Since gaining my first job as a marketing assistant for a small investment company, I have always been lectured about the main emphasis of leads, leads, leads (unfortunately for me not related to my football team). The daily battle of keeping sales staff inundated with fresh leads always seemed a challenge considering the business niche target audience and relatively small marketing budget.

As many business do, we focused our marketing targets on bringing x amount of leads to the business which for a while worked, but before long became this far too unpredictable and unsustainable. So we did as any other great tactician would do, and changed our strategy.

The data that had been collected, managed and updated over our lead generating campaign was to prove vital in establishing a far more effective marketing strategy – using personalisation. A recent article on the Digital Marketing Magazine stated that “in the customer experience battle, personalisation is an invaluable and effective weapon”. Personalisation is not only changing the face of customer experience but also easing the pressure caused by hounding sales staff and superiors.

Speaking from our individual experience as a company, personalisation has brought email open rates up from 5% to just under 20%. Not only has this provided more exposure for our campaigns, it has also allowed sales staff to approach potential clients on a more personal level, which with a 65% increase in sales seems to be working.

Although personalisation can be a complex and misinterpreted approach, take for example Pinterest’s recent congratulatory email message ‘You’re getting married!’ to thousands of single women, it can prove invaluable (when done right!). Simply acknowledging your customers as individuals and not as a number increases the likelihood for further engagements with businesses as increasing the chance that they are more receptive to those ‘pesky’ sales staff.

Although the friction between both sales and marketing teams will always be present, personalisation in my perspective is certainly building towards a cease fire.

 

By Jack Glanville.

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