When I sit downwardly to write an commodity, I have a pretty standard routine. I outline the story in our Content Optimization System (COS), re-create and paste it into a Google doc, notice a proficient photograph to back-trail it, do research, write, proofread, and carry it back over to our COS. Information technology's a weird series of steps that doesn't necessarily work for anybody, but it does for me. They're my very ain personal blogging habits.

Those habits aren't just limited to my writing procedure. I have morning, evening, and weekend routines, as if my entire life has become a series of established patterns. Knowing what those habits are, I learned during footstep iv of the above, is a veritable goldmine for marketers.

I figured that out from a 2012 New York Times commodity called, "How Companies Learn Your Secrets." Penned by Charles Duhigg, it was written largely as a follow-upwards to what became a public incident: An angry father marched into a Minnesota Target store, demanded to know why his teenage daughter received coupons for infant products, only to after notice out that she was, in fact, significant.

The retailer, it turned out, was able to predict her pregnancy and after personalize the promotions she received, thanks in big function to a ton of (completely legal) data drove and analysis. Creepy — or great marketing?

→ Click here to download our free guide to digital marketing fundamentals  [Download Now].

Today, we're still asking ourselves that question. But, ultimately, it seems that there can exist a good residual between knowing your client style too well and solid marketing. In fact, in 2018, Harvard Business Review revealed that although people want to keep their information secure online, they still value personalized and meaningful marketing experience.

But how does personalized marketing work, and how accept other brands put it into practice without coming off as creepy? Hither are eight great examples of brands that nailed it in a fashion that came off equally fun rather than intrusive.

9 Personalized Marketing Examples

1. Shutterfly

Shutterfly is a website and app that allows yous to create canvases, photobooks, calendars, and even items with your own photos laminated on to them. While Shutterfly has gotten creative with personalized emails and subject area lines, one unique thing information technology did recently was personalize detail offerings on its app.

If y'all download the Shutterfly smartphone app, create an business relationship, and give Shutterfly permission to access your photos, it will automatically place photos with faces in them and place them on items that you tin purchase from the app — similar these mugs, for example.

example of personalized marketing on shutterfly

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The Takeaway

If you sell products that are personalized to begin with, it can be helpful to show your customer what they could wait similar before they buy them as well as photos or words related to their life that would look great on the product.

Nevertheless, when you exercise this, be very conscientious that you get explicit permission to get through someone's information to pull this information. When it came to Shutterfly, Pamela had already given the app permission to access her photos and continued the account to her Facebook account where she approved a number of other related permissions. If yous don't get proper permissions and pull appropriate personalization data, you could come off as untrustworthy or downright creepy.

2. Snapchat's Bitmoji

In 2016. Snapchat launched an app called Bitmoji which allows users to pattern cartoonish avatars of themselves that can be featured as their Snapchat profile picture and or on the Snap Map, if permitted.

Since then, Snapchat has also launched an autogenerated daily Story in its Discover feed, called "Bitmoji Stories."

When you lot click into a Bitmoji Story, you tin encounter a series of comic-volume-like images that tell a story almost your own Bitmoji avatar. If you've recently spoken to a friend with a Bitmoji attached to the app, you can also see your friends pop upwardly in your daily Story.

Below is an example of a Bitmoji Story where Pamela Crash-land's Bitmoji shows her cousin's Bitmoji a new app:

Personalized Bitmoji Story on Snapchat Discover

The Takeaway

Because Bitmoji Stories announced in Observe, with all the other branded content and advertisements on Snapchat, the app visitor has found a great way to bring people to this particular expanse of the app — even if they aren't interested in seeing branded content. While audiences are on this Discover page, they might notice a brand or content that catches their attention and further interact with feed.

This is a cracking case of how an app creatively used personalization to bring traffic from ane area of its app to another.

three. Target

To proceed the above tale, we idea it might be helpful to share more information on how, exactly, the retailer pulled off the aforementioned personal prediction. Every bit Duhigg explains in his commodity — which goes into much greater detail than I will here — every Target customer is assigned a Guest ID number later on the very starting time interaction with the brand.

