Would you like to improve your retention rate?
Increase your average customer lifetime value?
Generate more referrals for your business?
The solution is to personalize.
Personalization guarantees a more engaging customer experience. It also leads to positive sentiment and increased brand loyalty. Personalization is so important that the lack of it is a leading cause of churn. Up to a third of customers leave a company if they don’t feel personally connected to the brand.
It makes sense.
No one wants to feel like a nameless, faceless user.
Customers are attracted to messages that are tailor-made just for them. They want to know that you, as a brand, understand their challenges and are speaking directly to their needs.
If you can nail personalization, research shows that you can experience a boost in revenue by as much as 15%.
Personalization doesn’t just impact how much you get in revenue, it also impacts how much you spend in marketing. Personalized marketing tends to be more effective, giving you a better return on your investment. If you niche down who you’re speaking to, you won’t need to reach as many people. You can save your marketing dollars and stretch your budget further.
Personalization also helps you stand out from your competitors. If you can call a person by their name, you’re sure to attract their attention.
So, let’s talk about what personalization looks like for SaaS and how to do it effectively without breaking a sweat.
What Is Personalization?
Personalization is the act of designing an experience for a specific audience. It can be as simple as addressing the visitor by name and as detailed as offering individual recommendations based on previous purchases.
The goal behind personalization is to provide a unique and memorable experience that’s tailor-made for your user. By doing so, you can win over their trust and convert them into a customer.
Personalization doesn’t just stop after conversion. The more you learn about your customer, the more you can customize your interaction with them, leading to more purchases in the future.
There are dozens of ways to personalize your interactions, including:
- By demographics (age, location, language, job title)
- By behavior (previous purchases, in-app activity, email click-throughs)
- By device (smartphone, desktop, laptop)
- By pain point (if you have more than one customer type, the challenge will vary even if your product/ solution is the same)
- By motivation to purchase (need, fear, convenience)
Personalization is important because not everyone comes to your website for the same reason. Your site visitors have different levels of knowledge about their problem and your solution. Some may need to learn more about their problem. Others need to know about your solution. If you want to convert, you’ve got to create content that’s customized for each type of customer no matter where they are on the buyer’s journey.
Ultimately, personalization doesn’t just show that you recognize the customer, but it also shows that you know what the customer needs at that very moment.
Understand Who Your Target Customers Are
The first step in personalization is to define your ideal customers. Who are they? What are their pain points? What motivates them to act?
To simplify the process, create customer personas for each of your ideal customer types. Most SaaS have at least two types of customers. Here’s how to create your own customer persona (along with a downloadable template).
Defining things such as your customer’s challenges, hesitations to purchase, and preferred social media channels will help you figure out how to customize your message for each persona.
Understand Where Your Visitors Come From
Once you determine who your customers are, it’s time to figure out where they’re coming from. Use your website analytics to learn more about your site visitors, including their origins.
Are they coming from search engines, social media, other blogs who’ve mentioned you, or direct?
Now that you know where they come from, customize your message for that specific audience. The easiest way to do this is by creating a unique landing page for your top referrers.
For example, if a good portion of your site visitors come from guest posts, be sure to update your blurb with a link to a landing page that’s made specifically for guest visitors. If you know that they’re interested in a particular topic, link to those resources right away on your landing page so they don’t have to hunt through your entire blog to find it. This is one example of personalization.
In addition to reviewing your website analytics, you can use URL shorteners to figure out your top referral sources. Simply assign different URL shorteners to each channel to quickly determine where your clicks come from.
Create Your Buyer’s Journey
How will your prospective customer go from stranger to loyal customer to superstar referrer? Map out the buyer’s journey from awareness to consideration to decision. Then decide how you’ll personalize that journey.
Tweet ThisAn easy way to personalize the buyer’s journey is to focus on the milestones.
On a basic journey, we identify 6 key milestones:
Milestone 1: Awareness
Personalize this milestone by showing retargeted ads to site visitors on Facebook
Milestone 2: Interest
Personalize this milestone by sharing case studies and testimonials by others in the same customer segment (or persona)
Milestone 3: Consideration
Personalize this milestone by sending segmented, nurturing emails
Milestone 4: Purchase
Personalize this milestone by showing recommended products/ services
Milestone 5: Retention
Personalize this milestone by showing the customer how much they’ve saved by using your product/ service
Milestone 6: Advocacy
Personalize this milestone by thanking and rewarding customers for telling others about you
Find ways to personalize each step of the buyer’s journey to show your customers that you care about their experience with your brand.
Personalize Your Emails
You can use email to personalize your interactions with your subscribers, whether they’re customers or prospects. First of all, you already know at least three things about your subscribers once they sign up:
- You know their email address
- You know their name (if you asked)
- You know what they’re interested in (if they signed up for a lead magnet)
Now, you can go about segmenting your subscribers.
You could segment based on their email provider or if they’re using a personal or business email address.
Because you know their name, you can configure your email marketing newsletters to address the subscriber by name.
If they signed up for a lead magnet, you can send them similar content in your future emails to nurture the relationship. And if they signed up to receive a coupon, you know they’re interested in buying from you, so it makes sense to send promotional emails (with discounts) in the future.
The inbox is where you’ll forge a relationship with your customers. It’s crucial to personalize every interaction as much as possible. Use their first name, not just in the greeting, but also in the body of the email to keep them engaged. If they’ve left something behind in their shopping cart, gently remind them via email to complete their purchase — and give them an incentive to do so. Show happy reviews from others in their customer segment.
Also, ask your subscribers directly what types of emails they’d like to receive from you. Make this a standard part of your onboarding process. And for those subscribers who are already on your list, send a quick survey via email to ask about their interests. It’s better to ask now instead of getting marked as spam later. Plus, everything you learn can be used to better personalize your content moving forward.
The Bottom Line
Your customers want to know they matter to you and that you care about delivering value to them. The best way to show them that you care is by personalizing their experience. Use the above tips to add simple elements of personalization in your customer interactions.
Before you go, check out these related posts:
- SaaS Pricing: Here’s What You Need to Know to Generate More Leads
- How to Build the Ultimate User Experience in Your SaaS
- Essential Growth Hacking Tips That You Can Implement Today
