Don't Take It Personally, But Innovators Are Done With Personas

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CMO.com

“The reason personas failed to achieve true personalization is that they were too simplistic to reflect the unique attributes that differentiate individual customers and prospects from the mass of other similar customers and prospects. And that is the essence of true personalization.”

These sentiments belong to TIAA CMO Connie Weaver. Indeed, over the past 12 months, we’ve seen a surge in the number of companies disappointed by the lack of a significant increase in response and engagement from their traditional persona-based segmentation. Whereas personas were once a good starting point to identify “buckets” of customers, the limitations of persona-based marketing have become apparent as the consumer decision-making journey veered from its predictable linear path and increased in complexity.

“Customer expectations for personalization have changed with astonishing velocity in the past year and will continue to transform rapidly,” said Paul Andrukonis, director of channel engagement and personalization at Citi Global Cards. “To keep pace in today’s highly personalized marketplace, it’s essential to empower customers with the ability to shape their individual marketing and service experience with your brand.”

Persona Research Findings
A consistent finding has emerged from thousands of hours of B2B and B2C Voice of Customer (VoC) research our firm has conducted for brands such as Microsoft, MassMutual, Gilt, and QVC: “It is essential for marketers to establish ‘human partnerships and relationships’ post-sale. Consumer relationships require authentic and relevant communications and interactions.”

Additional thoughts from our research regarding the impact of personas gone wrong include:

• “When I receive generic emails, it is obvious that you do not care enough to understand my individual needs. Instead, you are trying distill my complex needs into simple generalities to make your email blast easier for you ... and useless to me!”
• “You marketers don’t seem to understand that personalized engagement post-sale is valuable for the customer and ... it forges strong ties with your company that serve as a ‘grace account’ upon which to draw when there is the almost-certain problem or outreach from competition.”

A Fortune CMO summed up the damage caused by traditional personas this way: “We are using new CRM technology to automate old bad behaviors ... not guided by how customers define improved CX and personalization ... so the result is irritating and brand-damaging spray and pray.”

Going Forward: Human Data-Driven Personalization
Traditional personas based on implicit data (web browsing behavior, data mined from social media, and purchased-based behaviors) do not provide the necessary depth of information to drive relevant communications and offers. As a result, today’s personas are not generating the expected increases in response. Marketers must now make a profound shift toward “human data,” which is based on explicit, self-profiled, opt-in preference data. Human data personalization is unique in that it lends itself to segmentation based on self-described personality types, attitudes, and life stages.

“We are shifting focus from products we want to sell to truly understanding the financial needs and uncertainties of our individual customers and how they ‘feel’ about these complex issues,” TIAA’s Weaver said. “This is a profound shift and will impact every aspect of our personalization, CX, and problem-solving for each individual customer.”

Added Citi’s Andrukonis: “You will not transform your key metrics, such as conversion rates, engagement, ROI, or anything else, until your customers see their voice reflected in where, when, and how you sell your products. Moreover, by letting customers make you smarter about how, and how frequently, you market your products, you create more opportunities to heighten engagement with your brand.”

Another brand leader, GameStop, is initiating new strategies to gain deeper insights about who its customers are in order to develop more authentic and effective human data-based personalization and CX strategies.

“We recently analyzed the personas we had been using and found that the customer had changed dramatically,” said Darin Smith, senior director of PowerUp Rewards at GameStop. “We are now rethinking the real-world, human differences, versus just transactional differences, among our individual customers and formulating a plan to engage with them as individual gamers versus superficial aggregates of different gamer personas.”

Another exciting innovator is luxury design brand Shinola. “Traditional personas tell you very little because they are based on simplistic models and transactions,” said CMO Bridget Russo. “They cannot help understand why customers bought, what motivated them to buy, etc. Cookie-cutter persona-based marketing will not work for today’s savvy buyers.”