That ID is used to shop the customer'southward demographic information, ranging from ethnicity to chore history, and to rails ownership behavior. And past doing the latter, specifically with those who had baby registries with the store, Target's marketing analysts were able to grade a "pregnancy prediction" score, which allowed them to decide which purchasing patterns indicated a client was in the early expectant stages.

Information technology was a game-changer. "Once consumers' shopping habits are ingrained," Duhigg writes, "it's incredibly difficult to modify them." That is, until, a major life event takes place, like finding out that a baby is 1 the way.

That's when routines are forced to alter. Suddenly, there's a borderline, and people start to buy products that they never previously considered, like "cocoa-butter balm" and "a purse big enough to double as a diaper bag," the commodity says. Those are the behaviors that trigger Target's pregnancy prediction score, prompting the client to receive special deals on baby-related items.

The Takeaway

While this level of personalized marketing is admittedly fascinating, it could backlash. Duhigg summarized it well in his article:

Using data to predict a adult female's pregnancy, Target realized … could be a public-relations disaster. So the question became: how could they go their advertisements into expectant mothers' hands without making it announced they were spying on them? How practice you take advantage of someone'due south habits without letting them know you're studying their lives?"

That'south not to say that marketers should completely practice away with personalization, as it's effective when done correctly — personalized emails, for example, have a 6.ii% higher open up rate than those that aren't. But in an era with growing business over privacy and security, tread lightly.

Let your customers know that you empathize them, without beingness intrusive. Curious to learn how to exercise that with your HubSpot Marketing and Sales software? Read more than about how personalization tokens piece of work here.

four. Vidyard

Last week, my colleague, HubSpot Academy Sales Professor Kyle Jepsen, forwarded me an email with the comment, "Taking personalization to a whole new level." The video beneath followed:

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He wasn't kidding. This particular brand could take just superimposed each recipient's proper noun onto the whiteboard in this video and kept the same script for each one. Merely it didn't end there — Cole, the gentleman speaking in the video, not only addressed Kyle by his first name, but as well referred to his specific colleagues and the conversations he had with them.

The Takeaway

Considering that the boilerplate online reader loses involvement after about 15 seconds, personalizing your mixed media content is an interesting and often effective approach. "I hateful, conspicuously he made the video just for me," Jepson said. "It's an interesting case study."

And while this sort of personalization is memorable, information technology's besides extremely fourth dimension-consuming. So if you set out to create it, be absolutely sure you're targeting the right people. There's zip worse than taking the time to produce something highly customized, only to detect out yous've sent it to someone who doesn't accept the decision-making power you need.

5. Coca Cola

Personalized Coke Bottle.png
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Dorsum in 2011, Coca Cola launched its famous "Share a Coke" campaign in Australia, bringing it to the U.Southward. in 2014. It was an effort to attain millennials, in which each bottle contained one of the about popular first names assigned to that generation. Eventually, bottles independent semi-personal labels across offset names, like "ameliorate half." Today, according to Advertising Age, over 800 first names are used.

According to that aforementioned source, Coke will soon exist adding surnames to bottles, like Garcia and Thompson. "Last names give the states an opportunity to invite more people into the entrada," Evan Holod, Coca-Cola's brand director told Ad Historic period. "It'southward merely a nifty way to upwards the attain."

In addition to that effort, according CNBC, Coca-Cola Great britain will soon be including the names of famous vacation destinations on bottles, like Hawaii and Miami. The goal of that initiative is "to remind people of the refreshment and great taste that only an ice-cold Coke can bring on a hot summer solar day," read the official statement. Plus, those bottles volition come up with the take chances to win a trip to those locales.

The Takeaway

Putting first names on Coke bottles was a successful movement. In the U.S., it resulted in increased sales book for the starting time time in roughly four years. Plus, it provides a cheap thrill — I know that I internally squeal with excitement when I really find a bottle that says "Amanda."

The last name move, however, could exist a chip dissimilar. While at that place is the option to customize your own canteen labels at ShareaCoke.com — which allows you to write whatsoever you desire, like a customized event hashtag or something like "congratulations" — information technology could exist deemed as exclusionary to those with unique or hyphenated last names.

