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4 Ways to Personalize Your Marketing Strategy in 2020

Posted: 03 May 2020 11:00 AM PDT

Personalization is quickly becoming one of the best ways to grow and maintain your customer base. In case you don't know, personalization in marketing refers to the process of using customer analytics and behavior to create custom experiences for people that interact with your social media, email, or website. 

Customers prefer to deal with businesses that listen to their needs and make their shopping experience personal. How likely are you to go back to a website that makes no effort at all to make your experience unique or exciting? 

It's hard to imagine websites like Amazon stripped of their staple features such as product recommendations and custom lists. Similarly, Netflix wouldn't look much different than regular TV if they didn't have an algorithm predicting what individual users might want to watch based on past experiences. 

There's a good reason that 67% of marketers plan on adding personalization to their strategy this year. Simply put, it just works. 

Today we are going to look at four tips you should keep in mind if you want to start using personalization to grow your lead list, improve engagement, or increase sales.  

Create custom email campaigns

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to keep in touch with your target audience. Consumers land on your website and subscribe through a lead magnet, or by becoming a customer. Once you build a strong lead list, you can leverage personalization to increase your open rate by up to 26%

There are plenty of ways to segment your leads for more personalization opportunities. For example, you can segment your list broadly by breaking down subscribers based on their past purchases. Understanding the type of products people are more likely to buy can help you send out personalized offers. 

If you want to narrow down your segments, you can start personalizing with details like birthdays, location, and even first name. Adding the name of the recipient to your subject line can boost your open rate by an impressive 21.2%. 

You can even create different email campaigns for your segments and drip them out to users over time. Using this tactic, you can improve your sales and conversions gradually, which is vital for substantial business growth. 

Don't forget that email marketing is an excellent tool you can use to send product offers and cart reminders. If a customer subscribes after making a purchase on your online store, send them emails in the future that have similar products and features. Luckily, you're not limited to only personalizing recommendations through email. 

Make product recommendations based on user behavior

Earlier, we mentioned Amazon and how they use their product recommendations feature to keep consumers interested in their online storefront. You can use this strategy on your website for both your products and your blog content. 

Customers want to buy and experience things in a way that's personal for them. If you can consistently make accurate assumptions about your customers and have suggestions that cater to their needs and resolve their pain points, you'll have a much higher retention rate and customer lifetime value. 

Companies like Amazon and Netflix operate with machine learning software, which helps these companies proportionally scale up while offering the same level of personalization to customers. 

If you're just starting out, you can use the data you've gathered from your Google Analytics, email, and social media accounts to segment your list. As you exponentially gain followers, you'll likely have to shift to an AI-powered software to keep the personalization experience for all of your customers. 

Personalize UX

Next, let's talk about how to add elements of personalization to your on-site UX. If you want to increase customer retention, consider adding personal details to your site design. 

Many online clothing shops use personalization to get customers to the right place after they sign up for an account. The next time that the user goes to the clothing store, they will automatically get shown products and articles on the homepage that reflect their past searches. 

While not all consumers will buy something using this prompt, it will help streamline the experience users have when they visit your site. Imagine going to a clothing store and automatically seeing all of your favorite styles selected without navigating menus. 

You can also personalize the type of content users see when they land on your site. For instance, imagine you're running a website that teaches customers how to market their products and services. If someone joined, but only reads your articles on email marketing, you can make smart blog suggestions when they land on your site. Since the customer already showed interest in email marketing, they are more likely to click on new content in that category. 

Reduce cart abandonment

You can reduce cart abandonment through your email, social media, and on-site with personalization. 

First, let's talk about email retargeting. Essentially, email retargeting is when a user lands on your store page, subscribes, puts an item in their cart, but don't complete their order. Since they subscribed, you can send them personal emails, letting them know that they left an item in their cart and that they need to check out to complete their purchase. 

In most cases, you can send three emails within a week without seeming pushy or overbearing. The first email can go out within 12 hours, the second within 48 hours, and the last email can go out after a week of inactivity. 

Now let's say someone visits your site, adds an item, and leaves without signing up. There's no way to get these people back, right? Not quite. 

Retargeting pixels are cookies that users get after they visit your website. By now, we are all familiar with the website popups that let us know that we are getting cookies when we land on a page. These cookies are designed to track consumer behavior, and they will promote your product or service on social media to people who clicked through but didn't buy something. 

These ads will appear in their feed naturally, which can encourage them to go back and complete their order. You can create specific campaigns for retargeting, which gives you the freedom to create personalized ads for people who would otherwise abandon their cart. When you consider that 80% of internet users have at least one social media account, it's easy to see why marketers love using retargeting pixels to prevent cart abandonment. 

It's safe to say that personalization is only going to grow as we discover new ways to gather customer data and technology advances. We have the tools in place to build custom experiences for our users across all platforms, and almost all growth occurred in the last decade. We can't say for sure where the marketing industry will end up by the end up after another 10 years, but we can confidently say that personal marketing experiences will play a role. 

If you want to make the most of your personalization marketing strategy, make sure you're consistently reviewing your analytics and understanding user intent on your site. When you don't fully understand your target audience or their needs, personalizing experiences becomes nearly impossible. 

Spend the time and energy it takes to compile and understand the data if you want to create a marketing strategy that will attract new users, aid in customer retention, and grow your business.  