Dennis Kopitz, Shinola’s director of ecommerce, added: “To achieve and scale true personalization, we need to obtain deep human insights regarding who buys which category of our products, why they buy, what their needs and expectations are, and what they want next from us. This will take us to a far deeper level of understanding than traditional personas.”

Persona Takeaways
How can you evolve to the next level of personalization and achieve “human data-based partnerships and relationships” with customers? Here are three considerations:

• Traditional segmentation based on modeled “generic” personas does not differentiate individual consumer interests, lifestyles, and connection with the brand/product. Rather, it limits the ability to demonstrate why a consumer should purchase from it versus competitors.
• Human data, based on explicit, self-profiled, opt-in preference information, drives deeper levels of understanding and is therefore the key to developing more significant relationships.
• Poorly executed personalization is viewed as irritating by consumers and not only wastes of marketer’s time and resources, it damages brands.

Think Experiences — Not Channels — to Connect with Customers

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CustomerThink.com

“You can’t have your channels competing against one another … The goal is to get your organization as a whole to work toward overall revenue optimization, regardless of channel,” says John Romney, global practice lead of Omnichannel at NTT DATA.

Marketers are talking “omnichannel” but are still stuck in fragmented silos with competing goals, metrics and compensation. Meanwhile, customers have increased their expectations of a buying journey with one integrated, cross-channel experience. For 2017, it will be life threatening if marketers do not embrace and deliver simultaneous all-channel customer engagement.

According to the “Driving Shopper Engagement through Digital Technology” study by Synchrony Financial, “Over half the population has researched a product, checked in at a retailer, tracked rewards points, or checked out while using a smartphone in the last three months alone.” Other key points of this study;

• Shoppers expect the digital experience to not only be present, but also proactive and seamless.
• No longer just a tool for younger generations, the growth in smartphones has extended to everyone…. [There is] a dramatic rise in digital shopping, with almost 70% of the U.S. taking part in this now mainstream activity.

Additionally, in the 2016 POS/Customer Engagement Survey, it was noted, “85% of respondents indicated that unified commerce is their top priority.” The report goes on to state, “As retailers navigate among this ‘new’ retail environment, they realize the need to not only allow, but also encourage, the transcending of channels and personalization of the customer’s shopping experience…”

Apparel brand Perry Ellis put information from this POS/Customer Engagement study into action via a cloud-based technology solution, to create a “connected store” that uses digital tools within what it calls “a retail hub.” “Our goal was to create a highly designed shop with functionality and a focus on technology incorporation,” says Jennifer Stone Williams, vice president of retail services for Perry Ellis. The high tech retail space enables shoppers to discover the brand, have a personal moment, and engage with interactive, floating mirrors embedded with proximity sensors that offer product recommendations and styling suggestions.

Additionally, the company utilized iPads to free up sales associates to engage with consumers. “These mobile devices allowed the store associate to engage the customer anywhere in the store and throughout the transaction… [It} empower[s] the store associate to provide a much higher level of service to the customer and a more consultative sale,” says Mark Colbert, director of retail systems at Perry Ellis International. Via the iPad, sales associates can help shoppers access product and price information, ratings and reviews, check inventory and fulfill out-of-stock orders by accessing cross-store and cross-channel data to locate and ship an item to the customer’s door or sent as a gift.

Takeaways:

1. Shoppers do not segment their journey into separate channels, they look at their experience as a united all-inclusive venture. Therefore, marketers need to realign procedures to deliver a new type of engagement that delivers simultaneous all channel integration.

2. Rather than fighting the concept of “showrooming” (in which shoppers use mobile devices in store to gain product details and competitive information,) marketers need to embrace this shopper practice and develop sales associate training and procedures that provide opportunities for actionable shopper help.

3. Use of mobile technology is no longer a Millennial pursuit. Shoppers of all ages are now heavily engaged with mobile. In the “Driving Shopper Engagement through Digital Technology” study by Synchrony Financial it was noted, “The data shows that all retailers, no matter which generation they are targeting, need to embrace the growth of digital technology and its role in shoppers’ everyday lives.”

