Understanding or Information?
To know what someone needs, what do you need to know?
The idea of “content personalization” is a big topic in content marketing circles. Can you personalize communication based on information only? Can you truly connect with your audience and deliver what they need based on data available?
Information is fine if you need to catch a bus or a train. If you need to connect with your audience, you need understanding.
I’m not talking about retail-focused content personalization efforts of companies such as Amazon and Netflix. Getting to know your customers by tracking their clicks will get you information but it will not provide you with understanding. And that can work for massive retailers who collect reams of data on countless clicks (though my experience with either of these companies says they’re not doing very well with personalization, but that’s another topic).
Look at the emails you get from marketers – from realtors to app developers. Can they even correctly address your name or title or business ID? Yet the promise of personalization and marketing automation gets so many companies to buy data-based information services.
Understanding First
B2B service providers – manufacturers, accountants, lawyers, realtors and more – need more understanding, not more information.
I saw the results of a recent study on personalization of B2B emails. Titled “Putting Personalization to the (Field) Test” (with email registration required), this study aimed to determine how much personalization is necessary to capture attention. The query had these conditions:
Industry only: We modified the subject line and opening to include a relevant industry insight
Company only: We researched the company’s annual report and press releases to find a unique angle
Personal + Industry: We added personal details to the industry-specific email
Personal + Company: We added personal details to the company-specific email
The email with the highest open rates? The email with the personal-and-company specific info. That’s cool, if you’re goal is to get a higher open rate. If you want engagement, conversations, connections, the study found the industry-only emails had higher clicks and scheduled meetings. “In fact, (the industry email) had 24% higher click-throughs, and it had almost 50% higher meetings set,” Corporate Visions’ Tim Riesterer said of the study his group conducted.
Your Expertise Is Your Understanding
“Industry-only” content is the best kind of personalization. It’s your expertise. It’s what you should be talking about. It’s simply the good and relevant content you should be creating and delivering so you can get to know your audience, not because you already know your audience.
Data is not understanding, it’s simply information. There is nothing wrong with information. But it’s not the basis for meaningful conversations – that requires understanding.
The best part of this for business owners? Creating industry-specific communication plans is the easy part. Yes, it takes time to create good content that speaks well to a specific topic. It will take more time than simply automating an email campaign based on a recipient’s name and job title.
What do you do next? Create a communication strategy based on your understanding of solving problems for your customers. How do you know what problems they’re having? You should already know. If you don’t know, ask them.
If you’d like to talk about communication strategy and the creation of relevant content, contact me.