With thousands of messages flashing through their feeds and inboxes every day, most customers aren’t responding to generic messaging anymore. It’s now becoming a necessity to personalize your messaging, whether through welcoming them with personalized emails or sending custom product recommendations.
Customer journey personalization is a tried and true strategy for cutting through the noise by speaking directly to new and repeat customers with purpose and intention. From leveraging advanced data analytics to employing the subtleties of psychological engagement, we will explore the multifaceted approach that companies must adopt to deliver a truly personalized journey—one that captivates customers and keeps them returning for more.
Whether you're a seasoned marketer or a startup entrepreneur, this article will help you transform a generic customer journey into a memorable and individualized adventure, setting a new benchmark for excellence in customer experience.
What is Customer Journey Personalization?
Customer journey personalization refers to the effort of making aspects of the customer journey unique to the needs and details of each customer. While personalization might not be possible at every single step of the customer journey, the more customized the overall experience can be, the better.
Making an effort to make touchpoints with potential customers feel genuine and unique drastically increases the chances of satisfying a customer's need.
Personalized Customer Journey vs Personalized Customer Experience
While customer journey and customer experience are similar concepts, they are not interchangeable terms. The customer journey is a series of interactions between the customer and your company.
Taken broadly, the customer journey consists of five key stages:
1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Decision
4. Retention
5. Advocacy
Throughout these stages, your interactions with the customer through efforts like marketing campaigns, branding, outreach and more can be tailored for the specific customer. Instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach, creating a personalized customer journey allows you to forge connections with customers and foster long-lasting relationships.
Customer experience is directly linked to customer journey, but it’s not quite the same thing. The customer experience is the broader sum and outcome of all of the steps of the customer journey. The customer journey describes the steps a company takes to interact with customers, and the customer experience describes how the customer perceives the company as a consequence!
Customer Journey Personalization Example
There are countless strategies for implementing customer journey personalization into your marketing, sales, and outreach efforts. For example, you might create unique outreach videos to send via email to engage new prospects. It’s all too easy to ignore an email from someone you don’t have a relationship with…but prospects are much less likely to ignore your message once they hear their name in a video!
Fortunately, recent technology allows for large-scale, personalized videos like these–without the time crunch that recording a video for every single contact can create. Organizations can leverage tools like Tavus, an AI video generator that can make thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of videos that are customized to each recipient for whatever variables you want to personalize from their name to their most recent purchase to their first purchase ever–and much more.
This makes it possible to scale your customer journey personalization and see all the benefits custom connections provide.
How Customer Journey Personalization Works
Every business and offering is different, but the following four steps can help teams begin to personalize the customer journey.
1. Data Gathering & Analysis
To personalize the customer journey, you first need to understand who your customers are. Who are you talking to and what problems can you solve for them? Once you get to the heart of these questions, you can gather the relevant data you need to create the ultimate personalized experience.
This may include demographic information through the users interacting with your ads on social media. You can also gather insights on current customers, digging into what they’ve purchased in the past, when they started buying, how much they spend on average each month or year, and whether their buying habits can be linked to any past ad campaigns or rewards programs. This baseline can give you an idea of what’s working and with whom, so you can tailor future personalized marketing accordingly.
2. Design Personalized Offers & Content
With your customer base and their pain points in mind, design offers that are directly related to their problems. The more effectively you can address prospect pain points, the more valuable your offer becomes. Communicate that offer through personalized content and messages that make prospects feel seen and understood.
One of the best strategies for fostering connection is to leverage video messaging. For example, you can save time and create thousands of personalized video messages from one recording with high-powered AI tools like Tavus.
Tavus takes a single recorded video and uses AI to voice clone and lip sync, creating hundreds or even a million personalized variations of your video. Use dynamic video templates and customizable variables that you can fill in with details like customer names, dates, and key features you think they’ll love.
Add a layer of emotional buy-in with personalized content that speaks directly to each customer…without spending countless hours behind the camera to hand-record every single video.
3. Deliver the Personalized Content
Once you’ve designed the right offer in response to your customers’ pain points, it’s time to get that offer in front of them. Using the data gathered in step one, determine the best way to reach out and deliver personalized content to your customers, whether it’s via email, SMS, or specific social media platforms.
With Tavus, you can create and send personalized videos through email and other messaging tools…but you can also integrate the platform seamlessly into your existing workflow to meet your customers where they are. This automates the personalization process since Tavus integrates into the channels you’re already using.
Whether you’d like to embed a video into an email, a text messaging platform, or a DM on social media, Tavus makes it as easy as a few clicks. With direct integrations with over 100 communication, sales, marketing, and ecommerce platforms, Tavus allows for countless programmatic touchpoints so that you can customize every aspect of the customer experience, right within your existing workflow.
4. Optimize for Determined KPIs
In order to optimize your efforts to personalize the customer journey and provide a positive customer experience, it’s important to continuously analyze KPIs that can shed light on how well your efforts are working. From email open rates and video views to replies and conversions, dig into metrics to understand where tweaks might be in order along the customer journey.
Ways to Personalize the Customer Journey
Here are a few meaningful ways to personalize the customer journey, with examples of how to implement them.
