Striking the Ideal Harmony in Personalization: Aversion Towards Unwanted Ads or Content
Striking the Ideal Harmony in Personalization: Aversion Towards Unwanted Ads or Content
Picture this: you recently purchased a coffee machine, and lo and behold, your inbox is flooded with emails pushing another coffee machine at you. Quite the nuisance, isn't it? Some corporations established their empire by monitoring individuals online and bombarding them with ads. One careless click on an ad will have you drowning in a sea of irrelevant promotions.
However, the tides are turning. Apple made waves by nixing cookies, those pesky trackers that tail you online, and barring automatic tracking on Safari. Now, companies can't easily track customers like before. The playing field has shifted, and it's no longer a race to reach as many "touchpoints" (a fancy term for intrusive ads) as possible, but a competition to foster "customer engagement." Instead of bombarding people with ads, businesses are now trying to engage in genuine conversations.
For a company to be welcomed into a customer's space requires a delicate touch. It's all about striking the right chord, being relevant, and knowing when to back off. Be too pushy, too persistent, and the brand risks getting shut out permanently. Its messages end up in the dreaded spam folder, or its app may join the 50% that get uninstalled within a month of installation.
So, how can a company maintain a favorable relationship with customers? Enter AI. With cookies out of the picture, companies are now restricted to using only the data they collected directly from their customers - data that is heavily regulated. For years, businesses relied on algorithms to recommend products based on customer preferences via email, text, or apps.
Now, AI is stepping up its game, using Generative AI to refine personalization. It's not just about suggesting products; it's about creating a personal connection through interactions. Think of personalized emails or texts that make the customer feel special, not like one of a faceless multitude.
Unlike the old-school scripted chatbots, today's AI excels at tackling complex queries, and it's continually improving. It can provide empathetic and personalized responses, even at scale, without the mood swings and errors of humans. Generative AI can also discern the context of a conversation, such as a customer's mood, desires, or priorities, things that can't be found in any database. This level of understanding sets thoughtful messages apart from spam.
Any inconvenience to the customer could lead to loss of business. Companies must prioritize ease of use at each stage of the customer journey. Is your website user-friendly and straightforward? Do your product pages provide clear and detailed information? Is it effortless for customers to reach your support team? Do your ads guide users to the right destination?
And you know what? This approach pays off. Brands that nail personalization can increase customer spending by 10%. Digital-forward companies like Netflix have reigned supreme in this arena, but even traditional industries like retail and beauty are starting to catch up. A recent study revealed that if companies reallocated just 25% of their ad budget towards personalization, they could double their return on investment.
Customers in the US are open to this concept, but here's the catch: customers are demanding. If brands want to be part of someone's inner circle, they must earn their place. Mess up, and they risk becoming the annoying one-trick pony in a group chat, ignored and forgotten.
So, what's the conclusion? Companies need to abandon the aggressive recruiter mentality and instead adopt a thoughtful conversationalist approach. Customers don't want to feel like just another name on a marketing list.
In the new era of data privacy, companies can no longer rely on cookies for customer tracking, forcing them to focus on direct customer data.ai is now refining personalization through Generative AI, creating a more personalized and engaging customer experience, such as personalized emails and interactions. Missteps in personalization may lead to customer frustration and negative outcomes, like being ignored or uninstalled, but companies that master personalization can increase customer spending by 10%.