Understanding the 101 of Marketing Cloud Personalization

In today’s customer-centric landscape, personalization has become a critical element in enhancing CX and driving brand loyalty.

A recent survey^[i] done by Infosys concludes that:

• 59% of consumers said that personalization affects their purchasing decision.
• 74% of consumers get frustrated when website information is not customized.

While the concept of monitoring customer behavior and providing personalized experiences is not novel, the ability to do it in real-time is.

To turn this vision of personalized, omnichannel engagement into a tangible reality, you can count on Marketing Cloud Personalization (formerly known as Salesforce Interaction Studio).

Marketing Cloud Personalization is a real-time personalization and interaction management solution that enables you to create personalized experiences at pivotal touchpoints throughout the customer journey.

This quick read will help you start with the basics of Marketing Cloud Personalization, its key features, and how to use it to multiply the ROI from your marketing efforts and deliver personalized experiences that keep your customers coming back for more.

Reasons Why Businesses Should Implement Marketing Cloud Personalization

Marketing Cloud Personalization enables you to:

• Monitor customer interactions with your brand across multiple channels.
• Analyze gathered data and determine appropriate actions based on established business rules.
• Utilize insights to deliver optimal customer experiences.

There are several other compelling reasons why businesses should consider implementing Marketing Cloud Personalization. These include:

1. Personalize Experiences: Businesses can collect and analyze customer data from multiple sources, such as web browsing history, purchase history, and social media activity. You can build unique customer profiles for each individual, including their preferences, behaviors, and interests. With it, you can leverage robust real-time segmentation and advanced AI algorithms to deliver personalized experiences that motivate customers to engage and take action.

2. Real-time Data: It collects and analyzes data in real time, allowing businesses to respond quickly to changes in customer preferences. It tracks and monitors digital behavior, such as active and inactive time (not just clicks), and integrates it with email and offline behavior for a deeper understanding of each customer’s genuine interests.

3. Multi–Channel Engagement: It allows you to get a unified view of your customers across channels. You can use the information you gather from a customer’s interactions on one channel to personalize their experience on any other channel, whether it’s online or offline. For instance, if a customer browses a product on your website, you can use that information to send them a personalized email offering a promotion related to that product.

4. Predictive Insights: Marketing Cloud Personalization uses machine learning algorithms to predict customer behavior and suggest the best possible actions for marketers. Intelligently applying these insights enables you to deliver highly-relevant content and customers to start their journey from where they left off. Leverage the capabilities of Einstein to suggest the next best action or personalized recommendations for products, content, and other offerings.

Impact & Benefits of Marketing Cloud Personalization Across Industries

Marketing Cloud Personalization has been transforming the way diverse industries deliver relevant experiences during key moments of interaction across the customer journey.

Here are some of the benefits that Marketing Cloud Personalization can provide for different industries:

1. Retail Industry: With it, retailers can recognize both known and anonymous users across various digital channels and develop precise customer profiles. By displaying personalized product recommendations on the website, email, or mobile app, retailers can improve customer engagement, increase sales, and enhance the overall shopping experience. For instance, retailers can display product promotions that are tailored to the customer’s browsing history or location.

2. Healthcare Industry: With Marketing Cloud Personalization, healthcare providers can collect and analyze patient data to create personalized treatment plans and deliver more effective care. For instance, they can use the platform to send personalized health education materials to patients based on their health status, condition, and preferences so that patients can make informed decisions. It can also help improve patient experience by sending personalized reminders for appointment scheduling and medication refills.

3. Banking and Finance Industry: Banking and Financial institutions can use Marketing Cloud Personalization’s capabilities to gain a comprehensive understanding of each customer’s unique financial needs, interests, and behaviors. This can enable them to provide personalized recommendations for financial products and services, such as credit cards, loans, and investment options. For instance, they can send customized investment advice to high net worth individuals or personalized credit card offers to customers with a specific spending pattern.

4. Travel and Hospitality Industry: By analyzing customer behavior and preferences, travel companies can offer personalized travel recommendations, loyalty rewards, and special offers that cater to their customers’ preferences.

How to Set Marketing Cloud Personalization in Motion

Getting started with Marketing Cloud Personalization involves several steps. Let’s discuss the general overview of the process:

1. Set up Marketing Cloud Personalization Account: Purchase a subscription from Salesforce for Personalization. If you are using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can ask to enable it in your instance for an additional cost.

2. Configure Marketing Cloud Personalization Account: This involves setting up data sources, configuring data mappings, installing a JavaScript beacon on your website, creating data models, and so on.

3. Connect Data Sources: Marketing Cloud Personalization functions independently but needs to be combined with data from multiple resources, such as web analytics, emails, social media, etc for a unified view of customer information and personalized recommendations.

4. Create Customer Profiles: With various data sources connected, you must create customer profiles depending on their preferences and behaviors across different touchpoints. Customer profiles come in handy while creating marketing campaigns for a specific set of customers.

5. Define Customer Journeys: After setting up customer profiles, define customer journeys by creating triggers, actions, and messages that are specific to each customer segment.

6. Test and Optimize: Test and optimize customer journeys to improve their effectiveness. Use A/B testing and machine learning algorithms to identify the best-performing journeys and optimize them accordingly.

7. Monitor and Measure: Finally, monitor and measure the performance of customer journeys with it’s reporting dashboards. Use these insights to refine your marketing strategies and boost customer engagement.

As businesses compete for customer attention and loyalty, real-time personalization has become a critical differentiator. Implementing Marketing Cloud Personalization can help businesses improve customer engagement, build brand loyalty, and drive conversions.

Want to Get Started With Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization? Talk to Us!

Statistical References:

^[I]Infosys