If you have ever received a letter addressed to “Current resident,” you know the feeling of immediately losing interest in a communication that was intended for you but wasn’t specific to you. Evolution has built our brains to prioritize personalized information over generic content, and marketers have used this simple insight to revolutionize the effectiveness of their campaigns.
While global brands have successfully put this approach to work for years, there are also many excellent examples of personalized marketing campaigns by smaller companies. If you’d like to learn more about personalized marketing campaigns and maybe go a little off the beaten path, then you’re in the right place. This post covers four of the best examples of personalized marketing campaigns you’ve probably never heard of.
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What Are Personalized Marketing Campaigns?
How Iberia Airlines Used Questions to Inspire Their Customers
How easyJet Used Travel Data to Tell a Story
How Twiddy Researched Their Costumers’ Customers to Drive Personalization
How charity: water Used Progress Reports to Connect with Their Donors
What Are Personalized Marketing Campaigns?
Personalized Marketing campaigns use data to create messaging and creative that treats customers like they’re people. Some personalized marketing examples include Amazon’s product recommendations based on buying history, Spotify’s Wrapped reports based on listening data, and Cadbury’s candy suggestions based on social media data. All these campaigns use customer information to give generic creative personal meaning, transforming their power to connect with the recipient.
Although the examples highlighted above are rather famous, brands of all sizes have unique approaches to the technique. Read on for the stories of some lesser-known — but undoubtedly impressive — examples of personalized marketing.
How Iberia Airlines Used Questions to Inspire Their Customers
If you could go anywhere, where would you go and who would you go with? That was the provocative question Iberia Airlines posed to its customers via email during the 2016 holiday season. Their answers — which supplied the name and email of that special someone — would trigger another holiday email to their travel buddy. After clicking on this email, the friend would then see banner-ad reminders as they browsed the web to make their friend’s dreams come true with Iberia.
Takeaway:
While Iberia used cookies cleverly — and transparently — to pull off this personalized marketing masterstroke, what’s perhaps most interesting is the aspects of this campaign that didn’t require tracking. The entire chain of events hinged on the power of an excellent question to inspire customers to respond. With Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and other tech policy reforms changing the state of the game when it comes to data availability, marketers will need to get more resourceful when acquiring customer data to drive personalized marketing. Examples like this campaign from Iberia show us that it can certainly be done, provided the creativity is there.
How easyJet Used Travel Data to Tell a Story
What is with these airlines and their clever marketing? To celebrate the relationship easyJet had with its customers, the budget airline created a personalized email campaign that captured the journeys they had taken together. Each of the millions of unique emails they sent used graphics and text informed by client travel data to tell the story of the places their customers had been — and where their next adventure could be. One of the best examples of personalized marketing campaigns done right, easyJet’s tailored messages generated twice the open rates of the company newsletter and 25% more clicks.
Takeaway:
Like Spotify with its Wrapped reports, easyJet understands that few things excite clients like telling them a story where they’re the main character. Think about what customer data you have and how you might leverage that to create a narrative you can share with them. Have they told you what foods they like, shows they watch, games they play, or friends they have? Whatever the particular data points, if you can deliver a story about your customers that gets them excited about their lives, then you’re on the right track.
How Twiddy Researched Their Customers’ Customers to Drive Personalization
Twiddy, a North Carolina vacation rental firm, did its clients’ homework to take personalized marketing campaigns to the next level. By analyzing changes in rental trends across a year, Twiddy determined how its clients, the property owners, might better price their packages to match demand. They could predict pricing trends during the year, giving their clients the ability to optimize advertised rates to drive more sales. The research paid off for Twiddy’s clients, and they showed their appreciation by rating the company 9.7 out of 10 in terms of likelihood to recommend.
Takeaway:
The data you use for marketing personalization doesn’t need to be about your customers, it just needs to be relevant to them. When you’re brainstorming for future personalized marketing campaigns, think about the kinds of messages that would be most meaningful to them first, then do your research to fill any gaps. You’d be surprised what’s possible with a bit of ingenuity and persistence.
How charity: water Used Progress Reports to Connect with Their Donors
charity: water is a not-for-profit on a mission to give the entire world access to clean drinking water. Well-known for its masterful use of storytelling through video and other media, the organization also translates these skills into email marketing. To ensure its donor base stays up to date and engaged, charity: water sends personalized emails that give donors a clear picture of how much they’ve given, what projects they’ve contributed to, and how those projects are developing. By sending personalized progress reports, they help their supporters stay connected to the vision and work of charity: water.
Takeaway:
While the digital revolution has connected us in ways we never thought possible, it’s also contributed to our feeling of isolation. This fact makes the individual recognition of achievements or contributions all the more meaningful. Marketers that do this well can create authentic connections with their audience.
How to Start Building a Personalized Marketing Campaign
If you’re interested in personalized marketing but could use a partner, then reach out! We use AI to help businesses transform the power of their marketing through personalization. Our ML-powered engine analyzes and assesses each individual’s metrics like probability to churn, probability to convert, and lifetime value to produce truly personalized recommendations. Using this approach — Next Best Action — we show each individual the optimal offer, messaging, tone of voice, and background image at the ideal moment.
If you’d like to learn more about Next Best Action, reach out. We’d love to hear from you.
