9 Must-Read Personalization Insights to Start Your Week Off Right

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It’s no secret that content is still king when it comes to digital marketing. But it’s equally true that to unleash the full power of your brand’s content marketing, you’ve got to use your customer’s context and data to personalize their experience. That’s why we’ve said for some time that yes, content is king, but context is queen and data is the crown jewels. When used well, the three elements work together to provide your customers a truly “royal” experience — and to drive business results for you. But, it’s a complicated topic, so where do you begin? For starters how about you check out these 9 must-read personalization insights to start your week off right. Enjoy:

1. Kurt Heinemann has a great piece on CMO.com that breaks down “The New Era Of Individualized Commerce.” Kurt provides a terrific view of where we are today with personalized experiences — and where we still need to go.
2. Heike Young and the Salesforce.com team outline “4 Facts for Marketers About Personalization” on a recent episode of their Marketing Cloudcast podcast that’s well worth a listen.
3. Speaking of podcasts, our own Tim Peter explained “Why Digital Demands Personalization and Customer Focus” in a recent episode of Thinks Out Loud, our weekly e-commerce and digital strategy podcast that you’ll definitely want to check out too.
4. If you’re just getting started with personalization for your organization, Jeff Zych of Optimizely offers a very thorough, very useful look at “How to Run Your First Personalization Campaign” that you won’t want to miss.
5. Fiona Adler of Forrester explains “Why Your Organization Is Approaching Personalization Wrong” and offers some great tips on how to avoid those mistakes.
6. Chris Goward of Wider Funnel follows that up with his look at “How to succeed at segmentation and personalization.”
7. We put together a presentation for travel marketers about “Using Data to Put Personalization to Work for Your Property” and illustrated why “Personalization Starts With a Person.” But don’t let the travel focus fool you. The ideas work equally well for many businesses.
8. Kevin Lindsay wrote a piece last week for Adobe’s Digital Marketing Blog that outlined “Five Steps to ROI With Content Personalization” you won’t want to miss.
9. And, keeping with that theme of driving ROI from personalization, don’t miss Hubspot’s Katie Carlin’s take on “Increasing Audience ROI with Personalization.” Outstanding insights all around.

Personalizing your content is a process. Getting it right takes work. But by remembering that content is king, context is queen, and data is the crown jewels, you can begin to provide your customers with an outstanding experience every time. And these 9 must-read personalization insights will do a lot more than just start your week off right. They’ll help you jump-start your business success too.

If you want learn even more about how your customers’ changing behavior shapes e-commerce and marketing, be sure and register to receive a special report I’ve produced in conjunction with hotel marketing firm Vizergy, “Digital Hotel Marketing in a Multiscreen World.” While it’s targeted specifically at hotel and resort marketers, the lessons apply to just about any business. You can get your free copy of the report here.

You can also check out these slides and video from my recent webinar, “Digital Marketing Directions: Three Key Trends Driving Your Marketing Next Year”:

Finally, you might enjoy some of these past posts from Thinks to help you build your e-commerce strategy and your digital success:

• 6 Mobile Commerce and Strategy Insights: E-commerce Link Digest
• Content is Still the King
• The Digital Strategy Myth
• Why Mobile Payments Will Rule
• 2016’s Top Trends: Make Room For Mobile Video
• Driving Seamless Experiences in 2016 (Thinks Out Loud Episode 149)
• Mobile is So Much Bigger Than You Think (Thinks Out Loud Episode 140)
• It’s Not “Mobile First.” It’s “Customer First.”
• 8 Killer Entries About Improving E-commerce Experience: E-commerce Link Digest