For instance, while my feelings aren't hurt knowing that I won't find a bottle labeled with "Zantal-Wiener," I'm not well-nigh to pay $5 for a customized one, either. So when you prepare out to personalize a production, brand sure information technology's appropriately customized to accomplish the right segment of your audience, but isn't restrictive, either.

vi. Amazon

Amazon'due south personalization efforts aren't exactly new. Since at least 2013, its product curation and recommendation algorithm has made for headlines and case studies. And yet, every time I visit my Amazon homepage, I can't help but scroll downwardly and get a boot out of its recommendations for me. Have a look:

amazon's personalized marketing for customers
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Those who know me are aware of my deadline obsession with hip hop, which is also the motivation for a lot of my online shopping behavior. Clearly, Amazon has taken notice.

And equally I continued scrolling down, the fitting personalization went on. In that location was a header reading "For a night in" with recommendations on what to stream on Amazon Prime — an action that comprised the majority of my weekend. Its recommendations for dog and kitchen products were on point, besides. Subsequently all, those are the categories where I make the virtually purchases.

It'south not just me. When I asked my colleagues what their Amazon homepages looked like, they were as pleased. Sophia Bernazzani, a fellow Marketing Blog staff writer (and cocky-proclaimed "cat mother of iii"), had a plethora of personalized cat food recommendations, while Managing Editor Emma Brudner's suggested Prime streaming titles came with the header, "Bingeable Telly."

"Amazon," Brudner remarked, "You know me so well."

The Takeaway

Hither'southward a personalization example where we don't take a ton of complaints. As Brudner said, Amazon seems to know us pretty well, though I exercise question why, as per the image above, its algorithm thought I might similar to buy a pair of leg warmers.

The overnice affair about personalization of this nature, when it's executed correctly, is that information technology oftentimes tin atomic number 82 to unplanned purchasing decisions.

For example, the purpose of my most recent visit to Amazon was to check out its personalization features for this commodity. But then, I discovered that Rapper'south Delight: The Hip Hop Cookbook was in my recommended books. Did I buy something I don't need? Sure. But I too was left delighted by the fact that information technology was brought to my attention with very picayune effort.

If y'all're in the business of personalizing curated items or recommendations for your customers, remember: The all-time part nigh it, for the user, is the resulting discovery of new things that we like — whether it's a book, a tool, or an article.

7. Spotify

In 2015, Adam Pasick penned a story for Quartz explaining the "magic" behind Spotify's "Observe Weekly": A curated playlist of tracks that it thinks a given user will like. It'southward carried out, like many other personalization and recommendation platforms, largely with the help of an algorithm that determines a user's "taste contour," based on listening beliefs and the most pop playlists among the entire Spotify audience.

The technology behind it is from Echo Nest, a "music intelligence visitor" that was acquired, according to Pasick, by Spotify in 2014. Here's a bang-up diagram from the article that visually represents the process:

spotify personalized listening flowchat
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As much as I apply Spotify — which is close to daily — I've never actually bothered listening to my Discover Weekly playlist. So later on a colleague brought information technology to my attending, I decided to take it for a spin.

Spotify Discover Weekly personalized listening experience

The results were hitting-or-miss. In that location were a few new songs that I was thrilled to notice and plan to listen to again. But for the most role, my feel was similar to Pasick's, who described many of the songs on his personalized playlist as "meh."

Simply those backside Notice Weekly acknowledge that personalization isn't a perfect science. They also take suggestions for how to make it better, like adding the Find Weekly songs you like to your library, or skipping the ones y'all don't — "If users fast-forward within the first 30 seconds of a song,"

Spotify Product Director Matthew Ogle and Technology Manager Edward Newett told Pasick, "the Notice Weekly algorithm interprets that every bit a 'thumbs-downwardly' for that particular song and artist."

The Takeaway

Nigh personalization initiatives aren't going to exist perfect. Even with a cracking algorithm, they are, at best, very educated guesses equally to what'southward going to be applicable to your customers. For that reason, it might be best to take a conservative approach to your recommendations, especially in the earliest stages of whatever personalization efforts you make.

