13 Personalized Marketing Examples To Dazzle Your Clients
Jane is a 38-year-old mom looking to lose some weight.
And John is a 56-year-old man who wants to prevent hair loss.
Both of them click on an ad from health coach Andy.
Each lands on the same exact page that briefly talks about what Andy does before directing them to book a call.
Although the webpage is well-detailed on all of Andy’s expertise, it doesn’t speak to Jane or John. It feels too generic.
Therefore, each of them exits the website and never returns again.
The problem?
Andy’s landing page wasn’t personalized.
That’s where you lose the consumer.
As someone who works at or runs an agency, maybe you already know this.
So if you’re looking for some new ways to personalize the consumer experience, then this resource is for you.
In this article, you’ll read about 13 examples of personalized marketing from website, email, and advertisements to help you:
- Show your audience you understand them.
- Drive more conversions.
- Send more focused emails and avoid annoying subscribers.
- Increase ROI, as each marketing dollar is used for targeted individuals.
Now, let’s get into it.
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Does Personalization Increase Engagement?
Short answer … yes, of course it does.
As consumers have gotten more accustomed to better shopping experiences, personalization is key to modern marketing.
According to SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers will only engage with personalized messages from brands.
And since consumers have so many options to choose from, they’ll switch brands if you can’t satisfy this expectation — to someone that can.
A personalized experience shows consumers that you get them. You cater to their individual tastes.
As a result, your messages resonate more with your audience. No wonder 99% of marketers say personalization improves customer relationships, according to Salesforce.
Just put yourself in their shoes. For example, would you rather see a cookie-cutter email promotion from a brand or an email that takes your specific interests into account?
I’m sure the answer is obvious.
At the heart of personalized marketing is data.
Luckily for you, Inmar Intelligence finds that 65% of consumers are willing to share personal information in exchange for a more personalized shopping experience.
From there, you can segment your agency’s audience and send messages that are tailor-made for each person.
You might leverage some of the following data:
- Location
- Past purchases
- Browsing behavior
- Industry (for B2B)
- Blog content read
- Keywords used (for dynamic landing pages)
Although personalized marketing is great for the consumer, it’s also an incredibly useful tactic for you too.
As reported by Liveclicker, retailers earn up to $20 for every $1 spent on advanced, personalized marketing.
And it doesn’t only apply to B2C marketing. KoMarketing says 70% of B2B marketers using personalization see a 200% ROI.
Now, I’m sure you’re dying to start seeing some different ways to implement personalization into your agency’s marketing efforts. So if you want to see all this in action, then keep reading as we begin with the first personalized marketing example.
Website Personalization
Example of Personalized Marketing #1: Sew Heidi’s Dynamic Opt-In Copy
Fashion designer Sew Heidi offers educational content to people with a passion for the fashion industry.
She has a podcast, tutorials, a blog and some courses.
To resonate more with her audience, Sew offered personalized opt-ins for her website visitors.
That way, someone would receive an opt-in notification for a lead magnet related to the topic they were reading.
And first-time website visitors were segmented by their interests.
So if a user showed curiosity in starting a career in fashion, they’d see the following opt-in.
As you can see, this very subtle change speaks to the individual.
No cookie-cutter copy.
At the end of the day, that’s what personalized marketing is all about.
With the personalized opt-in copy, Sew managed to convert 7.8% of their visitors into subscribers.
And she now understands the goals of 100% of her subscribers compared to just 3% before the new strategy.
Example of Personalized Marketing #2: Prowly’s Geo-Targeted Landing Pages
Prowly is a Poland-based PR software company.
When it decided to expand into other European countries, the marketing team decided to set up personalized landing pages tailored to each geographic populace.
For example, potential clients in Sweden would see a landing page that says “Prowly is landing in Sweden!”
And it depicts a cartoon owl sporting some viking gear.
Then the German landing page reads “Prwoly is landing in Germany!” with two owls holding a beer and a pretzel respectively.
Granted, these may be sweeping generalizations, but still, the average Swedish and German citizen won’t feel offended and the message is clear: Prowly is ready to go all-in with them.
