[ P E R S O N A L I S AT I O N ]
YOU’RE
SPECIAL
EXPEDITED BY
INCREASINGLY ADEPT
TECHNOLOGY AND DATA
ANALYSIS, PERSONALISED
MARKETING IS EVOLVING
RAPIDLY. STEPHEN TIMM
LOOKS AT HOW IT CAN BE
USED TO BUILD LOYALTY
AMONG CUSTOMERS.
T
echnology improvements in recent
years have allowed brand managers
to gather ever greater amounts of
user data, providing them with
the potential to boost member
engagement in loyalty programmes
by personalising messaging and rewards.
Yet, too many companies mistake customer
segmentation for personalised communication,
says Steven Burnstone, CEO of data-analytics
company Eighty20.
He says what many brand managers believe
to be personalisation amounts merely to the
segmentation or filtering of offerings so that
customers are placed into specific groups. This is
reflected in the findings of a survey conducted
last year by Eighty20, in which only half of all
members agreed that these programmes leverage
data effectively. Yet, in a survey conducted by the
company a year earlier (in 2014), more than three-
quarters of programme owners reported having
used data for targeted-marketing campaigns.
This, says Burnstone, reveals a divide between
what loyalty programme owners say they are doing
and what customers perceive their actions to be.
He points out that while targeted marketing
involves the filtering of communication based
on criteria such as age, gender or marital status,
personalisation amounts to the customisation of each
message tailored to an individual customer. It can
help effectively counter the risk that customers view
messages as irrelevant, which happens when
brands employ broad measures to describe them.
Personalisation means those rewards
programmes that offer customers benefits and
rewards that are relevant to their present lifestyle
and position in life will be those that are most
valued by recipients. ›
R E WA R D S & L O YA LT Y S A
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