Providing a simultaneous all channel shopping experience is now mandatory to remain competitive and relevant. Marketers must keep developing new ways to innovate and deliver simultaneous all-channel customer engagement.

DMA CEO Tom Benton Answers 4 Questions For Marketing Innovators

Article by Ernan Roman Featured on CMO.com

Tom Benton is CEO of the Data & Marketing Association (DMA). Since becoming CEO in 2014, Benton has led a three-year transformation and rebranding of the organization (formerly the Direct Marketing Association), with an organizational and resource alignment focused on advocacy, innovation, education, and connections.

The rebranding comes on the eve of DMA’s 100th anniversary.

With an extensive career across a variety of data-driven marketing environments, including time as SVP of marketing analysis for AOL, Benton is steeped in industry knowledge.

He recently participated in our "4 Questions for Marketing Innovators" series.

1. What is one marketing topic that is most important to you as an innovator?
Two things: one, the rapidly increasing rate at which data isbeing generated, and, two, the rate at which disruptive technological capabilities are being developed that enable marketers to transform data into actionable insight.

With those capabilities come tremendous responsibility that all DMA marketers take very seriously. Marketing, like most things in life, is all about relationships—relationships with a purpose beyond profit. A responsible and successful marketer believes that what he or she brings to market fundamentally improves lives.

This fundamental marketing principle of relationships is not always understood or appreciated by all legislators and regulators—that marketers’ actions are guided by that commitment to a mutually beneficial relationship over time. Many legislators and regulators feel that the use of data and data technology is invasive and should be significantly constrained.

Yet without data-driven insight, value to consumers is diminished. And without data science, innovation is suppressed. I continue to be surprised that many executives, even rising young executives in our industry, either are unaware of or choose to ignore the importance of strong data and marketing advocacy and government relations. Without those relationships, our ability to transform data into actionable customer insight and nurture lasting relationships with our customers is at high risk.

Several DMA members, many from major brands, are working with DMA’s attorneys on Data Standards 2.0, an industrywide initiative to develop the standards that will govern the marketing industry’s accountability in this new era of data-driven marketing. Despite our community’s vigilant self-regulation efforts, our responsible use of data and innovative data technology is at risk. At any moment, with the stroke of a pen, a single state or a federal agency could suppress innovation and eliminate marketers’ ability to responsibly access, exchange, and use data and data technology. DMA is the association that stands between marketers and that real risk.

The role of data in marketing has always been present, but it is more pronounced today. Data and data technology are the strategic center of marketing—identifying needs, informing design, creativity, channels, messaging, and more. These are just a few of the reasons that DMA rebranded.

2. Why is this so important?
Foremost, the data and marketing community’s access to data and innovative data technology increases value to consumers. It makes consumers’ lives more efficient and more convenient. Additionally, the data and marketing community drives our economy by increasing efficiency and adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, as reported in DMA’s "Value of Data 2015" report. The data that fuels marketing enables a free internet with all its resources available to consumers.

3. How can this improve the customer experience?
The responsible use of data enables marketers to deliver higher value and more timely and relevant information to their customers, more seamlessly across their customers’ devices. This empowers their customers to more efficiently and conveniently fulfill their needs and interests.

4. How will this improve the effectiveness of marketing?
Today’s successful data-driven marketing and technology not only benefits consumers, it funds more innovation, which, in turn, will benefit consumers in new ways. It’s a virtuous, upward spiral all based on the fact that data-driven marketers continually strive to maximize efficiency and value for their customers and prospects. To fuel this upward spiral, DMA recently launched its Structured Innovation Program, where we bring together the entire marketing ecosystem of marketers, agencies, technology innovators, and data scientists to remove the barriers to innovation.

Bonus Question: What is your favorite activity outside of work?
It should be no surprise that, for me, it’s all about relationships. Making memories by spending quality time with my wife and two daughters, my friends, and my extended family is what I treasure most.

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