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The push and pull of personalization
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"Hello, [name.]"
Remember when that used to feel personal? In the early days of email marketing, seeing your name in a subject line was eye-catching. "How are they doing that?" we asked ourselves as we clicked through to the message inside.
Then that method became mundane, so brands incorporated more personalization. And more. And more. Brands have added onto their email platforms continually, attempting to personalize every pixel of the email to stand out in an increasingly crowded inbox.
But the fact of the matter is, we've reached a tipping point: The email technological foundations themselves can no longer meet the needs of brands and consumers alike. Recent Epsilon research shows just how much consumer demand for personalization within the email and text/SMS messages they receive from brands is growing—and how much they don't care to be over-messaged.
It's time to revisit the foundations of our email marketing solutions and instead move more toward cross-channel engagement solutions, learning from previous generations of email marketing to create a more consumer-centric future. The next generation of email marketing is person-first—seamlessly messaging consumers across all their many devices and accounts, with the kind of messaging experience they truly want.
Here's what it looks like to put identity first in owned-channel messaging.
These days, more than ever, consumers live fragmented digital lives. In the United States, more than 200 million adults have, on average, more than four active email addresses and multiple devices.
The problem this leads to for marketers is a lack of visibility: Is johndoe@email.com the same person as jdoe74@message.com? What about devices? This is where person-first identity comes in.
Person-first, consistent identity allows brands to recognize individuals between their various accounts and device IDs with individual customer IDs. Essentially this means creating a unified, comprehensive view of your customers, which allows you to personalize to them most accurately. Plus, in a world in which we are moving beyond third-party identifiers, having these resilient individual-level customer IDs is especially important.
On top of this, person-first identity can resolve online signals from customers–in addition to accounts and device IDs. With this, brands can understand who specifically is doing what on their owned channels, so they can react accordingly, and message users they know but that just aren't authenticated on their website in that moment.
The value of person-first identity is that it allows brands to speak to customers seamlessly across all their channels and devices, maintaining one consistent conversation. This is important, because our research found that nearly three-fourths (71%) of respondents said that excessive brand messaging for both email and text/SMS is their top gripe with the owned-channel communications they receive.
Brands can avoid over-messaging consumers when they can recognize them accurately, wherever they are, and whenever they want to engage. Instead of emailing John Doe the same message across his various email accounts, brands can send John one email, review his response, send him an appropriate text/SMS message, and continue the conversation naturally between each touch. This is how conversations naturally take place; personalization is grounded in listening and responding, based on consumers' true behaviors and engagements.
Person-first identity within cross-channel engagement solutions allows marketers to deliver relevant messages that are tailored to individuals—not just audience segments—with a single voice seamlessly across email, SMS/MMS and mobile push. This means real-time, relevant messaging that flows naturally across channels and builds over time.
As the digital landscape and consumer preferences continue to evolve, so too must our approach to email and cross-channel marketing. Personalization can no longer be a bolt-on feature; it must be ingrained in the architecture of our platforms. By prioritizing person-first identity and consistent messaging, brands can optimally connect with consumers across all devices and channels. This shift not only meets the growing demand for personalized interactions, but also respects the consumer's desire for meaningful, well-timed messages.
When it comes to owned-channel communications, it’s time to step back and reevaluate our strategies, focusing on building robust, identity-centric foundations for our cross-channel engagement platforms. By doing so, we can craft seamless and relevant experiences that can foster better brand affinity (which our research shows drives higher engagement) and lasting brand-customer relationships.
It's time to officially say, "Goodbye, [first-generation email platforms]."
This article was originally published on Adweek, September 2024.
