Set a goal for your personalization strategy
What is it that you’re hoping to achieve with personalization? A highly differentiated customer experience is one thing, but you probably also want to see some tangible success as a result of your efforts that can be measured by key performance indicators (KPIs). Start with a goal that addresses a customer pain point, solves a problem for your business, or both. Here are some examples of goals for personalization:
- Increase welcome series sales
- Improve customer lifetime value
- Reward my loyal customers
- Increase review sentiment
All these examples have a clear goal that adds value to the customer while driving results for your business.
If you can’t think of a clear goal, analyze your customer journey or sales funnel and target those points where drop-offs occur, where customer service complaints increase or where customers simply stop engaging. Once you have a goal in mind, you can work backwards to determine what kind of data you need to create those experiences.
Prioritize zero- and first-party data
In real life, you get to know people both by asking them questions and by observing their behavior. Zero- and first-party data allow you to do just that in the digital realm - build a clear picture of your customers by getting to know not just their first name and their birthday, but how often they visit your website, which categories they view the most, and how much they’re predicted to spend with you.
Think of zero-party data as information that your customers share directly with you upon request - like their first name, birthday, phone number, or favorite color. Typically, responses to these questions are stored as profile properties on your customers’ profilesin your Klaviyo account. Zero-party data (also commonly called demographic data) is ideal for 1:1 personalization, like using a subscriber’s first name in a subject line, or dynamically changing the imagery in an email to align with a subscriber’s preferences.
Think of first-party data as the information you capture on your customers as they interact with your owned properties, through means like essential first-party cookies. These data points are commonly referred to as behavioral data, metrics or ‘events’, because they usually refer to an action being taken - a customer clicking an email, adding a product to cart, leaving a review, etc. First-party data can be used to trigger event-based flows, or create segments of customers who have recently performed certain actions on your site, like window-shopping repeatedly or visiting a certain category.
Explore different channels for collecting zero- and first-party data
The more relevant data you collect on your customers, the easier it is to build a full picture of them and how they interact with your brand. Think of all the touchpoints customers can have with your business - your website, your email marketing, social media, leaving a review, qualifying for loyalty points. These are all opportunities for you to a) collect additional data and b) create more personalized experiences across these channels. Below are some examples of zero- and first-party data you can collect across your owned properties.
- Zero-party data: sign-up forms, quiz integrations, post-purchase surveys, VIP surveys, review custom questions
- First-party data: online search data, loyalty program data, shipping data, customer service interactions
Use pre-built integrations or custom APIs to pull external data into Klaviyo and create truly omnichannel personalized experiences, like triggering a flow based off a change in loyalty tier or creating a segment of customers who’ve recently left a bad review. Explore Klaviyo integrations to discover more!
Practice good data hygiene
Practicing good data hygiene isn’t a nice-to-have - it’s something you should be baking into your data collection strategy from the word go. Following best practices when it comes to data hygiene is important, both for staying compliant and for making your life, job, and workflows easier to navigate. Keep the below in mind as you begin to collect zero-party data!
- Collect data in the most usable format. Many brands make the mistake of asking customers a question in a sign-up form, and allowing them to type the answer in a short text field - just like you would with a first name. But not only does this put more work on the customer, it’s also a terrible idea when it comes to data hygiene. Think of all the possible replies a customer could give to ‘What kind of dog do you have?’ Alsatian, Chihuahua, poodle… You likely don’t have the infinite resources at your disposal to create 1:1 personalized experiences on all of these different variables. Instead, use radio buttons or multi-checkbox blocks to allow customers to select the answer from a pre-determined set of options, e.g. a) a small dog (like a chihuahua or miniature poodle), b) a medium dog (like a greyhound or border collie), or c) a big dog (like a labrador or Great Dane).
- Align on internal naming conventions for custom properties. This is a really important conversation to have with your team. Properties are case-sensitive, and once you create a new property, Klaviyo considers it as just that - a new property. If you have both ‘dry skin’ and ‘Dry_Skin’ stored as custom properties in your account, Klaviyo will not recognize these as one and the same (unless you have Klaviyo CDP - more on that below). Make sure you have strict naming conventions that everyone follows, to ensure that your account doesn’t get cluttered up with duplicate properties that cause missed opportunities for 1:1 personalization.
Invest in a CDP to simplify managing your data
As your business grows and becomes more complex, so does your dataset. If you find yourself collecting and importing data from multiple different sources but feeling the pain of a lack of standardization or clarity, then it might be time to consider investing in a customer data platform or CDP to manage your data, unlock key insights about your customers and execute advanced personalized experiences. Read on to learn about how Klaviyo CDP can help you take some of the best practices above to the next level.
- Prioritize zero- and first-party data - CDP’s analytics features give you access to RFM and funnel data, allowing you to understand your customers’ behavior better than ever before. RFM data gives you a framework for optimizing segmentation to increase retention and LTV.
- Explore different channels for collecting zero- and first-party data - CDP allows you to sync every data point from every channel and tool in your stack through 300+ pre-built integrations, APIs, SFTP, webhooks, & more, and then unify that data into 360-view customer profiles.
- Practice good data hygiene - CDP allows you to backfill anonymous browsing behavior using identity resolution, as well as ensuring you have clean data you can understand and action quickly by standardizing profile attributes and events. (So ‘dry skin’ and ‘Dry_Skin’ can become one property!)