The value of good personalization
We’ve all been the recipient of lazy personalization. You’ve probably received an email from a company who forgot to set a fallback for their template tags, that reads a little something like this:
‘Hi, first_name!’
How did that make you feel? Probably not a lot like a valued customer.
That’s the exact type of experience you want to avoid giving your customers. Personalization that doesn’t hit the mark, and has no real objective beyond a checked box, is not going to win you any prizes in today’s retail landscape. Intentional personalization, however, that starts with a goal, solves a real customer problem, and feels almost seamless, pays for itself. Deloitte reports that brands who excel at personalization are 48% more likely to exceed their revenue goals.
Collect data that solves a problem
In the video below, you’ll see an example of how skincare brand Nani took a customer pain point and used personalization to improve the experience.
Nani zeroed in on what’s important to their customers: finding the right products for their skin type. They started with a goal, and worked backwards from that to decide what type of data they wanted to collect and at what stage of the customer journey.
Start with a goal
Below are some more examples of common business goals, and how four of our brands achieved them using personalization. But before diving in, let’s level-set by differentiating between the two primary types of data you’ll find in Klaviyo: metrics, and profile properties.
Metrics are an example of first-party data that are also commonly grouped under ‘behavioral data’. In Klaviyo, these show up under the Metrics tab - think Placed Order, Active on Site, Clicked Email - and keep track of your customers’ behavior across your channels. They are most commonly used to create segments or trigger flows.
Profile properties are attributes about someone that are stored at the profile level. Most profile properties, but not all, are examples of zero-party data - data that your customers have shared with you willingly, like their birthday, skin type, or pet’s name. They are most commonly used to create segments or personalize campaign and flow content.
Increase welcome series sales
Nanidecides to use the dry, sensitive, and oily profile properties they’ve collected to personalize their welcome series through branching.
Strategy: Personalize the welcome experience
Data needed: Subscriber skin type (profile property)
Collection method: Sign-up form
Improve customer lifetime value
SWAK wants to target at-risk customers with timely re-engagement messaging, so that they’re not leaving money on the table when it comes to CLV.
Strategy: Target a segment of customers who are considered ‘at risk’
Data needed: Predictive analytics (metrics)
Collection method: Klaviyo AI
Reward my loyal customers
Beantown wants to send customers who move into the ‘Gold’ tier of their loyalty program an immediate reward to thank them for their loyalty.
Strategy: Trigger a flow containing the reward (a code for a free bag of coffee)
Data needed: Custom event (metric)
Collection method: Integration with their loyalty program provider
Increase in-store sales
Bola’s wants to increase their in-store sales and include a block about exclusive in-store offers in their weekly newsletter, without subjecting non-local shoppers to useless information.
Strategy: Use dynamic content to display the block only to people who live within 15 miles of Bola’s
Data needed: Subscriber location (profile property)
Collection method: Automatically collected by Klaviyo and stored on profiles as a Klaviyo property
Plan your strategy
Now you know how other brands have planned their strategies, it's time to develop your own. (Follow the steps below by clicking on the number icons.)
Set a goal
Like the businesses above, you should start with a goal that ideally solves a) a customer pain point and b) a problem for your business. Some goals might lean more heavily towards either of these outcomes, and that's okay too: as long as your goal will eventually bring about value for both you and your customers, you're doing it right.
When thinking about personalizing messaging, there’s a tendency to focus solely on ‘improving open and click rates’ as the sole possible outcome. Personalization can definitely help improve message engagement, but try to think beyond that: a business with a mature personalization strategy will incorporate personalization at every stage of the customer journey, because it can help to improve almost any business outcome.
If you need help deciding on a goal, use inputs like your website analytics, Klaviyo’s custom reports, or funnel analysis to understand where drop-offs occur in the customer journey. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes: what kind of personalized experiences have you received that enticed you to open, click, buy, spend more, return, or leave a review? You probably already have an idea of where your business is struggling or could do better. How can personalization become part of the solution?
Establish your success metrics
Once you have a goal, the next step is to establish how you’ll measure success. If your goal is increasing customer lifetime value, for example, you may measure success by measuring the net change in your repeat purchase rate and average customer lifetime value since you implemented your personalization strategy. Some goals may only have one success metric; other goals can have multiple.
Sketch out your personalization tactics
Have an idea of the type of personalization tactics you want to employ to achieve the success metrics you’ve set out. Do you need to send targeted emails to specific segments? Trigger flows to customers who have a particular profile property? Your strategy might expand from the ideas you have at the beginning, but having a rough idea of how you will execute your strategy will help you understand what kind of data you need to collect. Some common personalization tactics include:
- Branching flows based on metrics or profile properties
- Responding to customer reviews with personalized messaging e.g. VIP program invites, cross-sell campaigns, discount codes to say sorry
- Designing a segmentation strategy based on customers' lifecycle stage or RFM status
Determine your data gap
Now we come to the crucial question! What types of data are you going to need to execute your tactics and ultimately achieve your goal?
The most advanced personalization strategies rely on a mixture of zero- and first-party data, but if you’re starting small (e.g., with the goal of improving the click rates of your campaigns), you may only need to use one kind of data. When determining what data you’re going to need, think about what your personalization tactics are. Remember, metrics are most commonly used for creating segments and triggering flows, while profile properties are helpful for creating segments and also for dynamically personalizing content within messages (although there are exceptions!). And remember, there’s no need to limit yourself to data that comes from Klaviyo or your e-commerce platform. You can use pre-built integrations, APIs or manual .csv uploads to bring in data from outside Klaviyo to enrich your personalization strategy.
Decide how you’ll collect your data
This is particularly important for zero-party data because you’ll need to ask your customers to share this information with you in a way that’s easy for them and allows them to see the value exchange with your brand. Here are just some examples of methods you might use to collect data:
- Sign-up forms
- Custom quizzes
- Surveys
- Your preference center
- Other tools from your tech stack