It’s stunning that only 25% of interactive marketers use behavioral targeting. Consumers are not one-size-fits-all and expect an experience relevant to their needs.
For instance, this evening I searched for a flight to Munich, Germany. 
After reviewing the flights results page, I decided to click on “Vacation Packages” in the top navigation and got targeted with an ad about Carribean resorts. I’m not interested in Carribean resorts. The ad is not relevant to my needs – which was a trip to Germany. On top of that, I’m targeted with an ad for New York vacations. Oh my… My experience on the site could have been more customized through behavioral targeting. They could have made some money on me with a tour package to Munich or a vacation package to the Alps. Lost opportunity (speak sales). I’m going elsewhere…
Deliver the right offer to the right consumer at the right time!
It so happens that I received Coremetrics’ “A Marketing Imperative: Profile, Personalize, and Profit” whitepaper in my inbox today. It highlights why delivering a personalized experience can increase sales and optimize marketing. Here are the highlights:
- Despite widespread recognition of the power of personalization, only a handful of companies do it truly effectively.
- According to Forrester Research, only about 25 percent of interactive marketers use behavioral targeting (a term synonymous with personalization). That means that 75 percent of interactive marketers don’t use personalization, or use it in limited and ad hoc instances.
- If budget-conscious consumers and companies grow more discriminating, it becomes more important than ever for retailers and B2B marketers to zero in on customers and prospects with content that is relevant and customized to a customer’s needs.
- And studies 8 by Aberdeen of companies that have deployed personalization solutions revealed that:
- 88% of best-in-class companies say they’ll realize return on investment (ROI) from personalization
- 76% agree economic gains from personalization outweigh investment costs
- Personalization should not be viewed as a one-time or ad hoc effort. It is best treated as a core business strategy and should be supported by:
- Well-defined and detailed performance goals
- A structured performance monitoring system
- A dynamic roadmap for continuous optimization
- Automation across all stages of the personalization lifecycle
- “In today’s homogenized world, customers want, expect, and desire a more customized and personalized experience,” the CMO Council said…
- Forrester says that “almost twice as many marketers say they’ll be using [behavioral targeting] in the next year, which would make its adoption rival that of other established forms of online targeting, such as geographic, demographic, and contextual.”
- Personalization means delivering product recommendations, offers, and content based on what you know about a given customer. Done right, it means developing dynamic profiles of individual customers and demographic segments by integrating data from disparate sources.
- Understanding customer behavior in real time and matching marketing efforts to what you know about a customer at a given moment gives you the best chance of delivering content and recommendations that match your customer’s interests.
- Test, Monitor, Analyze, and Adapt
- As dozens of studies have shown, smartly executed personalization systems almost invariably generate highly attractive ROI, enhance online conversion rates, boost average order value, and strengthen customer loyalty and retention.
Anyone still not sold on personalizing the user experience?