The What, Who and How of Personalization
When it comes to the omnichannel consumer and personalization strategies, consumer goods (CG) companies oftentimes don’t know who is responsible within the organization, and what strategy works best for them. That is why this month, CGT sits down with Srinath Srinivasan, principal consultant, Digital Business at Mindtree, to discuss the what, who and how of personalization for the CG industry.
What do you think has triggered this wave of personalization in CG companies?
Srinivasan: I don’t necessarily see personalization as a paradigm shift in the way CG companies are doing business. To me, I see it more as the coming-of-age of the omnichannel journey that companies started a few years back. While it did start off with “Buy Online, Pickup In-Store” (BOPIS) kind of use cases — where you start a transaction in one channel and end up in another — it has since evolved into connecting the dots between consumer touchpoints with added intelligence. For example, the ability to capture browsing behavior online and subsequently sending a customized direct mail would be a kind of omnichannel personalization.
Who is responsible for personalization strategies within the organization?
Srinivasan: Personalization strategies within CG companies need to cut across the job functions of marketing, sales and service. Any touchpoint that a consumer has with a brand can and should be personalized. Often personalization strategies are thought to be about enabling hi-tech platforms for generating product and content recommendations that help in personalizing the online experience of the consumer. However, it’s equally important to ensure that hi-touch is maintained during offline interactions. The ability of a store or a service representative to influence a customer is often ignored when defining personalization strategies. That’s a mistake.
How should companies go about defining a strategy for personalization?
Srinivasan: A sound personalization strategy is dependent on three dimensions:
• Geography — Personalization strategies need to be tailored to the geography of the individual consumer. As mentioned earlier, it will be a combination of hi-tech and hi-touch interactions which influence the strategy. For example, in emerging economies it’s believed that shoppers change their buying patterns twice as often as their counterparts in the developed world. So it’s important for store representatives in these regions to engage in personalized conversations to influence the sale.
• Type of product — Personalized interactions can vary greatly depending on the type of goods sold. For example, providing bundling and online offers for convenience products based on the user persona might be a great way to personalize one experience, however, when dealing with a luxury brand, you might want to provide a more concierge-like experience during the shopping process.
• Department — As mentioned earlier, personalization cuts across job functions of marketing, sales and service, and it’s important to define the strategy for each of these departments. Each of these need to ensure that they are feeding off information from one another and establishing a consistent connection with the user.
From there, the building blocks for personalization come from specific capabilities. For one, companies need to have a fine grained understanding of consumer personas – and brands need a clear definition of each persona and where he/she engages. Analytics capabilities are also crucial. With storage being cheap, organizations are collecting a lot of data from their customers’ online and offline footprints. Having the right analytics capabilities to plough through this data is critical. Integrated campaign capabilities — the ability to execute campaigns and share data across channels — are also necessary.
And lastly, companies need to do all of this with a publicly expressed Code of Honor. With so much consumer data being collected, it’s important that the right security protocols are in place to protect it — not just to keep the data safe, but also to give customers peace of mind. Clearly the ‘Why’ is obvious and the ‘When’ is Now!
What do you think has triggered this wave of personalization in CG companies?
Srinivasan: I don’t necessarily see personalization as a paradigm shift in the way CG companies are doing business. To me, I see it more as the coming-of-age of the omnichannel journey that companies started a few years back. While it did start off with “Buy Online, Pickup In-Store” (BOPIS) kind of use cases — where you start a transaction in one channel and end up in another — it has since evolved into connecting the dots between consumer touchpoints with added intelligence. For example, the ability to capture browsing behavior online and subsequently sending a customized direct mail would be a kind of omnichannel personalization.
Who is responsible for personalization strategies within the organization?
Srinivasan: Personalization strategies within CG companies need to cut across the job functions of marketing, sales and service. Any touchpoint that a consumer has with a brand can and should be personalized. Often personalization strategies are thought to be about enabling hi-tech platforms for generating product and content recommendations that help in personalizing the online experience of the consumer. However, it’s equally important to ensure that hi-touch is maintained during offline interactions. The ability of a store or a service representative to influence a customer is often ignored when defining personalization strategies. That’s a mistake.
How should companies go about defining a strategy for personalization?
Srinivasan: A sound personalization strategy is dependent on three dimensions:
• Geography — Personalization strategies need to be tailored to the geography of the individual consumer. As mentioned earlier, it will be a combination of hi-tech and hi-touch interactions which influence the strategy. For example, in emerging economies it’s believed that shoppers change their buying patterns twice as often as their counterparts in the developed world. So it’s important for store representatives in these regions to engage in personalized conversations to influence the sale.
• Type of product — Personalized interactions can vary greatly depending on the type of goods sold. For example, providing bundling and online offers for convenience products based on the user persona might be a great way to personalize one experience, however, when dealing with a luxury brand, you might want to provide a more concierge-like experience during the shopping process.
• Department — As mentioned earlier, personalization cuts across job functions of marketing, sales and service, and it’s important to define the strategy for each of these departments. Each of these need to ensure that they are feeding off information from one another and establishing a consistent connection with the user.
From there, the building blocks for personalization come from specific capabilities. For one, companies need to have a fine grained understanding of consumer personas – and brands need a clear definition of each persona and where he/she engages. Analytics capabilities are also crucial. With storage being cheap, organizations are collecting a lot of data from their customers’ online and offline footprints. Having the right analytics capabilities to plough through this data is critical. Integrated campaign capabilities — the ability to execute campaigns and share data across channels — are also necessary.
And lastly, companies need to do all of this with a publicly expressed Code of Honor. With so much consumer data being collected, it’s important that the right security protocols are in place to protect it — not just to keep the data safe, but also to give customers peace of mind. Clearly the ‘Why’ is obvious and the ‘When’ is Now!