phone & a computer (no funding or investments), and today we generate over $100 million annually with 365 staff. I’m passionate about helping small businesses succeed at marketing and grow — because when small business does well, we all win.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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How to Harness the Power of Personalization in B2B Marketing

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By Samuel Thimothy

Here’s what you can do to reach more business-to-business customers and make your campaigns more efficient through the power of personalization.

Featured Image Credit: Getty Images

By Samuel Thimothy

VP at OneIMS.com, an inbound marketing agency, and co-founder of Clickx.io, the digital marketing intelligence platform.

Sourced from Inc.

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3 Ways Ecommerce Brands Can Use AI for Personalization

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By Shane O’Neill

How AI is revolutionizing ecommerce, from personalized ads to dynamic pricing and enhanced customer support.

The Gist

  • AI powerhouse. AI for personalization enhances individualized ecommerce experiences.
  • Tech advantage. Machine learning dynamically adapts prices, boosting consumer appeal.
  • Customer support. AI-enabled chatbots provide personalized, emotionally intelligent assistance.

Attention ecommerce brands: The days of blanketing consumers with vaguely relevant ads are over.

Seven out of 10 consumers now expect brands to personalize ads and product recommendations, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen, according to McKinsey research.

In response, nine out of 10 businesses, including Coca-Cola, Netflix and Sephora, are investing in the practice of using artificial intelligence (AI) for personalization to give consumers a one-to-one experience, or something close to it.

In a nutshell, personalization in ecommerce uses data to show customers products and deals tailored just for them. Instead of asking shoppers to sift through a list of products, personalization uses a customer’s purchase history and browsing behaviour with the brand to suggest the most likely item that person would buy.

To return the favour, 78% of consumers are likely to make repeat purchases from companies that personalize, according to the same McKinsey report mentioned above.

Yet personalization will only boost customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and sales if it’s executed precisely. And to do that requires culling insights from droves of customer data that humans simply cannot process and analyse manually.

And this is where artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) come into play for ecommerce brands.

AI for Personalization in Ecommerce

Personalization in ecommerce is still possible without AI, but it relies on grouping customers into “personas” based on shared demographics or interests. While this is an adequate approach, today’s consumer can sniff out when they’re being marketed to as a persona rather than an individual.

AI-based personalization is much more specific, using advanced algorithms to scan volumes of customer data and deliver information to you based on your own specific behaviour.

“AI’s ability to process data in real-time and adapt on the fly to create personalized experiences is a key advantage for ecommerce brands,” said Kristin Smith, managing director and retail commerce lead at Deloitte Digital. “It also helps that AI isn’t prone to human mistakes and can work 24/7.”

With advanced personalization now expected by the majority of consumers, ecommerce brands have a variety of ways to utilize AI to deliver tailored shopping experiences. Here are three of them.

1. Product Recommendations for the Individual

One of the clearest examples of using AI for personalization are the tailored product recommendations we see in emails or when logging on to our favourite ecommerce brand’s web site.

Here, complex machine learning algorithms mine your previous purchases, cart adds, product reviews, and product interactions, and generate personalized product recommendations in real time.

This customer data becomes the basis for training an algorithm that continues to learn and improve on the accuracy of recommendations as it receives new data.

Example to Emulate: Netflix

Netflix is a recommendation trailblazer. The streaming giant’s recommendation engine, called NRE (Netflix Recommendation Engine), uses algorithms to analyse data from each member’s viewing history and generates hyper personalized movie and TV show recommendations.

2. Automated Dynamic Pricing

Constantly adjusting product prices is a necessary but time-consuming task. By incorporating machine learning into pricing, ecommerce brands can automatically adjust prices in real time based on their own manufacturing costs, competitor’s prices, market demand and seasonality.

AI-based dynamic pricing benefits consumers by:

  • Monitoring the competition and adjusting prices to ensure customers get a fair price.
  • Offering real-time personalized discounts based on a customer’s behavior. For instance, if a person continually shows interest in a product, a dynamic pricing algorithm could entice that person with a time-limited discount.