Besides, 3 out of 4 consumers appreciate it when brands use humor, according to Sprout Social.
Okay, now that you’ve seen Prowly’s personalized landing pages, let’s check out the next personalized marketing example for your agency to draw inspiration from.
Example of Personalized Marketing #3: Secret Escape’s Homepage Listings
Secret Escapes is a travel company that sells to consumers looking to stay at luxury hotels for a discounted price.
For this example, Secret Escapes was using pay-per-click (PPC) ads to promote their homepage listings.
And in order to personalize the homepage for people after clicking on the ad, the team leveraged the following data:
- Last three search terms
- Most visited type of sale for the visitor
- PPC keyword that acquired the visitor
Depending on this data, visitors would see listings most relevant to them.
To illustrate, if someone clicked on a PPC ad with the keyword “New York” or “All-Inclusive,” the listing page would look like this:
According to Tok Evans, the product manager responsible for the A/B testing, the personalized listings saw 210% more complete purchases than the previous version.
Example of Personalized Marketing #4: Tealium Leverages Firmographic Data
Tealium is a B2B firm that helps companies manage and make use of their customer data.
As you can imagine, they attract businesses from a wide variety of industries.
According to Accenture, 73% of B2B buyers want a personalized, B2C-like customer experience.
And to accommodate for that fact, Tealium needed to think outside the box.
In order to personalize the user experience on its website, Tealium’s marketing team decided to utilize some third-party tools that detect the IP address of a website user, match it with a company name, and display a homepage variation that resonates with the unique visitor.
So if someone from the retail industry frequents the blog often, the homepage looks like this:
But say that the website visitor is from California and is interested in data governance.
He or she will see the following variation:
Want one more example?
Here’s what the homepage looks like for someone who has visited Tealium.com three times in the last 30 days and works in the financial industry.
All these homepages share one thing: They’re tailor-made for the individual B2B buyer.
With that, the visitor is more likely to feel like they’re understood and will complete the call to action.
So, time to proceed to our next example on the list.
Did you ever think Hallmark would become a source of inspiration for your agency?
Because, that’s the next example we’ll be looking at.
Example of Personalized Marketing #5: Hallmark’s Video Recommendations
According to Wyzowl, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
Moreover, 69% of consumers prefer video when it comes to learning more about a product or service.
And who better to display video than a TV-program-centric company like Hallmark?
To increase video consumption on its website and drive more demand for its programs, Hallmark turned to the magic of personalization.
So to do this, Hallmark used Dynamic Yield’s machine-learning algorithm that would suggest relevant content to visitors that performs well.In other words, unpopular video content was weeded out.
And based on past content viewed, the visitor is recommended videos that he or she would be most interested in.
Instead of having 100 videos to choose from at random, Hallmark does the hard work for you.
Another cool thing with this example of personalized marketing is the geo-targeting Hallmark implemented.
For really popular shows like “The Good Witch,” Hallmark featured a countdown timer, based on the visitor’s time zone, to add a sense of urgency to tune in.
Example of Personalized Marketing #6: Brooks Running Cuts Down on Shoe Returns
Customers love returning products these days.
According to the National Research Foundation, U.S. consumers returned an estimated $428 billion in merchandise in 2020.
And if you sell something like shoes, then you can expect a great deal of “return abuse” from your customers.
Just ask e-commerce store Brooks Running.
The company was finding that a lot of shoppers were purchasing two pairs of shoes with the same size or within half a size of each other.
And most of them were returning at least one pair.
Clearly, the shoppers were concerned about the shoes not fitting, so they buy two pairs and keep the one that fits.
So in order to combat this issue, Brooks Running personalized the purchasing experience for shoppers.
With the new strategy, if a shopper adds a second shoe size to the cart, they see a message prompt that reads: “Not sure which size to get?” This message would direct the shopper to get assistance from customer service.
After adding the personalized message prompt, shoe returns declined by 80% for Brooks Running.
On top of that, nearly 9 out of 10 customers said they appreciated the offer to help.
