Building Your Marketing Resilience
Last week, we took a high-level look at what it means to be paycheck to paycheck with your retention marketing program. If you missed it, you’ll want to take a look here to get caught up before jumping in to todays addition.
Last Week On “Jason wishes all retention marketing was more personalized”…..
“Building your long-term investment—your life-long investment—in your business is pretty straightforward. Focus your energy on creating the most personalized experiences possible for as many of your customers and audience members as necessary. This is important! Your goal is not to create personalized experiences for EVERY customer and audience member (unrealistic goals lead to wasted effort), but to create the most personalized experiences possible for AS MANY customers and audiences as necessary.”
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Ok, with that flashback behind us… we are left with our next thought exercise: What does “necessary” mean? And what qualifies as a personalized experience? And what do I do with my hands?
Let’s start at the beginning here. Put your hands down; let me rephrase. I’m saying that not every segment of your audience will even generate enough messages delivered to justify personalizing for them. So you’ll always have a percentage of your messages rolling out with your standard branded best practices. By design, you should invest your time and energy with the audiences that move the needle the most for your business. Like the people that like you!
Covering what qualifies as a personalized experience can be summarized in a three-part checklist: 1) Can you distinguish why this message is more valuable based on the connection between content/recipient? 2) If a personalization tag in your message fails, will this message still be uniquely valuable to this recipient? 3) Does it pass the “effort” check?
More info on the three-part checklist? OK, let’s use an example:
We will have to create a new e-commerce store here, so let’s go with the obvious—a Subscription Sock Service for Chairs concept. Every single month, our customers receive a curated selection of stylish socks for their chair legs. It’s called the Chair Couture Cozy Club, and it’s going to rock your socks off. Protect your floors in style, and never worry about your chairs feeling underdressed (or chilly) at your next dinner party.
Our very first Meta Ad! ROAS here we come!
Meet The Sub-Avatars
It’s important to note that, much like your business, the CCCC has a very diverse audience, with our more elegant (higher price point) customers opting for our Aristocrat Ankle Collection with our hand-stitched, cashmere-blend chair socks, and our entry-level (lower price point) customers shopping our One-Size-Fits-All Fuzzies Collection made from synthetic sheepskin, designed to stretch over any chair leg. These are unique groups with unique needs, values, and pain points. It’s foolish to think we can send out a single message that speaks to both audiences.
With the stage set, it’s time to plan an SMS campaign for CCCC promoting our latest blog post called “Keep Your Socks On!! 10 tips to a scratch-free floor NOW!”. Since we have the benefit of segmenting our audience based on type, we’ve created two versions of this campaign for sending.
High Price Point Segment:
"Elevate your living space and protect your exquisite floors with grace. Indulge in the art of floor care with Chair Couture Cozy Club. Read now: [Link]"
Low Price Point Segment
"Ready to give your floors some love without breaking the bank? Keep ‘em scratch-free, and keep ‘em for longer! Your floors (and wallet) will thank you. Get inspired with Chair Couture Cozy Club. Check it out: [Link]"
The Three-Part Personalization Checklist In Action:
1. Can I distinguish why this message is more valuable based on the connection between the content/recipient?
Think about the why. Why was this content added for this specific recipient? Each message is designed to speak to each group on many levels, and that’s important. Our high-priced content speaks to the personality of this audience. “Indulge in the art of floor care” is meant to laser focus on the personality traits of an individual who would spend $99.50 on socks for their dining room chairs. Our low-priced content caters more to the preservation of what you already have than elevation or indulgence. Again, speaking directly to the personality traits of this group.
2. If a personalization tag fails, will this message still be unique to this recipient?
This one is to separate the fakers from the personalization-makers. I intentionally did not include a {{ first_name }} in today’s examples to highlight the fact that Property Tags do not equal Personalization. So, to pass this gut check with your message, remove all personalized tags and see if your content is still personal. If not, you’ve missed it.
3. Does it pass the “effort” check?
This is one of those “you know it when you see it” type rules. Let’s compare our low-priced example:
"Ready to give your floors some love without breaking the bank? Keep ‘em scratch free, and keep ‘em for longer! Your floors (and wallet) will thank you. Get inspired with Chair Couture Cozy Club. Check it out: [Link]"
With another version of this same message
"Want tips for floor care? Read our blog 'Keep your socks on—10 tips to a scratch-free floor NOW!' for ideas. Visit Chair Couture Cozy Club for more: [Link]"
And you tell me which one passes.
If you were the customer, which one would show you that the store owner knows who you are?
Once you’ve passed steps 1 & 2, this is meant to be one last chance to do right by your customer before hitting that schedule button. Leave it all out there on the field; as Jalen says, “Effort will never be questioned.”
That’s it for this one. Next week, I’ll follow up with the final post of this 3 part series, spending some more time on the ins and outs of personalization for retention marketing. See y’all then!
Go Birds!