Example to Emulate: Amazon

Amazon is the king of AI-based dynamic pricing. The ecommerce giant uses machine learning to update the prices of millions of products several times every day. Its repricing algorithm factors in product demand, stock availability and customer behavior. This allows Amazon to consistently offer the most competitive prices.

3. Personalized Customer Support via AI-Powered Chatbots

Using NLP and sentiment analysis, today’s chatbots understand not just text but also the emotion behind customer support requests.

When you combine sentiment, access to customer data and speedy responses, it’s easy to see why chatbots are now a personalization tool. Today’s chatbots can greet customers by name, recommend products and discounts based on purchase and browsing data, and even help customers complete online purchases.

Example to Emulate: Sephora

Most ecommerce chatbots can handle rudimentary customer inquiries, but the more innovative chatbots also serve as shopping assistants.

Cosmetics retailer Sephora is a prime example. Sephora’s website chatbot answers questions about returns and exchanges. But it’s also a virtual assistant that asks customers questions about their skin tone and makeup preferences and then gives tailored recommendations.

The Big AI Personalization Challenge: Relevant Data

The benefits of using AI for personalization are clear, but the success of your strategy hinges on your data.

Kristin Smith of Deloitte recommends that ecommerce brands ask themselves the following questions regarding customer data:

  • What is the quality and source of the data your brand is trying to use?
  • Does the brand have permission to collect and use the data they have?
  • How actionable and granular is the data?

“Many organizations have customer data only at a high level,” Smith said. “But high-level, demographic data does not always translate to actionable insights for personalization.”

In addition to having the skilled staff in place to implement and maintain AI tools, the entire marketing and data team should always ensure that the data the AI algorithms are using is unbiased and specific enough to actually help the customer connect with your brand and buy from you consistently.

“There will be a rabbit hole of ideas for data points AI can collect for personalization,” said Derric Haynie, head of demand generation at Pipe17 and co-founder of Ecommerce Tech.

“Maybe you’re going to test new products based on previous purchase history. Or test personalized emails based on when customers last visited the site. There’s a lot to personalize, and the nature of personalization is recognizing each person has a different customer journey, and catering to it.”

Feature Image Credit: Blue Planet Studio

By Shane O’Neill

Shane O’Neill is an award-winning journalist and content marketer with more than 20 years of experience covering digital transformation, content marketing, social media marketing, artificial intelligence, and ecommerce. His work has been recognized nationally, earning an ASBPE Award for Blogging and a Min Editorial & Design Award for Best Online Article. Shane’s experience as both a B2B journalist at CIO.com and InformationWeek and as a content marketing director at tech startups gives him a unique insider/outsider perspective on tech innovation. Connect with Shane O’Neill: https://twitter.com/smoneill 

Sourced from CMSWIRE

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Generative AI for Email Personalization: A Hallucination Wrapped in Confusion

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By Chad S. White

The potential for generative AI creating highly personalized emails may be premature, as current AI technology falls short in several areas.

The Gist

  • Scaling limitations. Generative AI struggles to efficiently create highly personalized emails without significant manual intervention, limiting its practicality at scale.
  • Traditional superiority. Existing personalization methods and machine learning models are more effective, reliable and risk-averse than current generative AI approaches for email personalization.
  • Unproven potential. The performance and return on investment of generative AI personalization in emails remain uncertain, with unclear benefits and possibly diminishing novelty.

Let me be blunt: We are so far away from generative AI writing personalized emails in any meaningful way. So very far. Yet, I keep hearing people suggest that generative AI will be writing highly personalized emails to individuals in the not-too-distant future.

I don’t think this is a realistic expectation at any significant scale, with any degree of automation and with a reliable expectation of increased performance — much less a positive return on investment. Let me explain why.

Not at Scale

The best example I’ve seen of generative artificial intelligence (AI) writing a one-to-one email was a meeting request for a salesperson. First, that’s a pretty generic request — and, in the example, amounted to 10 words. Not a big time-saver. Second, the salesperson is chaperoning the AI, and if they don’t like what’s written, they either have to edit it or write a follow up prompt for changes, which further reduces the time-savings. In that example, the degree to which it was personalized was achieved through manual intervention and not automatically driven by the recipient’s past behaviours, demographics or other criteria — which is the traditional definition of personalization.