Example of Personalized Marketing #7: SlideBelt Saves Your Cart
E-commerce store SlideBelts sells wearable merchandise like ratchet belts, watches, wallets and more.
For this personalized marketing example, we look at how SlideBelt greets returning website visitors.
If shoppers add an item to their cart and leave the website without checking out, they’ll be reminded later if they revisit.
And the fact of the matter is, this occurs a lot.
As stated by The Drum, 92% of your client’s first time visitors are going to leave without buying something. Even more, I’m sure you notice this trend on your agency’s website too.
The thing is, most website traffic is not interested in purchasing anything.
But by doing what SlideBelts does and reminding them of what they’re interested in will help you convert them when they decide to come back.
See, if a shopper didn’t opt-in with your mailing list, then you have no way to send a cart abandonment email.
So saving their cart is the next best thing you can do.
Email Personalization
Example of Personalized Marketing #8: Adorama Adds Brand Logo Banners
Adorama is a retailer that sells electronic products, such as cameras and film equipment.
Although it has a large email list, the marketing team felt that the static emails were boring their audience.
So it was time to step it up a notch with some personalization.
According to Campaign Monitor, personalized emails drive as much as 6 times more conversions than traditional emails.
Before the personalization, promotional emails were generic and looked like this:
But in this example, Adorama broke up its audience into three distinct groups. Customers who have purchased cameras from:
- Canon
- Sony
- Nikon
From there, each recipient would see a similar email, only that the banner at the top would feature a logo of the brand of their liking.
By just simply adding the brand logo banners to the emails, Adorama increased its revenue by 18.25% and average order value by 25.33%.
Example of Personalized Marketing #9: EasyJet Tells a Personalized Customer Story
Like any other airliner, EasyJets needed to find a way to drive more demand for its high-cost service.
Buying an airline ticket isn’t exactly the same as buying a pair of sunglasses, it’s a lot more expensive (at least I’d hope it is).
And instead of focusing on acquiring new customers, EasyJets reached out to its current customer base.
With a joint effort between EasyJet’s data scientists and marketing team, the company came up with a really cool way to get its customers re-engaged.
Each customer received an email that summarized his or her traveling history with EasyJets, including:
- Very first trip
- Distance traveled
- Total trip count
- Airplane seating arrangements
- Most recent trip
Then, of course, it follows that all up with a CTA to try some other locations.
Most of the time, personalization still requires consumers to see similar recommendations as other customers if they’re in the same segment.
But EasyJet was in a unique position to go above and beyond that.
As no surprise, the email campaign was a massive success.
The results were:
- More than 100% more opens
- 25% higher click-through rate
- 1.1 million social media impressions
- 7.5% of customers booked a flight within 30 days
Example of Personalized Marketing #10: Denamico Uses Lifecycle Segmentation
Denamico is a growth agency that took on a client specializing in retirement financial planning.
For this example of personalized marketing, the team decided to use lifecycle segmentation to deliver targeted emails that resonate with each recipient.
So if someone is just a lead, then they see a different email than someone who’s a sales-qualified lead.
Whereas a lead is still at the top of the sales funnel, a sales-qualified lead is closer to the bottom and ready to make a purchase.
That’s why Denamico focused on educational content with an e-book offering for email recipients in the lead segment, while those in the sales-qualified lead segment received a request to schedule a consultation.
Sales Lead Email
Sales-Qualified Lead Email
Because of the more personalized approach to the emails, Denamico’s client saw 43% opens and an 89% uptick in its click-through rate.
Advertisement Personalization
Example of Personalized Marketing #11: Finish Line’s Dynamic Facebook Ads
In early 2017, Finish Line teamed up with Facebook Marketing Partner StitcherAds to increase website sales.
And in order to do so, the team took consumer website browsing behavior and displayed personalized ads on Facebook.
In other words, they used retargeting ads, which have click-through rates 10 times higher than a typical ad, according to Wishpond.
So if someone was browsing men’s black Nike crew socks, then they’d see an ad over on Facebook featuring the product (if they use Facebook, of course).
