Personalized marketing doesn't try to sell a product to the entire world. It focuses on who the customers are and why they'd want the product, catering the marketing experience to each of them.
According to the Tardell 2025 Small Business Marketing Survey, only 9% of small businesses consider their marketing highly effective. Lead generation and budget constraints were their greatest difficulties. Having a narrower focus can help prevent these issues.
Read on to learn more about effective personalized marketing techniques to boost your ROI or return on investment.
Personalized marketing, or marketing personalization, is the process of targeting specific members of your audience.
Instead of sending the same marketing materials to everyone, you tailor them to each customer. That starts with gathering data about them.
Gathering information about your customers is the key to personalization. There are several types, and they're all equally important.
Demographic data tells you what type of person they are. This includes information such as:
Behavioral data tells you what type of customer they are. It reveals what they've searched for or bought in the past as an indication of what they may buy in the future. Examples include:
Psychogenic behavior is the most personal data. It helps you get to know customers beyond what they buy. It lets you know what they care about and how it shapes their decisions. Examples include:
Benefits of personalization include:
There's a reason it's not part of every ad campaign. There are several challenges you could face in your personalization efforts. They include:
Personalized marketing strategies involve creating an overall plan for how you'll go about personalized marketing. This starts by identifying your audience and then honing in on their preferences.
The most important part of any personalized marketing campaign is finding your audience. If you can't take that step, you won't be able to move ahead.
Analyze your existing customers. Who are they? Where are they? What are they buying?
Think about who needs your product or service. Why do they need it? What kind of messages would convince them to buy?
Look at who your competition is monitoring. If they're selling a similar product, their customer base will be similar to yours.
Then, it's time to hone in and get more. Do market research through:
When you've found your audience, split them into segments. These are like categories you can sort customers into.
Narrowing it down this way makes personalization easier. Tailoring a message to a specific group is easier than tailoring it to your entire customer base.
Gathering data about customers is almost like doing research for a biography. You need to know as much about them as possible.
Fortunately, most customers are willing to provide it. In a recent BCG survey, only 18% of respondents said they wouldn't provide any personal data, such as their name or age, if it led to a better customer experience.
Be transparent about it. Let your customers know about how and when you're using data to ease any fears and reduce the risk of data breaches.
According to the security team Huntress, the number of data breaches went up 211% from 2023 to 2024. There were over 1.3 billion attacks that cost over $4.9 million to recover from. Proper security is essential for getting data while protecting your bottom line.
Build an internal team focused on personalization. Train everyone on how they can use it in their daily operations. That includes how to gather data and how to use it.
Effective marketing techniques use more specific, honed-in methods to achieve the goals of personalization. This means creating personal, multi-channel experiences and tracking their success or lack thereof.
Create personalized experiences. These may include:
There are also smaller ways to cater your marketing efforts to your customers. Address people by their first name through a personal email address. Pay attention to any interactions you have. It'll help you pick up information about what they like or don't like.
Customers expect their experience to be the same, no matter what channel they interact with you through. Your emails should feel the same as your website and vice versa. Even hyper-personalized marketing needs to feel this way.
A personalized campaign is only as good as its ROI. The only way to know if it's a positive investment is to track it throughout its lifespan.
It's also wise to do A/B testing of a few similar but different campaigns. Run them at the same time. Focus on the ones that perform better. Measure them to see which has the greatest ROI, because it'll be worth your time and money.
There are several ways to engage in the strategy, but one method is personalized promotional messages.
You may notice that certain customers have been searching for a specific product or frequently purchase it. You can send a message or email about it to them. It could include deals or information on the latest models.
ROI-driven marketing is all about increasing the potential ROI of a marketing campaign. It involves basing decisions on what will have the greatest returns for each dollar spent.
Personalized direct mail can be part of this approach. According to the Tardell 2025 Small Business Marketing survey, direct mail has the second-highest ROI behind Facebook ads.
Personalized marketing is more effective than traditional marketing. You target messages to each customer, making them more likely to engage.
Tardell can help you meet your next best customer. We're a team of experts offering an all-in-one platform to help you reach your goals.
Contact us to start planning your campaign today.