Small business service for large-scale digital marketing: Personalizing the customer experience with data

Remember stepping into your favorite local shop, where the owner greets you by name, recalls your usual order, and asks with genuine interest about how your day is going? Though this kind of small business charm can be difficult to preserve as an organization grows, the value of great customer service never goes away. 

As more commerce moves online, consumers are increasingly expecting some level of personalization in their digital experiences, and effective use of consumer data can help meet these expectations. For businesses with the right technology and customer experience strategy, the result can be preserving some of the personal touches that shoppers love about a small business, even across multiple channels and at any scale.

The power of personalization

Meeting customers’ individual needs might seem impossible for a large company to accomplish, but with the right technology solutions for harnessing customer data, it’s possible – and proven to pay off. Research from McKinsey suggests that 71% of consumers expect personalization in digital interactions and that these preferences strongly influence shopping behavior. 

When done correctly, personalization can enhance customer satisfaction and boost sales. In addition, personalized marketing can benefit long-term performance by reducing financial uncertainty, increasing customer lifetime value, and elevating overall sentiment toward a brand. The key is adopting a small business service mindset when tailoring the customer experience with data.

The small business approach to customer service

Think about how a friendly shop owner runs their local store, particularly the simple gestures showing every customer that they matter. These might include actions like:

• Greeting familiar customers by name and asking for the names of new customers
• Inquiring about each customer’s individual preferences and remembering how to serve them better on their next visit
• Going the extra mile to provide the best possible experience for repeat customers 
• Interacting with customers outside of the business to show commitment both to the well-being of the individual and community alike

Though these practices may look different in the digital space than in a brick-and-mortar store, following the same principles can elevate the customer experience for businesses large and small.

Scaling personalized service with digital marketing

Learning and meeting the needs of individual customers should be a core part of any digital strategy. By leveraging a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to collect and utilize the right types of data, organizations can carry a customer service mindset to content design and delivery at all scales.

Understanding the customer

When a customer walks into a local shop, they’re likely to receive a friendly greeting and a question about what they are looking for. The clerk might even make small talk to learn more about the customer and how to better serve them. Similarly, digital solutions can help a business learn about customers through data collection. 

Methods for collecting consumer data include:

• Personal information collected through account registrations or email signups
• Website or app tracking to analyze customer behavioral data
• Transactional data to analyze what individual customers tend to buy
• Sentiment analysis using social media engagement and customer reviews
• Forms and surveys to ask customers about their preferences directly

Learning to understand and empathize with customers is the first step in delivering the ideal personalized experience.

Personalizing the customer experience

Just as a small shop owner might recommend products based on a customer’s unique preferences, digital solutions can utilize customer insights to deliver recommendations and customize experiences. Examples of personalized digital experiences include email audience segmentation, automated product recommendations, and targeted advertisement delivery.

Building a community

A small business can foster community by contributing to local events and organizations. Online businesses can also establish a sense of community by creating platforms for public interaction, engaging on social media, and building trust through genuine customer service. Supplement these actions with data about consumer preferences and market conditions to optimize how resources are spent.

Respecting privacy

Respecting boundaries is important for any successful relationship, and the case is no different for customer relationships with businesses. 

It’s also true, as the U.S. Government Accountability Office points out, that consumer data comes with risks related to privacy, security, and compliance. However, these risks can be minimized through the use of capable technology and best practices for data protection.

Best practices and tips for personalizing campaigns

In today’s increasingly comprehensive regulatory environment, businesses should rely on first-party data for personalizing the customer experience. 

Any organization using this data also needs a strategy for protecting personally identifiable information (PII) to maintain compliance along with consumer trust. Finding the right balance between consumer privacy and individualized attention is still possible with the right technology and strategies. 

Modern data storage and management

Though a small, local business might do just fine with filing cabinets and simple tech tools, a scalable campaign requires more advanced technology to succeed. For example, a cloud-based Customer Data Platform allows for customizable, automated collection that maintains compliance with sensitive information. What’s more, a robust platform with data integration can utilize insights from multiple different sources without a complicated migration process.

Consistency across channels

Sources of consumer data will vary between businesses, as will the various channels that reach customers and generate conversions. Examples of these channels are websites, mobile apps, email, and social media. Even small businesses know that sticking with just one channel isn’t sufficient for marketing, however, so large businesses should pursue omnichannel marketing to meet customers wherever they are.

Share messaging about preserving a seamless brand experience across all digital channels. This is never easy, but it can be accomplished with consistent style guidelines paired with CDP technology for integrating data across platforms.

Automation and AI for efficient personalization

Rapid advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have led more than 80% of marketers to use AI-powered tools. The types of AI tools are as varied as their use cases, which include generating content, finding and analyzing new data sources, and delivering insights from large quantities of anonymized customer data.

When choosing a customer data platform, marketers should consider a CDP that uses AI-powered insights to automate content delivery and data collection across all consumers’ interactions with the business. Only this type of efficient, scalable data personalization can allow every customer to feel recognized and cared for, much like they would when returning to their favorite local store.

Predictive analytics and real-time customization

Predictive analytics is the science of anticipating customer actions based on past behavioral data. A simple example is using a customer’s purchasing history to show other products they may like, but advanced forms of predictive marketing can synthesize diverse behavioral data across different channels and touchpoints, and AI tools can activate insights to customize the experience automatically.

For example, by utilizing a CDP solution with AI-powered data activation, marketers can deploy personalization in real time. This means that any customer can receive individually customized content based on their immediate actions on a website or mobile app. As they interact with this content, further insights are analyzed with machine learning to continually inform the single-customer view — all while keeping PII anonymized.

Testing for optimization and improvement

Finally, no marketing strategy is complete without regular testing and ongoing research. This remains true for highly automated digital campaigns, but the procedures can be as hands-on or hands-off as desired, depending on the data tools used.

For example, automated A/B testing is much more efficient than manual methods, and machine learning can deliver strategy recommendations while protecting customer data. As an additional step toward personalization, a capable CDP can automatically act on testing insights for real-time optimization if it’s configured to do so.

At the end of the day, a face-to-face smile and a handshake is a level of personalization still reserved for shoppers in brick-and-mortar businesses. That doesn’t change the fact that commerce is moving online, and consumers expect increasingly personalized experiences from technology. With proper use of customer data powered by AI decision-making, marketers can maintain the feel of small business service at any scale.