Personalisation

Personalisation uses data and analytics to tailor customer experiences to the individual. Using shopping history, demographic data and pattern recognition data, an individual’s experience can be modified to fit their unique preferences. Offering options that best fit their needs helps the customer to find what they want quickly, giving them more personalised experiences, ideally leading to happier customers and more sales.

• History
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• Today's World
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• Who Uses It
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• How It Works
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• Next Steps

History of Personalisation

While personalisation may be thoroughly modern and you might think it’s driven solely by technology, that’s far from true. Personalisation has been around since the first shop owners.

For example, in the 1800s a man might walk into a cobbler and ask for a pair of shoes. The cobbler could look at his customer card to see what size the man wears, how much he usually spends, how much time he spends on his feet – and then make a new pair of shoes based on his previous customer data. Especially in smaller towns and villages, early retailers were likely to recognise their customer and be able to create just what the customer needed. This level of personalisation became scarce after the Industrial Revolution when mass production largely replaced handmade items. As the early stages of the internet eventually came around, personalisation was still not much of a concern and most marketing teams would cater to each customer the same way.

However, the customer experience shifted when web-based companies, such as Amazon, appeared. Web personalisation first took off with Amazon due to its “customers who bought this item also purchased …” feature. And the age of the recommendation engine was born. This enabled grouping of customer segments based on merchandise preferences to be shown to other buyers in the same segment. Today, segmentation is not considered the purest form of personalisation, but it allowed for early personalised experiences and began the growth of the concept tremendously.

Balancing Personalisation and Privacy

As technology advances and starts to collect more customer data, people have become increasingly wary of how it affects their privacy. Security breaches, government use of personal information and marketing communications that are a little too personal are making people more on edge about their personal information being shared. This makes it difficult for marketers to know the balance between how much personalisation is going to make someone’s privacy feel violated. As technology expands, it becomes vital for companies to be able to show two things: that they understand the customer and can protect their personal information.

CNM Helps Nonprofits

Nonprofits were one of the many organisations significantly affected by COVID-19. However, personalisation offerings allowed them to keep up with demand and further their efforts during the crisis. Their use of analytics allowed them to build back safer and more healthy communities. Watch this video to take a closer look into how nonprofits fought back during COVID.

How Personalisation Works

Personalisation is mainly accomplished today by using algorithms and machine learning. Algorithmic complexity varies from basic to advanced, but they all offer a degree of differentiation. Basic algorithms might present new products or bestsellers to a buyer. More advanced algorithms for personalisation will be able to identify specific things about a customer and recommend similar items. For example, Netflix uses an algorithm that looks at the shows you watch in real time, and then recommends shows to you based on your viewing data. Decision trees are created to direct you to different paths to find more products related to your known interests.

In many ways, personalisation is the modern equivalent of excellent customer service. Customers expect it and may even become annoyed when the sites they visit do not include personalisation features. When looking at car insurance for a new driver, for example, an insurer who knows the ages of your children and what types of cars you drive can personalise an offer more quickly.

Next steps

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