But besides retargeting website visitors, StitcherAds and Finish Line also honed in on people between the ages of 18 and 65 who haven’t been on the website yet would be likely to be interested in Finish Line’s products.
For this, the team presented ads that focused on the brand and incentives, such as free shipping and flat-rate shipping. And, in alignment with marketing best practices, the ads were mobile-friendly.
Between April and May 2017, Finish Line accomplished a 49 fold increase in sales and an 83% reduction in cost per sale.
Not too bad.
Our next personalized marketing example got some results that weren’t so bad either. Let’s take a closer look.
Example of Personalized Marketing #12: Deutsche Bahn’s “No Need to Fly” Campaign
Contagious, a company that helps agencies and brands with creative marketing solutions, left an interesting case study on YouTube.
Their client was a German Railway company by the name of Deutsche Bahn.
And what they did was use comparison advertising to show price differentiation between German destinations only a train ride away and out-of-country destinations requiring plane tickets.
Using an AI algorithm, the company picked up on what destinations travel enthusiasts on social media were thinking about traveling to via the search terms they used.
To suggest a nearby location and estimate the cost of travel, Deutsche Bahne leveraged geo-targeting.
You see, they would first feature two images side by side.
Next, some text would appear on each image revealing the location.
Then finally, the price comparison.
The idea is, why would you pay over 1,000 more euros to travel to another destination that looks so similar anyway?
Of course, this is a bit misleading.
There’s always some people that might be attracted to a destination for a very specific reason.
For example, although Germany and Vancouver may have very similar scenery, you can’t see any orca whales in Germany.
Or check out some ancient Indigenous Peoples sites.
But to the average person who casually travels, the price difference does make Deutsche Bahn’s train services seem a lot more reasonable.
Apparently, German travelers took notice, as 850% more clicks and 24% more sales were attributed to the campaign.
Example of Personalized Marketing #13: Toyota’s RAV4 Facebook Video Ads
Everyone is unique, right?
We all have our own tastes in products.
Fortunately for car shoppers, Toyota gets this.
To promote its RAV4 Hybrid, Toyota and their agency partner, Saatchi & Saatchi, used dynamic Facebook video ads.
Each beginning, middle and ending part of the video ad was designed to be interchangeable.
With 100,000 variations of the short video, users would see one that’s most personalized for them.
As a result, the video felt more relatable to each individual.
Below is one variation of the video.
Conclusion
Personalized marketing is pretty much par for the course these days.
If your agency doesn't use a messaging strategy that’s targeted toward different types of people, then you’re stuck in old, outdated habits.
With the many benefits of personalized marketing, it’s natural you want to master this at your agency.
That way, you really wow your clients.
In this resource, you saw 13 examples of personalized marketing from other companies. Some come from household brands you already know and love, while some come from lesser-known brands that prove the little guy can be just as effective.
With these examples, you and your agency have some new, interesting avenues to consider for your upcoming campaigns.
But if your agency has been really having a tough go with personalized marketing, then you aren’t alone.
Although nearly every marketer understands the importance of personalization, most don’t utilize it as effectively as they wish.
According to Gartner, 74% of marketing leaders still struggle with personalized marketing.
There’s a wide range of factors that need to be reviewed, everything from data privacy to content creation.
So if you have any concerns moving forward with your personalized marketing, then please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of AutoGrow’s account strategists and see how we will help your agency.
As personalization has been a cornerstone of our digital marketing services for over a decade, we have great confidence that we’ll find all the right pieces to the puzzle to make your clients’ audience feel passionate about their brand.
No more high bounce rates.
No more frequent newsletter unsubscribes.
No more social media unfollows.
By the way, you’ll get 100% of the credit from your clients.
At the end of the day, our mission is to help you grow your digital agency and take on more clients.
And who knows? Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two.
Speak With an Account Strategist
If you enjoyed reading this article, which personalized marketing example stood out to you and why?
Let me know in the comments below.
Keep AutoGrowin’, stay focused.
Mark