While generative AI will get much better in the years ahead, that example is a very realistic example of how generative AI would be used in a “blank page” email situation right now, given generative AI’s many faults and limitations, including its propensity to “hallucinate.” That use case appropriately minimizes the risk by (1) asking for a routine request, (2) keeping the text short and (3) having the output monitored and approved by an employee before it’s sent.

Not Automated

To date, I’m not aware of any brands using ChatGPT or any other large language model (LLM) to incorporate personalized content into an email. And there’s a good reason for that: It’s unnecessary.

Traditional methods of personalization are highly effective and are far from fully utilized — due to siloed and unreliable data. And machine learning models for product recommendations and send time optimization are even less utilized. These existing tools are tried and true and offer solid returns with much more control — which is to say, with far less risk — than generative AI.

In fact, when generative AI is ultimately used for personalization, I predict it will be fed content that’s been personalized using traditional methods. Put another way, any personalization done by generative AI will be done on top of traditionally personalized content. That approach would minimize generative AI’s opportunities to introduce inaccuracies, biases, plagiarized material and other problematic content while simultaneously focusing generative AI on the kind of personalization that only it can do.

Just what are these new forms of personalization that only generative AI enables? Here are a few:

  • Tone. Some subscribers are receptive to more aggressive pitches while others are much less so. And, of course, there’s a whole spectrum of potential tones that could be used. Generative AI could rewrite copy on the fly to better align with what subscribers respond to best.
  • Vernacular. Language varies in significant ways by geographic region, education level, religious beliefs and other factors. Especially if it’s informed by sales and support correspondence, generative AI could adapt a brand’s messages to match the recipient’s language usage.
  • Image backgrounds. Generative AI for images can enable brands to create highly personalized images based on the subscriber’s location, industry and more. For example, an outdoors retailer could place a model in any number of national parks depending on the location of the subscriber or knowledge of where they like to hike or camp.

As with all personalization, a big part of the challenge will be securing enough data to make sound decisions. But even if that hurdle is cleared, there’s the question of performance and generating a return on investment.

Unproven Performance

Oracle Marketing Consulting has identified more than 170 segmentation and personalization criteria that can be used in digital marketing campaigns. However, just because you can personalize a message using a particular data point doesn’t mean your subscribers will respond positively to it. Through experience and testing, each brand must discover which factors truly move the needle for them. The same is true for generative AI personalization.

Even if you have the data to try to personalize the vernacular of your emails, for example, it’s currently unclear if this would be a winning approach. It’s likely that at least some subscribers would find this kind of personalization creepy and manipulative.

It’s also likely that some performance boosts likely wouldn’t be sustainable as the novelty wears off. The history of first-name personalization likely provides a good example. A decade and a half ago when it was new, first-name mail merges moved the needle for a while. But it quickly became a hollow gesture and a gimmick because it generally didn’t signal that the email’s body content was any more relevant to subscribers. First-name personalization got brief bumps when brands gained the ability to personalize images with a subscriber’s name and again when they could personalize videos with their name. But subscribers still view these as technological stunts that don’t signal anything meaningful.

Generative AI personalization may have the same effect, drawing attention away from your message and to the technological stunt of personalizing an image with the skyline of the person’s home city, for example. Sure, it will be cool the first time you encounter it, but the novelty will fade quickly because it’s based on relatively easy-to-obtain geographic data that doesn’t speak to the person’s needs or wants. Plus, attention-grabbing tactics often don’t translate into better performance.

Uncertain ROI

Even if generative AI personalization can boost performance, a positive return on investment is unlikely — definitely not at current “per token” price levels. And given email volumes, it’s possible that generative AI personalization may never make financial sense except for highly targeted campaigns.

It’s worth noting that many of our clients have seen lacklustre returns when using predictive subject line writing tools like Phrasee and Persado. These tools have been around for many years and are primarily driven by machine learning models where wording recommendations are based on the historical performance of a brand’s subject lines and other copy. If models that are trained on historical performance can’t reliably generate a strong ROI, marketers should be deeply sceptical that generative AI tools with no access to performance intelligence can.