This is an area where small-scale-batch testing can be helpful. When yous want to try out a personalization project or algorithm, identify your most active users, and invite them to pilot out the technology. Listen advisedly to their feedback — good and bad — and come across what you can practise to make it improve.

eight. Iberia Airlines

During the 2016 holiday season, Iberia Airlines customers received emails posing the question: If yous could visit any vacation destination, what would it be, and who would you go with? To answer, customers were redirected to a microsite where they would fill in responses, every bit well as the email address of the person they wanted to travel with.

Not long after that, the friend would receive an email with a holiday greeting well-nigh the dream holiday — merely, in order to view the card, that person had to click a link to view it in his or her browser.

It was that last pace, Skift writer Brian Sumers explained, where "Iberia ... put its advert budget to piece of work, using cookies [with the user'southward permission] and so the traveler'south friend would see banners across the web, suggesting the perfect Christmas gift." That gift, of form, was the dream vacation.

Let'southward say, for instance, I sent one of these cards to a friend. She might afterwards see several ads while browsing that said things like, "It's never besides late to fulfill Amanda's dream. Do it with a trip to Mykonos."

The Takeaway

The idea is certainly a beautiful one — and around here, we're suckers for a good holiday marketing entrada. Simply 1 of the virtually important items to highlight hither is Iberia's employ of cookies, and the fact that the make wasn't sneaky nigh information technology.

Every bit per the video to a higher place, a clear request was made to the user to let cookies, and that's essential. Even the best-customized marketing becomes less personal, and definitely less desirable if it'due south carried out without the user's understanding.

9. Twiddy

Twiddy example of personalized marketing
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Having enough data is essential for marketing personalization — simply knowing what to look at and how to utilise it is but as important. That'southward what made a tremendous difference for Twiddy, a holiday rental company based in the Outer Banks.

"Unless we had a skilful way of looking at the data," Marketing Director Ross Twiddy told Inc., "how could nosotros make good decisions?"

Ane of the major pieces of data that Twiddy began to more closely examine was how rental volume and demand shifted from week-to-week. Noticing those trends allowed the company to outset making "pricing recommendations" to homeowners, according to Inc., "on the ground of market conditions, seasonal trends, and the size and location of a habitation."

The week after Independence Day was one that stood out to the team in particular, in that rentals showed a precipitous driblet during that menstruum.

Considering Twiddy observed that trend (amid others), it allowed the owners of its managed properties to start experimenting with pricing for that particular calendar week as early as January.

Not only did it benefit the client — setting more realistic prices for lower-demand periods really increased the bookings made for them — merely information technology was just one mode that Twiddy was delighting its customers with helpful, actionable information. Information technology paid off, also. Since the brand began to utilise this data to aid homeowners with decisions similar pricing, its portfolio increased over 10%.

The Takeaway

There's a famous saying that goes, "Assist me aid you." Data, in general, can exist a tremendous nugget to brands. And it doesn't take to be about your customers' behavior — it can exist most the habits of their customers, like the vacationers that rented from Twiddy's homeowner clients.

Equally long as it's something that can be shared ethically — like objective buying or seasonal trends — share the data and insights with your customers that'southward going to help brand them more successful. That's the type of thing that makes a brand remarkable, and can assistance benefit your business, as well.

Get Personal

One of the fundamental purposes of any personalization endeavour is to let your customers know that you're paying attention to them. Only hitting a balance between, "We retrieve you lot might find this helpful" and "we're watching you lot" isn't a simple process, so be sure to do some conscientious research, planning, and testing before yous jump into whatever large-calibration customization initiatives.

Think that while you might be a marketer, you're likewise a consumer. When it comes to experiments like these, put yourself into the shoes of the client and ask, "Is this delightful? Or is it just creepy?" If it leans toward the latter, find out what's giving it that vibe, and try something different.

Editor'southward Note: This mail service was originally published in Dec 2013 and has was updated for comprehensiveness in November 2019.

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Originally published Oct 28, 2020 12:00:00 AM, updated October 28 2020