How consumer data and personalization can support sustainability efforts

It’s time to get more personal.

In recent years, the increased availability of customer data has led to businesses being able to conduct more personalized marketing experiences. Personalized marketing is a powerful approach to expanding your brand among consumers, and it is only made possible thanks to advances in software and computer platforms, in particular machine learning. (ML) and cloud computing environments.

Why embrace personalized marketing?

Instead of wasting precious money, time and effort conducting a massive, blanket advertising campaign that uses a scattershot approach to a wide and undifferentiated audience, you can use first-party data to identify the most engaged customers in your specific target audience. Doing so can actually save organizations like yours up to 40% of each marketing dollar spent.

Personalized marketing has grown more popular as of late with companies because customers are showing that they prefer this over ordinary marketing. As pointed out by TechCrunch, “for big brands and retailers, personalization is expected to be the top category for tech investment this year.”

It explained that 80% of respondents to an Epsilon survey said that they are more inclined to conduct business with an organization if it provides personalized experiences. Furthermore, 90% of those responding said that they do find efforts to personalize their marketing experience to be appealing. These are strong signals that you should devote more efforts to boosting personalization in your own campaigns.

Indeed, personalized marketing has grown more popular lately because organizations find it is a dependable and more efficient method to connect with customers as well as potential customers. You’ll see that the growing trend of personalized marketing has an added benefit of helping you to support your sustainability efforts.

In light of this trend, here are ways that collecting consumer data in the context of the rise of personalization can improve the way you approach the issue of sustainability. Adopting a more personalized system for marketing and outreach should impress upon customers that you take seriously your responsibility to protect the planet and its natural resources.

This can translate to an improved flow of revenue and will promote goodwill among current as well as future customers, along with vendors, investors and members of the news media.

Read on for insight into various ways that the collection of consumer data and the rise of personalization can benefit your ongoing sustainability efforts. This will include:

• The minimization of waste through highly accurate projections for production,
• And the minimization of energy consumption related to digital marketing as marketers focus their efforts on highly qualified customers.

You’ll also see how exploring the connection between higher-quality products and services can lead to reduced waste, going forward. These are all benefits that you can tout to your customers as well as to potential new workers, when it comes time to recruit to fill your ranks.

Reducing waste through more accurate production planning

There is plenty of value to glean from the information you’ve been harvesting on each new and existing customer. Businesses can now use customer data to predict demand for their products and services more accurately. This will allow them to avoid over-production, which can lead to waste. Ideally, you will reduce waste to as low of a percentage as possible. Having more data at your disposal can help in this regard, no matter what kind of products or services you are marketing.

For example, consider the problem of food waste in this country, which is a shame when anyone is going hungry here or around the world. According to the US Department of Agriculture, “food waste is estimated at between 30-40% of the food supply.” The USDA based its estimate on data from its Economic Research Service, which leads to the wasting of approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food, per the latest available statistics.

But gathering and using personalized data can have an impact on waste. A report from Forbes indicates that “personalization of food will create multiple possibilities for improving consumers’ health and cutting waste.” Not only can you operate more efficiently and at lower costs, you can promote your green credentials in your website, emails, social media and other communication channels.

Doing so will serve to promote loyalty in your customers, who will be invested in the idea of receiving not only personalized recommendations, but the concept that by buying from you, they are helping to control waste and improve the environment. Rather than feeling guilty about contributing to global warming and the excesses of waste in a bloated supply chain, they can maintain a sense that they are doing their part by staying with a company that actually takes seriously the idea of sustainability, instead of just paying lip service to green marketing cliches.

Reducing energy consumption with more targeted digital marketing

Wouldn’t it be great if you could cut down on power utility bills while also achieving a more fine-tuned approach to dividing your customer base into segments?

Personalized data also affects how your employees get their jobs done. Let’s say you have a fleet of delivery vehicles and operators. In the past, using a generic set of instructions to navigate from point A to point B and then points beyond would take a lot of effort, looking in map books and trying to take into account historical weather information, and keeping on top of potential obstacles, such as freeway construction or major events like a parade that could disrupt your delivery and supply chain.

But as Forbes notes, “We used to drive around with paper maps, and it was a stressful experience, but things got a lot easier with GPS and real-time traffic updates. Every part of our lives is getting digitized and personalized.”

Businesses can use customer data to segment their customers. This is easily accomplished when you rely on a powerful customer data platform, such as the solution provided by Lytics. And when you make better use of comprehensive data on these customers, you can then use your limited resources much more wisely.

It turns out that you can reduce energy use, including fuel and water (heating and delivering water contribute to the costs).

Consider that your sales team may be wasting untold amounts of time and effort as they drive (or fly) to different areas, such as when you are looking to expand your service area or you have noticed that more customers in distant ZIP codes have been starting to order from you and you want to jump on that trend.

Armed with more comprehensive and detailed data, and no longer needing to use as much fuel to get to potential sales leads will allow your team to concentrate more on qualified leads, saving a great deal of time and effort.

Improving the quality of products and services

You didn’t get to your current position of success without fostering a company culture that prioritizes the quality of the goods or services that you provide. It should be clear that when a business focuses on providing personalized experiences, such as helping to optimize ad spend, you will do a better job of boosting the value of each item you sell or each service offered.

And it’s easy to see why. When you are focusing more on boosting the customer experience via personalization, you will naturally be catering to the specific needs and wants of your target market. This also provides value in that you avoid alienating potential clients and customers that might have had bad experiences with a generic product or service that was clearly not targeted to them in the first place.

Approximately 61% of consumers do enjoy getting promotional email messages in their inbox each week, and some 38% of customers would actually prefer to receive more email weekly, per a report from Constant Contact. The report also noted that while only 12.5 % of customers would feel comfortable clicking a “buy” link in a social media post, 60% of them have bought something because of an email that the company sent them.

This is possible because customized email and improved web user experiences can help you make personalized recommendations to each of your customers. It’s like they’re getting a message from a good friend who knows what they like and dislike, in direct communication using one of their preferred means of contact — email.

Focusing marketing efforts on highly engaged customers

By now, you already know that businesses can use customer data to identify their most engaged customers. These customers are most likely to purchase or take the desired action you present to them. By activating a personalized marketing campaign, you can also create more accurate email recommendations and an improved web user experience.

As noted by McKinsey, “From web to mobile and in-person interactions, consumers now view personalization as the default standard for engagement.”

This means that if you continue to offer generic messaging and recommendations, your customers will see through you, and note that you are not taking their business seriously enough to make an effort to engage on a more personal level. Then, they will be happy to take their business to another company that is more forward-thinking about such issues as sustainability and lowering energy use while also curbing unnecessary waste.

Consult with experts to help you boost your use of consumer data and personalization for improved sustainability efforts

These days, it’s no secret that more people are becoming interested in “going green” and doing their part to improve sustainable practices. Your organization has determined that focusing on sustainability measures is good for your bottom line in multiple ways. From boosting engagement with customers to helping lock in their loyalty and attracting new people, such tasks are easier to accomplish when you have the right vision, right processes, and. right technology in place.