Muddied Terminology

A big contributor to this premature idea of generative AI personalization is that some people are using the terms machine learning, AI and generative AI almost interchangeably. While they’re all loosely related, they’re far from the same. They operate using different algorithms and models, have different goals, are built on different datasets and are appropriate for different use cases.

With generative AI and AI in general being so hot right now, brands need to work extra hard to be clear-eyed about what’s possible now and what may perhaps be possible at some point in the future. Just like in the late ’90s when adding “.com” to company names was all the rage, now .ai domains are super popular. Just like then, in some cases these are just aspirational or opportunistic marketing moves.

Generative AI will ultimately be huge, and brands should absolutely experiment with and get comfortable with it. However, we’re in the hype-iest part of the hype cycle, so proceed with caution and ask lots of questions.

By Chad S. White

Chad S. White is the author of four editions of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle.

Sourced from CMS Wire

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AI’s Role in Digital and Retail Personalization, Part 1: The Big Picture

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By Justin Racine

Now more than ever, the convergence of retail and digital commerce has never been more important.

The Gist

  • Dreams and the path. Desire leads to personalized journeys and trajectories, as seen in my this author’s own story of buying a Mustang and getting a marketing internship.
  • The evolution. Personalization has been around for decades, evolving from traditional relationship marketing to email marketing and now AI-powered personalization in almost all aspects of life.
  • Three-part series. This series will explore three main components of personalization in retail, digital, and the intersection of dissonance and action.

When I was in high school, I pined for a fast, cool-looking muscle car to be my first vehicle. At age 16, all I could think about was a convertible Ford Mustang — and I was really determined to buy it. My parents, being the traditional people they were said, “Son, if you want this — you need to work for it — that’s how life goes.”

So, I did what any 16-year-old would do — I decided to find a job at a local golf course as I played quite frequently with friends and thought it would be something I would enjoy. (It was.) Sure enough, I saved up the money and was able to buy the Mustang I wanted so desperately.

But what happened next is what would forever alter the course of my life in a personalized way.

An Internship and a Transformation

While working at the golf course — I also was attending classes at a university, specifically for a degree in marketing and advertising strategy. Part of the course curriculum required me to get an internship; and, well, working at a golf course didn’t quite cut it. I gave my notice and told the owner of the course what was going on and he said, “Justin, we loved having you here and hate to see you go — you know, I also work as a general manager of a medical product distribution company — we could use someone like you this summer.”

Eager to upgrade my Mustang, I accepted and spent the summer learning marketing and advertising within the medical space.

We All Have Our Personalized Journeys

This story is important to set the stage of this article. We all as humans have our own journeys, personalized to what’s important to us. For me, it was a Mustang convertible — my desire to have that car set me off on my own personalized journey and trajectory. I later accepted a full-time position at the above-mentioned medical products company and spent the next 13 years learning and absorbing as much as a I could, which provided me with the path to that I’m still on today.

The same holds true for consumers today who demand experiences built on AI-powered personalization. Consumers want and demand things in their lives, and marketers and advertisers must provide personalized journeys to help them intuitively find what they want, and ultimately — change the trajectories of their lives. But to do so, requires a little help from our computer conscious friends.

Personalization, From the Start

The term personalization is somewhat new, thanks to the vast and wide adoption of technology and AI that allows brands to display products and services that we desire; that being said, personalization has been around for decades and traditionally took on another term, Relationship Marketing.

The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) describes “relationship marketing” as “a strategy of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that emphasizes customer retention, satisfaction and lifetime customer value. Its purpose is to market to current customers versus new customer acquisition through sales and advertising.”

This holds true, to a point.

At its core, relationship marketing has really always been around. A customer visits your business, purchases a service or product, consumes that service or product, then hopefully if you as a business gave them an exceptional experience — the cycle will repeat. This of course has been prevalent since businesses have been around — however, relationship marketing also made a massive step forward during the 1990s, thanks to the rise of the internet and email marketing.

By Justin Racine

Sourced from CMSWIRE

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