MarTechTalk: Maximising the ROI of your personalised content

On 14 November, MarTech Talk host Kevin Craine was joined by Priyal Borole, VP/Director MarTech and Communications Delivery, OneMain Financial; Mustafa Bohra, Associate Director - Growth, Careem; Danny Lacey, Entrepreneur, WOWVI Group: Full Content Production; and Jamie Grabert, President/Co-Founder, The Consultancy Group.

Views on news

YouTube has recently unveiled a brand new addition to creators’ channel home tabs called the “For You” section. The “For You” section provides a tailored experience for visitors to your channel showcasing a curated mix of videos that align with their individual viewing preferences. Creators have the power to select the types of content they want to include in this section. The active involvement of content creators in determining what the algorithms offer their viewers is a nice development, and their say may get stronger as the functionality is evolving. 

 

Tools for measuring the success of personalisation

Email is still the most widely used channel by marketers, although sms, text and web messaging are growing. Suites such as Salesforce or Paradot have functionalities measuring click-through rates, conversions and engagement metrics, as well as testing the efficiency of personalisation. You can also measure how engagement is changing as you tweak content and how these changes drive KPIs.  This can be done by exposing one cohort of customers to some content while not showing it to another cohort in order to see the differences in customer behaviour as a result. With an email campaign, first you must get the basics right.

 

Then, you must decide what you’re measuring and how. It also matters what your source of data has been – first party or third party, as user-generated data usually results in better outcomes. However, if you don’t get the basics right, the rest of what you do along the funnel will be a waste of time. Even if you deploy AI, you need to remember that you’re a human marketing to humans. You can ask your repeat customers about whether they’d recommend you to a friend to find out if they’re satisfied. You must also personalise your message when selling the same product across generations. 

Marketing tools come in three different categories: for the personalisation of outgoing comms, product personalisation tools (e.g., CuPid), and tools for data analytics. The tool you’re using should be a mix of externally developed and in-house solutions. AI tools aren’t ready made. They must be trained on your CRM or some other system. More and more privacy laws come into force and on an increasing number of platforms tracking and cookies are out of bounds. However, this doesn’t present a problem with 0 and first-party data. Tools such as Mobile Ink, MailChimp, etc are instrumental to translating data into personalisation. 

The panel’s advice

You must measure micro conversions, too, i.e., actions that that strongly indicate a user progressing towards a purchase. 

There are 33 digital touchpoints before the average person will buy. 

You must have a human in the loop to ensure that the user is given a healthy variety of content. 

No matter where feedback is coming from – CRM, surveys or your salespeople – pay attention to it.