HEY, {YOUR NAME HERE}, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT PERSONALIZATION?
(I’m not gonna lie to y’all – I don’t have the ability to change your name on the headline above so bare with me.)
We all love feeling special – especially when someone we love makes us feel that way. But is the same true for us as consumers when we receive personalized advertising from brands? The answer is a resounding yes.
Even with massive shifts in data privacy that limit an advertiser’s ability to create highly personalized targeting – personalization is still an integral part of digital marketing success. The ability to create contextually relevant messaging at an individual level contributes to the customer experience (CX).
The Customer Experience is the way customers feel about your brand across the entire customer journey – both online and off. Managing this experience takes dedication, fine-tune optimizations, and strong data tracking.
While I could write an entire article about CX, let’s focus on one of the aspects that makes CX exponentially better – personalization.
The Facts About Personalized Marketing
90% of U.S. consumers find personalized marketing content somewhat to very appealing. (Statista)
45% of consumers say the “coolest” personalized tactic they’ve seen is when a brand apologizes for poor shopping experiences. (Accenture)
67% of consumers think it’s important for brands to automatically adjust content based on current context. When brands don’t adjust accordingly, 42% of consumers will “get annoyed” that content isn’t personalized. (Adobe)
In a 2019 study, 79% of consumers surveyed believed companies knew too much about them, but 90% were still willing to share behavioral data for a cheaper and easier brand experience. (SmarterHQ)
Looking at the data, it’s pretty clear that relevant advertising, content, and offers, all contribute to a better customer experience. After all, would you rather see ads for a product that you might actually find useful? Or one that you wouldn’t recommend even to someone you hated?
More personalization = a better online experience. That’s better for everyone.
Here are 3 case studies that outline how different brands use personalization to captivate their audience and increase brand loyalty.
Evaluating 3 Brands & Their Personalization Strategy in Marketing
Personalization Case Study #1 – How Spotify Uses Your Music Taste to Increase Retention & Grow Subscribers
The music streaming Titan Spotify is no stranger to personalization among its users. What’s even more amazing is their ability to do it without being creepy, AND being able to do it in a way that increases FOMO (fear of missing out).
In this mini case study, we will show a few of Spotify’s campaigns and how they used personalization.
Spotify Audio Birth Chart
On June 2nd, 2021, Spotify launched the “Only You” campaign. A customized story and playlist experience that created the “Audio Birth Chart” composed of three cosmic signs: Sun, Moon, and Rising.
The Sun sign is the artist a user has listened to most over the last six months.
A user’s Moon sign is dictated by an artist that best represents their emotional side.
And finally, the Rising sign is an artist that has been recently discovered by the listener.
The Spotify algorithm used previous listening habits to identify these signs and packaged all of this data into a very aesthetically pleasing story format for its listeners to watch.
This is my personal chart:
And this is the kind of messaging Spotify used to make the user feel truly unique. Notice the language – “only YOU would listen to…”, “YOUR most UNIQUE genre combinations…”, etc.
This resulted in the best quarter of Spotify’s history when it came to DAUs (Daily Active Users), and with Q3 data right around the corner, I’m confident that number will be even higher following the Only You campaign.
Spotify Wrapped
Spotify’s flagship personalization campaign – Spotify Wrapped is easily one of the streaming giants’ best plays on personalization.
Launched in 2017, Spotify curates a personalized list of your listening habits in a visualized data story for you to share.
Showing your top artists, most listened to songs, and your top genres are just a few of the stats provided at the end of the year and it is a HIT.
In 2020 alone, Spotify Wrapped was responsible for increasing Spotify’s mobile app downloads by 21% in the first week of December.
In addition to the peak in downloads, Spotify also increased existing and new customer daily app usage rates to 146.15M users in the first few weeks of December, directly tied to the yearly Wrapped campaign.
Since then, Spotify has continued to follow this tradition annually, generating new customers and increasing the loyalty of existing customers as more and more people share this experience via social media.
Spotify “Find The One”
Finally, Spotify’s most recent personalization play has shifted into another key part of its audio business – podcasts.
In September of 2021, Spotify launched a personalized quiz that aimed to use your answers to targeted questions to recommend you a podcast that you might enjoy.
While this is still a relatively new campaign, it goes to show how dedicated Spotify is to personalization with their second personalization campaign in consecutive quarters.
Personalization Case Study #2 – Adobe Uses A Personality Test to Find Your Custom Creative Type to Share with the World
While this case study has limited data behind the results, it’s worth noting that on a personal level, I’ve had this test shared with me 5+ times over the years since it launched in 2019.
In this example of personalization, Adobe uses a creative quiz that analyzes your answers to vague questions like “When Travelling, You Always Need… (A) a destination or (B) direction”. Based on your answers, Adobe matches you to one of eight archetypes loosely based on the MBTI and Jungian archetypes.
After completing the quiz users get the chance to share it on social, via email, or direct link through a message.
My favorite part of this personalization campaign is that it’s used in a TOF approach – introducing Adobe to potential new customers in a way that isn’t invasive but also gives interesting insights into a potential user base.
Personalization Case Study #3 – Coke Gets Personal with Customized Bottles to Share A Drink with A Friend
Finally, one of the most infamous marketing campaigns around personalization is the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign, which launched in Australia in 2012.
In this example, Coke began replacing their logo directly on the bottle with common and uncommon names, encouraging people to share with friends and spread the brand’s message using the hashtag #shareacoke. The ultimate goal was to increase loyalty while also utilizing the power of sharing to increase word-of-mouth advertising and advocacy of the drink to potential new customers.
The result? Coca Cola Co. saw a rise in sales for the first time in over a decade.
A spokesperson from Coca-Cola said: “This campaign taught us that personalization can only be highly engaging and effective if it can be shared with a wide audience.”
This is where personalization really starts to drive bottom-line impact – at the cross-section of personalization and shareability.
Takeaways & Tips for Advertisers
I would venture to say that it’s easy to collect consumer data and make slight changes to audience targeting, messaging, and media buying that dynamically shift to align with users. But just because we have the ability now, doesn’t mean that will continue to be the case moving forward.
As changes in the consumer data landscape happen – i.e. iOS 14.5, the “death” of cookies, and GDPR laws, advertisers need to find more creative ways to get personal with their customers.
Here Are Some Ways You Can Get Personal
- Fun and engaging quizzes to learn qualitative and quantitative data that tie back to your product, brand or service
- Data visualizations of customer behavior (where it applies) that is easily shareable
- Tie in social causes that relate to your ideal consumers and show how they can make an impact – I also recommend sharing the results afterwards
- Encourage community engagement – the best example of this is Liquid Death’s #CrackOpenAWater campaign to have their audience make the funniest ads they can around the brand.
- Specific shopping recommendations on site – this can be tied into quizzes or be given using prev history
But on top of all of the ways you can personalize messaging and content, if there is one key takeaway from some of the best campaigns we just saw – make your personalized campaigns sharable to boost an already effective strategy. Want to use personalization to drive sales? Check out MuteSix if you’re an ecommerce or direct response brand looking to grow.