Marketing Personalization
The awareness and consideration phases of the customer journey are among the most important for personalization. Avoid getting lost in the noise through marketing personalization using strategies like:
- Newsletters: Sending an email newsletter keeps you top of mind for prospects, whether or not they are actively in the process of purchasing a product or service. Engaging with this customer base in an active and personalized manner can help foster loyalty and genuine connection. With video marketing software like Tavus, you can even record a video and personalize it with relevant recipient information within seconds.
- Outreach Campaigns: Even cold email outreach can be effective with the right prospecting system and a personalized message. Leverage tools like Salesforce for customized cadences for email campaigns so that prospects aren’t receiving the next email in a sequence without ever viewing the first one. Or, use Tavus to create personalized video messages to help you get high-value calls on the books.
- Webinars: Hosting webinars allows you to share more information about your product or service offering while also adding value for those who sign on. One of the best ways to ensure your webinar efforts are optimized for long-lasting connection is to send a follow-up message with next steps. A personalized webinar follow-up video can transform webinar attendees into loyal customers.
Sales Personalization
In the decision phase of the customer journey, personalization can drive conversions and pave the way for long-lasting customer relationships. Consider these strategies for baking meaningful personalization into sales efforts:
- Demo videos: Showcasing the features of your product or service plays a crucial role in helping prospects better recognize the value of your offer. However, overly general or cookie-cutter content can water down your message. Include first names, product specifications, company details, and more within personalized demo videos with Tavus.
- Retargeting and upsells: Especially after a prospect has had a real conversation with a salesperson, personalization is essential. No one wants to be tossed back into a pile of prospects and sent generic messages again. Whether a prospect has bought before and you’re making an effort to upsell premium products or they’re waiting for the right time to buy, a personalized follow-up might be the nudge they need to move forward with a purchase.
- Unique follow-ups: Nothing kills a sale like going silent after a great sales call. Whether you’d like to send a wrap-up with the next steps or you’re following up with a prospect who hasn’t been responsive in a while, personalization can work wonders for generating replies and connections. Record a single video and use Tavus to personalize with names, suggested meeting times, and unique prospect details.
Customer Service Personalization
During the retention and advocacy phases of the customer journey, personalized customer service can transform new clients into loyal customers. Offer customized solutions and personalized updates to enhance customer satisfaction.
- Answer questions: Create helpful videos addressing common pain points and questions related to your products and services.
- Provide updates: Whether your software product is rolling out new features or the workflows involved in your service offer are shifting, informing your customers proactively is key to maintaining trust. Communicate attentiveness and care with personalized video updates that address each recipient by name.
- Request and respond to feedback: Ensure that customers feel heard and valued by asking for specific feedback about their experience with your products and services. Use follow-up video messages to respond to common concerns and feedback to keep the conversation and the feelings of trust going strong.
Benefits of Personalizing the Customer Journey
Personalizing various aspects of the customer journey takes time, organization, and effort. Why bother? Put simply, it pays off–a lot.
More Interaction & Engagement
The emotional impact of video makes recipients more likely to engage with a video than plain text, and people are even more likely to interact with a video if they hear their own name. This degree of connection helps boost engagement and pave the way for more conversation in the future.
More specifically, personalized videos have click-to-open rates that are 16 times higher than generic videos and are 35% more likely to retain viewers.
Increased Conversions
Personalized messaging makes prospects and customers feel seen and heard. They foster an emotional connection that makes them much more likely to make a purchase and kick off a customer relationship.
In fact, personalized videos can boost conversions by a whopping 500%!
Higher CLTV
Spending big on marketing and outreach only to allow customers to become one-time buyers doesn’t add up to a successful strategy. Luckily, almost 100% of marketers believe that personalization strengthens customer relationships.
Increase customer lifetime value (CLTV) with personalized videos that help strengthen relationships and provide ongoing customer support.
Customer Journey Personalization Limitations
Despite the undeniable benefits of personalizing the customer journey, limitations standing in the way of implementing these practices unfortunately keep many companies from benefiting from them. The most common barrier standing in the way is time.
Creating highly personalized content can be extremely time-consuming. In many cases, especially in the awareness stage where outreach occurs, a lack of relevant data may also prevent a successful personalization strategy from taking shape.
Fortunately, with the right tools to support you, it’s entirely possible to personalize the customer journey without sacrificing countless hours to the process. Tavus allows users to upload a single video recording and turn it into thousands or even millions of personalized videos with just a few clicks.
With AI technology, Tavus minimizes the obstacles to a thoughtful and successful personalized customer journey.
Add More Personalization to Your Customer Journey
In today's hyper-connected world, customer expectations are soaring, with personalized experiences no longer a luxury but a standard demand. Sculpting an experience that feels exclusive and intuitive isn't merely about harnessing technology–it's about cultivating a deep understanding of your customers and responding to their needs with empathy.
By integrating the data-driven intricacies of personalized marketing strategies with a genuine commitment to customer delight, businesses can foster profound connections that transcend from transactional to transformational.
It’s time to leverage the power of personalization in making your prospects and customers feel seen, heard, and connected. Create highly personalized videos for the ultimate ROI with Tavus.
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