 

How to Successfully Manage Remote Work Amid COVID-19

Posted: 03 May 2020 12:00 AM PDT

Remote work has been the norm for many startups for years now. For most companies, in-house employment still helps them manage their workforce better. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruptions to businesses around the world and forced them to change their operation and work strategies.

This may sound familiar to you, with the set lockdowns forcing you to lay off some of your employees or put them to work from home. You may have also considered business process outsourcing to continue your operations. 

Whether you use remote or outsourced teams, you should learn how to properly manage them through these times. Below are some of the best practices in managing your remote team.

Balance the way you manage your team

Managing your remote team can go into extremes. When you don't manage them properly, you might end up micromanaging or having little to no control.

Regularly supervise them

When you imply too little to no supervision, you lax too much on your team you end up letting them do what they want. This may bring confusion for them in doing their tasks, especially for the first time. As a result, their output may be different from expected or might be delayed.

This is why you need to supervise them regularly. Find time to check up on them, their tasks, and if they experience difficulties in doing it. Use screen monitoring software to help them feel that you are there and available should they have any questions.

Avoid micromanaging

Micromanaging, meanwhile, gives you too much control in supervising your staff. While it is important to check up on them regularly, bugging them every time with reminders and monitoring their activities can wear down their work productivity.

Trust them with their tasks. Give them space to do their work properly and simply track their progress through different tools. Working from home can be challenging since they also need to take care of their family. Also, your workers are not robots. Give them time for their families especially in these times.

Use online tools properly

Online tools are there to help you work with your remote team. Instead of keeping long threads of email for every project, you can have different tools for project management, documentation, and communication. Choose the right tools that are:

  • Easy to use. This is important especially when it is your first time to collaborate online. Choose a tool you and your staff can easily navigate with minimal to no tutorial needed. Asana, for instance, uses a simple checklist system for assigning tasks and tracking your staff's progress.
  • Accessible to your team. One of the advantages of working remotely is that you can save on resources in working, especially with the abundance of free tools in the market. A paid tool can give you more features, but unless you have the budget to pay for additional subscriptions, you may better explore these free resources.
  • Appropriate for your work. Some employers use Facebook Messenger to communicate with their team. This may be more accessible but it can get your team distracted. Instead, you can use Viber or Hangouts for communication to keep your communications professional as well.

Regularly check for reports

You cannot just depend on your online tools to track their progress. You should check up on the welfare and performance of your employees to find out what's going on while they're deployed. 

  • Chat with them every day. Set a time where you can talk to your employees one-on-one. You can talk to them at least 30 minutes before they start or end their shift.
  • Set up weekly meetings. Gather your team through a Zoom meeting at least once a week. Have a little chat at first about their conditions then let them prepare their weekly reports.
  • Let them contribute. As a leader, you should value your employees' feedback. Give them time to share their insights about a project and let them brainstorm through their meeting.

Help them boost their productivity

One of the challenges of working remotely is maintaining the productivity of your team. They may get distracted by household chores, kids, pets, and social media especially since communicating with friends and updating social media feed is one click away. Increase your team's productivity through these ways:

  • Set a standard check-in. Encourage them to check-in through an app such as Slack or Trello when they start their shift. This helps them kick start their day and make them feel like working in an actual office.
  • Encourage time management. Set an example in managing work hours. Recommend methods such as the Pomodoro technique where employees work on a 25-minute to an hour interval with 10 to 15-minute breaks each. 
  • Encourage setting up a workspace. Share ideas on how they can amp up their workspaces to boost their mood while working. Set up a playlist everyone can listen to. This helps them get going throughout their workday.

Motivate your team

Working from home can be more difficult during these times. The isolation due to extensive lockdowns can affect their motivation at work. An article from Harvard Business Review states that working from home when an employee has no other choice on where to work lowers down motivation drastically. This creates a bigger challenge in managing your team.

You can take these several measures to motivate your staff:

Strengthen your entire operation 

One of the key motivators at work is having a strict process, rule, and procedure. It is important to review your in-house processes, adapt it to your new work setup, and train your employees on how to do their tasks online. Implement your tools to your procedures to keep your workflow smooth. Working remotely can be like working in an office when you get the hang of it.

Delegate challenging yet realistic tasks 

Letting them solve problems while considering their capacity during these times is still possible. Find a balance between the two to set challenging yet realistic tasks for your team. Trim out the non-essential workload they do in the office and retain the essential ones. This helps them get motivated to do more and become more efficient at their work.

Praise and reward a good job

Inspiring them to do a good job is more important during these times. Praise and acknowledge them for a job well done during online meetings. Give them a reward or a little token of appreciation at the end of the month. It may not be a grand one due to the limitations of working from home, but it helps them to do better and make them feel they are appreciated.

Communicate effectively

Lastly, effective communication should be your top priority. Since you cannot talk to each other physically, a simple misinterpretation over chat is a possible hindrance to your team.

  • Use simpler words. Especially when chatting, use simple words to better understand each other. Minimize your jargon and limit it to emails, letters, and other more professional channels.
  • Use appropriate tools. Chats are used for simple and real-time communication. Emails, meanwhile, are more suitable for external clients and higher-level employees.
  • Monitor communications frequently. False information has become more rampant today. Monitor your threads and the updates you send them to prevent misinformation but consider their privacy, too.
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