We kicked off this three-part series a few weeks back, diving into the importance of brands approaching the 2020 holiday season with a clear focus on reality. We then turned our attention to the value of flexibility in brands’ marketing strategies as a way to better serve and support current and future customers in the months ahead. 
This week, we’re concluding the series with one final consideration for brands that are planning, fine-tuning and executing their holiday strategies: incorporating personalization into the holiday shopping experience.
As we’ve mentioned in previous installments in this series, consumers are heading into the holidays during an unprecedented pandemic and with less discretionary income, and are therefore more likely to be even more selective than usual in how they shop for holiday gifts, seasonal services and everyday necessities over the next several weeks. Even so, they will still be inundated with messaging and promotions from countless brands.
Personalization offers an opportunity to break through the noise and clutter on current and potential customers’ screens. It also creates additional opportunities to reach customers at various touch points throughout the interest, research, consideration and purchasing phases of their shopping journey.
The key to personalization? Carefully - and thoughtfully - curated customer data. Most customers these days are aware that brands are collecting information on them, and as long as it is transparent and disclosed clearly by the brand, do not necessarily mind. In fact, according to Accenture, 83% of consumers are willing to share their data if it helps to create a more personalized and relevant brand experience.
Data collected from past purchases, actions or behaviors engaged in on a brand’s website, successful paid search and SEO campaigns, past media conversions, email open rates, high-performing content, and recent social media engagement (just to name a few) can create a trove of information that helps better prepare brands to provide personalized recommendations and solutions for each customer this holiday season.
The extra effort it takes to personalize the customer experience is worth it: a report from Boston Consulting Group found that brands that create personalized experiences see their overall revenue increase by six to 10 percent—two to three times faster than those that don’t.
Beyond an increase in revenue, however, incorporating personalization into your brand’s holiday marketing strategies offers additional benefits. Now more than ever, customers want to feel understood by the brands that they support. It does not matter if they’re upgrading insulation for their homes or purchasing gifts for their significant other. Products, services and solutions that are marketed in a way that feels personal to each individual consumer pays off in the form of increased brand loyalty, trust and value, all core components of successful long-term customer-brand relationships.
Although the holiday season is already in full swing in many different respects, there is still plenty of time left to optimize your brand’s marketing strategy over the next few weeks. By incorporating a focus on reality, finding ways to add flexibility and understanding the value of a personalized customer experience, brands across industries can enhance their holiday strategies and tactics while simultaneously building the kind of relationships with customers that last long after the final twinkle of holiday lights.
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Miss the first two posts in the series? Get caught up: