5 B2B Personalization Tactics to Add to Your Arsenal

Despite everything you hear about AI being the magic elixir for every B2B challenge, the ultimate need of most B2B buyers is to have a relationship with the company they buy from that feels genuinely personal. Ironically, AI and automation will help you deliver a deeply personal experience, but make sure you let the realization sink in that your customers want you and your company to know them, understand them, anticipate their needs, and treat them like fellow human beings. In today’s blog, we’re going to explore a few tactics that will help you leverage personalization in more rewarding ways for both you and your customers.

A Little Personalization Inspiration

Personalization is still the number one marketing tool when it comes to fostering engaging interactions with customers. In fact, a study by McKinsey found that companies that execute a good personalization strategy can expect a 20 percent increase in customer-satisfaction and a 15 percent boost in sales-conversions. Digital marketing strategist, Adam Connell shared these statistics for 2024 in a recent post:

• 90% of marketers say personalization makes their business more profitable
• 68% of companies say their personalization efforts have exceeded their revenue targets
• 60% of businesses say personalization delivers an increase in retention and conversions

Connell also shared research that revealed that B2B customers expect personalized content throughout their journey.

• 57% expect personalization in the discovery stage
• 59% expect personalization in the research stage
• 66% expect personalization when buying products/services
• 68% expect personalization when getting help with products/services

5 Powerful and Proven B2B Personalization Tactics

1. Rethink Your Segmentation Strategy

If you’re looking to put more prospects in your pipeline, it’s time to reconsider how you segment the people who receive your personalized campaigns. Joe Hanson, a senior content strategist at Adobe recommends drilling down on segmentation. “B2B sellers need to segment registered users, not just by their company or industry but by their role within the buying organization,” said Hanson, “Unlike in B2C, it’s not a buyer’s personal preferences that matter in B2B but what they need to do their job efficiently. B2Bs must tailor content and options to the buyer’s role and to the kind of company they work for.”

Pro Tip: Before implementing this tactic, make sure you account for the variety of roles involved in making a purchase from your company, and that you vary the personalized content and topics according to the unique needs of each role.

2. Prep Your Data for maximum success

Bestselling author and Brand Consultant, Adrian Swinscoe, shared that 51 percent of customers say brands are failing to personalize their experiences because the data they have on them is not accurate or up-to-date. It doesn’t matter how much you personalize the content and messages you send in campaigns if the data you are using is wrong. In addition to wasting money and annoying people that you desperately want to trust your company, data that is old, incomplete, and flat out wrong sends a message that your company is not on the ball and can’t get details right. Obviously, this is not the kind of message you want to send. The good news is, cleaning up your data’s act is both a simple and an economical process.

Pro Tip: To make sure your data is always ready to populate personalized campaigns, integrate all of your data-housing tools and use automation to keep data perpetually clean, complete and enriched with everything you need to send personalized campaigns that resonate.

3. Choose Channels Customers frequent

Today’s customers “are more interested in being able to choose how they engage with organizations – and having those choices respected – than receiving what organizations think are helpful reminders, or proactive offerings,” said Swinscoe. This means that even if your data is good-to-go, you won’t win customers and prospects if you send personalized campaigns to people on channels they no longer frequent. According to Salesforce, multi-channel customer engagement is preferred by almost 78% of customers. What’s more, adding more channels for your personalized campaigns to leverage has multiple benefits in that it empowers you to:

• Revive dormant accounts
• Reach new markets
• Extend your reach in the markets you serve

If you rely on email to do your heavy lifting, consider supporting those personalized campaigns with SMS/MMS (text) messaging. If you already use those two channels, think about adding chat, push notifications or direct mail to connect with customers.

Pro Tip: To pull off personalized cross-channel campaigns with finesse, add each channel one at a time. This allows your ops team to work out any issues on a small scale before sending personalized multi-channel campaigns to your master lists.

4.  Personalize Nurture Campaigns

One of the most powerful tools for building ongoing relationships with customers is the personalized nurture campaign. The goal of a good nurture campaign is to gently guide a prospect down the path to purchase by providing content that is relevant to their interests. The more interest they show, the more in-depth the information you provide, as they navigate closer to a conversion. For example, if a prospect is browsing our site and reading about data orchestration, we might send them an SMS link to our use case on Data Management and Enrichment, followed later by an email newsletter featuring our latest blogs on data orchestration. And finally, I might invite them to view one of our webinars or schedule a demo.

Pro Tip: Always follow three simple rules to boost nurture campaign results:

1. Address a single topic—an issue that can be resolved, a benefit, an opportunity
2. Keep copy brief, but helpful—acknowledge their need and offer valuable information
3. Include a call to action—provide ways for them to keep the conversation going at their pace

5. Nurture Sales and Prospect Relationships Simultaneously

An additional benefit of personalized nurture campaigns is that they can be used to support your sales team while simultaneously enhancing the customer’s experience. If you make personalized nurture campaigns the first point of contact with your organization, it gives marketing more time to qualify the lead, gauge the interest level, and provide sales with valuable insights that enable them to speak knowledgeably to the customer’s specific needs. This in turn leads to more sales and more revenue, which is the ultimate win-win that personalization delivers.

Personalization Puts the REV in Your Revenue Generator

Companies that personalize their marketing content typically see a 300 percent ROI over the course of their relationship with a customer. What’s more, personalization leads to a 63 percent lower customer churn and a 55 percent higher share of wallet. When you get personal with customers, they become more loyal, spend more and buy more often. It’s no wonder that a whopping 79 percent of companies that exceed revenue goals have a documented personalization strategy.

Let’s Make 2024 Your Best Year Ever

At Sureshot, we have a team of experts and a portfolio of data, messaging and CX solutions that are proven to help you realize a greater ROI on your marketing strategy and initiatives. To find out how we can help you go from setting growth and revenue goals to achieving them, start by taking our FREE Martech Assessment.