Personalisation is everywhere, yet despite widespread recognition of its power only a handful of companies are putting it to great use. The cutting-edge idea of personalisation in ‘real-time’ – meaning being prepared to make a decision during a live interaction about what message to convey – is putting increased pressure on marketers to push one step further and build real-time into their personalisation strategies.

So what is ‘real-time’ personalisation, and how can marketers use it effectively? Below are the top five things we think you should know about real-time personalisation, and how you should be writing it into your strategies.

1. What is real-time personalisation?

Real-time personalisation is even more powerful than basic personalisation and goes one step further. It doesn’t just involve making advance decisions about what message a customer will see the next time you interact with them, but instead means being prepared to make a decision during a live interaction. However, real-time personalisation can mean different things to different people (or organisations). Some marketers may be more focused on inbound communications, others on outbound marketing, and still more may be focused on a specific channel like email or website interactions.

2. Why personalise in real-time?

Real-time personalisation is on the rise as companies strive to meet customer expectations for a more customised and relevant experience. When executed properly, the rewards of personalisation can be enormous – increasing sales and revenue, enhancing online conversion rates, boosting average order value, and strengthening customer loyalty and retention.

Customers have grown increasingly overwhelmed when dealing with outbound marketing offers and, consequently, the effectiveness of traditional outbound marketing campaigns has significantly declined. So it’s even more important to connect with customers on their own terms – during those moments when they contact you – which can dramatically improve marketing’s effectiveness.

With real-time personalisation you can:
- Increase response rates for inbound channels by maximising the relevancy of messages presented in real-time
- Improve each customer’s experience by personalising interaction with your company
- Maintain a consistent dialogue with customers across all channels
- Achieve better overall marketing results.

3. What needs to be personalised?

What exactly can be changed about the message as it’s presented to different people? There are two key things that can be personalised: the message (what you are trying to convey) - and the look and feel of the content (how you want the content to appear).

Depending on a marketer’s area of expertise, they may only focus on one aspect – the message or the design. But the most effective approach to personalisation will take both into consideration. It doesn’t matter how compelling the offer or message is; if the customer is so turned off by the way the content looks, they don’t read it. And no matter how amazing a web page is or email appears, if the message or offer falls short, the effort is a waste. The fact is, today’s customers are bombarded with offers from every direction. You need to differentiate yourself by offering the most relevant and valuable message using the most attractive and engaging means possible.

4. How do I personalise it?

The most effective real-time personalisation solution leverages two kinds of information: identity and behaviour.

Identity data is information about each individual customer’s identity and such details as demographics, account information and interaction history. Most of this is the typical information found in your customer database.

Behaviour type information is about how the person is behaving during the moment of interaction. For example, what a person has viewed while visiting a website; location as identified by a mobile device; or products about to be purchased in-store.

To successfully implement a personalisation strategy you must ensure both types of information are considered.

5. Can I link personalisation across channels?

It’s easy to think of real-time marketing personalisation opportunities as existing in a vacuum. But it’s actually very important to remember that each live interaction during which a real-time personalisation can occur – be it on the web or on a mobile app – should be integrated with the rest of your outbound marketing efforts. Customers think these interactions are part of a broader series of experiences with your brand, so you should too.

Let’s look at an example, such as making a travel reservation. The customer books the airline reservation online; he then receives an email confirmation; he may interact with a call centre representative if he needs to modify or verify his reservation; and he will finally check in at the airport via a kiosk or by interacting in person with an agent. This scenario demonstrates five different opportunities for real-time marketing personalisation. Many customer interactions will follow a similar pattern, such as opening a new bank account or making an online purchase with an in-person pick-up.

The best option is to make decisions while considering everything that has happened across the entire cross-channel experience. This will allow you to reinforce offers and messages from one channel, learn from previous interactions in other channels to make a better real-time decision, and ensure consistent messaging and co-ordinated efforts across different media. 

 This will only work properly when your data is both up to date and structured, which often requires collaboration from partners across the industry. Dan Telling, Director of Business Development at Occam comments: "To ensure your personalisation strategy becomes a successful reality, it is important that you have a vast array of data across all channels available to guarantee you are giving people the best real-time experience possible."

 

By Julie Vaccaro, Product Marketing Manager for IBM. 

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