The secret to successful personalization is promotion marketing

Personalization is an essential part of modern sales and marketing strategy. It helps businesses build rapport with customers — making them feel more appreciated and therefore improving engagement.

What’s the secret to successful personalization? There are different ways to create a personalized experience for your customers. But one of the most effective strategies is personalized promotions.

In this article, we’ll discuss a handful of ways you can use promotions to personalize your marketing and get meaningful results while doing so.

‍Why do customers want personalization?

According to Oberlo, 63% of shopping events begin online. And online shopping is only increasing in popularity. This means businesses have had to up their game when it comes to promotions and internet merchandising.

Personalized online shopping experiences were a defining feature for Amazon in its growth years. They helped the brand stand out by offering consumers something unique and exciting. The brand still uses personalization to give its customers a better shopping experience.

But the barrier to entry for building personalized experiences is now much lower. Even small brands can offer personalization in various forms at every stage of the customer journey.

Now, rather than being something that sets a business apart, personalization is something businesses need to keep pace with the pack. That doesn’t mean deep-dives into personalized multimedia messages and using machine learning to pick gifts for every customer.

Personalization can be as simple as showing a "welcome back" message, displaying customers’ names on emails, asking for feedback on a recent purchase, or notifying customers when their favorite products are on sale.

When customers see personalized promotions, they’re significantly more likely to shop with a brand. Personalization also directly benefits brands in many ways.

If you’re interested in setting up personalized promotions, try these personalized promotion ideas. You can use them to achieve a variety of different objectives.

Attractive loyalty program offer

Offer customers a 20% first purchase discount when they join your loyalty program. The discount isn’t personalized, but your loyalty program should be.

Make sure you communicate the benefits and personalized features your program offers customers. Common personalized features include special discounts on relevant items, exclusive offers, or early access to new products.

Personalized coupons

Email a personalized 10€ coupon code with a well-curated collection of items that are relevant to your customer. You can use their previous searches, "likes" or purchases to select these items.

If you don't have this data, use geographical data or cultural insights like holidays or popular events to tailor your content. Providing insightful recommendations and informative content will help you position your brand as a trusted source of knowledge and compelling rewards.

Individually tailored bundle promotions

Frequent active customers should be a key focus of your personalization efforts. They make up the core of your customer base, so you should reward them accordingly.

Use purchase data to offer your most active customers individually tailored bundle promotions. Narrow the audience further with specific criteria like geographic location, purchase amount greater than X, or purchases from a certain category.

Offer customers that fit all of these criteria a free item with their next purchase. You can make this promotion even better by allowing them to choose from a selection of different free items.

Personalized referral rewards

Reward your most loyal customers and attract new ones with personalized referral rewards. For every referral your top customers make, reward them with a $20 coupon code, or offer them a personalized gift based upon their purchase history. These customers are few and far between, but they make a significant contribution to your revenue.

Promotions via email

Reach out to inactive customers with a friendly email containing a personalized promotion on recommended products. Also, consider asking for feedback on their experience as a customer. You may gain some useful insights about why they stopped shopping with you and how you can improve your customer service.

Alternatively, let them know what’s new and show off any improvements you’ve made to your brand since they first started shopping with you.

Personalized product recommendations

Try running seasonal promotions, at Halloween, Easter, or Christmas, with personalized product recommendations. You could offer better rewards for your loyalty program members to encourage new sign-ups.

Running special promotions for regional holidays or festivals is a good way to show you understand different markets. Regional promotions are also easy to set up using geofences.

A successful promotional strategy involves more than just running simple promotions. Any business can offer its customers simple discounts or generic coupons. But they’re not going to improve your customers’ perception of your brand, which is a big part of what promotions are about.

Using the promotion ideas above as inspiration, you can create personalized promotions to engage your customers and find out what they really like. To execute personalized promotions like these, you need a promotion marketing solution that will let you use a variety of data points to build complex campaigns. 

Talon.One allows you to take data from customer interactions, your ecommerce shop, and all sorts of other third-party platforms. You can then feed this data into campaigns to personalize them for individual customers or customer segments.

To find out more about our platform, and the many ways it helps our customers, take a look at the materials in our Content Library.