How digital marketing can be empowered to create more personalised experiences

Relevance and personalisation are increasingly becoming important for brands and marketers to scale up their engagement with consumers and increasing customer satisfaction. In today’s volatile business environment, harnessing data analytics to strengthen digital marketing strategies for hyper-personalised experiences is essential.

In conversation with Adgully, Vivek Bhargava, Co-founder, ProfitWheel (consumr.ai), and Priyanka Aggarwal, Co-Founder, Punt Partners, speak about how digital marketing strategies can be empowered in today’s business ecosystem to build more personalised experiences.

Drawing from her experience as a CX consultant, Aggarwal highlighted that crafting comprehensive user personas through advanced segmentation and analysing user behaviour across both physical and digital touchpoints allow businesses to anticipate user interactions at critical junctures.

“This enables them to encourage and facilitate desired behaviours that provide meaningful interventions in users’ lives. By delivering tailored content that aligns with individuals’ needs and preferences precisely when and where they require it, businesses can create impactful experiences that resonate deeply with their audience,” she added.

Bhargava responded by quoting Salvador Dali: “The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot... I still remember the first calendar I received where my name was spelled by clouds in the sky... the remaining 20 similar calendars went in the dustbin.”

He elucidated, “Today, personalised experiences need to be built in the backend, rather than trying to communicate that it has been personalised for me, else it has the potential to spook consumers in this privacy oriented world. This is the exact challenge that a platform like consumr.ai is attempting to solve, we help brands understand the psychographcis of their customers and then we are able to feed this psychographics into various LLMs to improve communication with them personalized on a cohort basis rather than one to one basis.”

AI and hyper-personalisation

When asked how AI is helping scale up hyper-personalisation and creativity in digital marketing, Aggarwal noted, “Today, AI has surpassed its status as a mere buzzword, fundamentally reshaping business operations and influencing user behaviours. Through harnessing AI’s potential, businesses can transform the complete customer journey, spanning from initial awareness to long-term advocacy.”

Drawing upon extensive datasets, AI crafts micro-hyper-personalised experiences, examining real-time user behaviours and preferences. This enables the delivery of precisely tailored content and recommendations to individuals, enhancing their engagement and satisfaction. Furthermore, AI-powered algorithms not only assist in content creation and optimizing ad placements but also predict future trends.

As a result, the role of strategists is shifting from data analysis and planning towards utilising AI tools to focus on future initiatives aimed at enhancing brand loyalty and delivering impactful and memorable customer experiences. This evolution marks a pivotal moment in marketing, where AI becomes an indispensable ally in crafting more engaging and personalised interactions with customers.

The road ahead

Bhargava believes that the future is about cohort and segment personalisation, rather than one-to-one personalisation. Citing an example, he said, “One could enter 100k revolver customers of a bank (people who make part payment of a bank) as a segment on platforms such as consumr.ai – now AI will take inputs of demographics, psychographics, general conversations with them on CRM, etc., and then use all inputs as a prompt to create a perfect media plans, give right credit card offers to this segment. Also, AI models like Sora could create a customised video script for this segment; AI will help create and execute all this on a real time basis.”

Sharing her insights on what the future roadmap for targeted advertising look like, Aggarwal said, “While ethical concerns persist in targeted advertising and data privacy, the utilisation of advanced data analytics enables precise prediction and creation of personalised content tailored to individual needs. Marketers and brands embracing transparent and ethical data practices will earn enduring customer trust. Shifting focus towards content consumption over user information is imperative.”

Also, newer ways of engaging the customer that gives an immersive view of the product and helps them personalise their products themselves using technologies like AR and VR.

Aggarwal concluded by saying, “I am excited to see how the launch of Apple’s Vision pro helps the ad industry.”