Here is some great insight from Annette Franz. Annette is founder and Chief Experience Officer of CX Journey Inc. She is an internationally recognized customer experience thought leader, coach, consultant, and speaker. She has 25+ years of experience in helping companies understand their employees and customers in order to identify what makes for a great experience and what drives retention, satisfaction, and engagement. She’s sharing this knowledge and experience in her first book, Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business).
According to Salesforce, 51% of customers expect that brands will anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before they make contact – by 2020. Well, here we are!
It’s amazing how much business has changed in the last 20+ years, and yet, it’s incredible how much it hasn’t. Take for example the concept of 1:1 marketing, introduced by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers in the late 90s. They defined 1:1 marketing (also called relationship marketing or customer-relationship management) as “being willing and able to change your behavior toward an individual customer based on what the customer tells you and what else you know about that customer.” Sounds like something that has been referred to as “personalization” in recent years but has evolved even further to “hyper-personalization” in 2020.
Let’s start with some definitions.
What is hyper-personalization?
Interestingly enough, there is not a clear definition of hyper-personalization; my search online found several very different definitions, some of which didn’t sound like anything much different from the definition of personalization. Here are two that I felt fit what I think of as I consider the meaning of this term.
Capgemini defines hyper-personalization as “an advanced and real-time customization of offerings, content, and customer experience at an individual level. Designed to perfectly match a customer, hyper-personalization leverages Big Data to deliver such tailor-made solutions in real time.” And, they note that hyper-contextualization is an integral part of hyper-personalization. Clearly, there’s also an element of speed included in this concept.
Three Deep says that “hyper-personalized marketing is the process of a brand speaking directly to one customer.” I like this definition and would only clarify it by putting quotes around “speaking” because hyper-personalization doesn’t just have to be about content and messaging.
Hyper-personalization includes – but also moves beyond – data-driven to analytics-driven. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics are important tools in the hyper-personalization toolbox.
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