In recent years, there has been an increase in customer expectations around personalized experiences. According to Salesforce, 73% of customers expect companies to understand their individual needs and expectations—up 7% from 2020. And with more and more brands adopting hyper-personalization, consumers now want brands to know far more than their first name.
You’re likely already personalizing first names in many of your messaging campaigns. But there’s a lot more you could be doing to tailor your app experience to individual users.
Take your mobile messaging to the next level with these data-driven personalization strategies.
Why Use Advanced Personalization?
Drive Revenue and Conversions
Advanced personalization tactics can result in up to 17% more revenue, data from Liveclicker reveals. This means if a generic campaign generates typical revenue of $100k, adding advanced personalization, i.e., using behavioral data to target and personalize, leads to an opportunity for $17k more in revenue.
Gather More User Data
Great experiences incentivize customers to share more of their data. If you show users you’re only using their data to improve their experience, they will be more willing to share. Users want convenience and expect you to know and respond to their past interactions, purchases, and preferences.
Deliver A Better Customer Experience
Personalizing your messages beyond the profile data you gather about users shows them how well you understand their individual needs. Your messaging should be relevant to the user’s buying journey, behavior, habits, and app lifecycle.
For example, if a user regularly browses Guns n’ Roses merchandise, you might target them with a notification saying, “Alex, we thought you’d like to know Guns n’ Roses t-shirts are two for one this month. Rock on!”
Build Customer Loyalty
Consumers gravitate towards brands that recognize them as individuals. In this sense, personalization has become a brand differentiator. Take Spotify, for example. Its users love their Discovery Weekly playlists.
Spotify begins by looking at 2 billion playlists created by its users—each one a reflection of a user’s tastes. Those human selections and groupings of songs form the core of Discover Weekly’s recommendations. It then compares your listening habits and those with similar tastes to suggest new songs you haven’t listened to before and fit your profile.
So what once was a cassette mixtape gifted from a music-loving friend is now cooked up by an algorithm to deliver that same deeply individual experience.
Going Beyond Name-Based Personalization
Users expect personalized app experiences. Your competitors are likely aware of this and prioritize delivering relevant and contextual in-app, push, and cross-channel experiences. So, the bar is high for you to compete and provide more focused messaging to your users.
Here are some ways you should use the data available to you to personalize beyond a user’s first name.
Recover Abandoned Carts
The mobile shopping cart abandonment rate is a staggering 84%. There are many reasons why customers walk away from the checkout process, but a well-crafted message can lead many of these users back into your app to complete their purchase.
Trigger a push notification an hour after the user closes your app, reminding them about the items left in their cart. Include an image of the item and deep link the message directly to where the user abandoned the purchase.
Further entice customers to convert with a special offer, such as free shipping or a price discount. And create urgency by placing a time limit on the promotion or mentioning if stock levels are low.
Incorporate User Location
Incorporate real-time location into your messaging to make your offerings hyper-relevant and personal.
For example, if you have physical stores or locations, use geolocation targeting to drive more foot traffic.
Starbucks uses personalized push notifications to drive footfall to its stores and build emotional connections with customers. Users who enter a geofence close to a Starbucks cafe receive a promotional offer tailored to their preferences and past order history.
In this example, the coffeehouse chain offers the user a discount on the drink they usually order to entice them when they are in the vicinity of a store.
Send Behavior-Triggered Messages
Triggered push automates sending notifications to users in direct response to their specific actions.
Whether it’s finishing a TV series or unlocking a new loyalty level, triggered push campaigns engage users at impactful moments in the customer journey.
Likewise, send a push message when users fail to complete a specific action, such as a purchase, level in a game, or opening the app within a specified time.
These notifications are unique to each user, making them highly personalized and contextual.
Activate New Users with a Welcome Message
Delight your new users with a perfectly timed welcome message. Tailor your content to match the actions they have taken in the app so far. If all they have done is download the app, send them a push illustrating the steps required to get going.
Or if they started completing their profile but abandoned halfway through, deliver an incentive to encourage them to return and finish where they left off.
Celebrate Birthdays, Anniversaries, and Milestones
Don’t miss the opportunity to engage your users on special occasions. Schedule automated messages to celebrate birthdays, sign-up anniversaries, and in-app successes.
Personalized incentives build stronger emotional connections and inspire users to continue supporting your brand compared to generic promotions.
Deliver Personalized Recommendations and Offers
Are you considering your users’ browsing and previous buying behavior as part of your personalization strategy?
Sending relevant product recommendations based on a customer’s past purchases and browsing history is a great way to build 1:1 connections with users.
Trigger a personalized message like this one when a user purchases from a particular product category:
Or send an in-app message with an offer on a complementary product when a user adds an item to their cart. Delivering even a single personalized product recommendation can boost average order value by 369%, not to mention helping users discover items of value and interest to them.
Engaging your users with custom offers keeps your brand memorable and provides an extra layer of personalization to boost retention.
Final Thoughts
Personalization is essential for app growth and success. Are you looking for ways to enhance your personalization efforts?
Book a demo with our team of marketing experts to find out what leading brands are doing to personalize customer experiences and deliver business results.
