Personalisation is all about tailoring your message to each customer’s needs, preferences or behaviours.
So, by making your marketing super specific and relevant, you can increase your engagement, improve the overall customer experience, and boost your sales.
However, you CAN’T expect these results without a strong strategy (or if your idea of personalisation only involves using someone’s first name in emails!).
So, let’s cover the most common mistakes in personalised marketing so that you can bypass them and set yourself up for success.
1. Over-personalisation
Has a targeted ad ever made you feel like this brand has been listening to your private conversations? Then, you know it’s not a nice sentiment.
So, when personalising your marketing, you should aim to make your customers think “Wow, it’s like they wrote this for me,” NOT “Oh gosh, have they been stalking me?!”
The latter can happen when you send excessively detailed and invasive messages or take it too far.
For example, just because someone bought a cheap low-involvement product from you (like an electric toothbrush), it doesn’t mean they want to receive a 21-part email sequence on their dental hygiene habits.
How to avoid this personalised marketing mistake
- Use your customers’ data responsibly – Don’t make them feel like you crossed some boundaries (more on data privacy soon!)
- Focus on adding value – Map out your customer journey first, getting clear on when and how you should use personalisation
With ScoreApp, you can collect useful data to personalise your marketing without overdoing it.
This is because your customers are sharing it voluntarily by answering the questions in your quiz lead magnet. So, that personalisation (from your nurturing emails to the message that invites them on a call) will always feel natural and valuable, never invasive.
2. Not personalising your messaging enough
Yes, it’s the opposite of the previous personalised marketing mistake but just as counterintuitive.
For your marketing to be successful, you must show the right message to the right person at the right time.
So, if you keep it generic to try and appeal to more people? It’ll fail to resonate with each customer’s specific needs, goals, preferences and overall situation.
How to avoid this personalised marketing mistake
- Collect the right data – For example, you might want to get clear on who your ideal customers are, what pain points they’re struggling with, what they’re aiming to achieve, whether or not they’ve already invested in similar products and so on
- Personalise your messages accordingly – Aim to meet each customer where they’re at right now (we’ll show you how to segment them soon!)
A ScoreApp quiz will do all this automatically for you. It’ll segment your leads based on their answers and send them different nurturing sequences.
This will also allow you to reference each prospect’s situation when you recommend the right products or invite them on a call. Much more effective, right? No wonder you can expect a 20% increase in sales!
3. Lack of data integration
It’s normal (and smart) to acquire data, leads, and customers from different channels and tactics. However, if they’re not connected, you could end up with incomplete customer profiles.
So, your communication will feel all over the place, and your messaging won’t be consistent and effective.
How to avoid this personalised marketing mistake
- Centralise your data – Make sure it’s up to date and everyone can access it (for example, with lead generation tools that feed into a main CRM). So, no matter which team member takes the following action, they’ll always be in the loop
- Use it to keep your personalisation consistent and relevant – It should take your customers’ needs, preferences and previous touchpoints into consideration, too
Guess what? Your ScoreApp quiz will integrate with your existing email marketing platform and CRM system.
That way, you can collect more data, add it to your customer profiles and keep all your communications consistent!
4. Ignoring data privacy
Buying data and looking for similar shortcuts might sound appealing but can backfire BIG time.
If you don’t respect your customers’ privacy, you’ll lose their trust, your email deliverability could be negatively affected (for example, if they report you as spam), and you might even incur legal issues.
How to avoid this personalised marketing mistake
- Follow relevant privacy laws – One of the main ones is GDPR, but you might want to check the privacy regulations in your country
- Get your leads’ consent – Do that before collecting their data and contacting them! You should also give them the option to unsubscribe and end all communications (and actually honour that)
ScoreApp quizzes follow this lead generation best practice and are GDPR-compliant: your audience must consent to receive emails from you in order to access their results.
So, your personalised marketing will NEVER come out of the blue! On top of that, all their data is collected and stored securely (phew).
5. Overwhelming customers
Unfortunately, you can have too much of a good thing! No matter how compelling your personalised marketing is, it’d be counterproductive to pester your customers with multiple daily messages.
You’d end up annoying them, fostering resentment towards your brand and pushing them to opt-out and unsubscribe.
How to avoid this personalised marketing mistake
- Plan your personalised communications – Keep their frequency realistic and balanced, and make sure every single message is actually adding value to your customers
- Automate them – Avoid human error and repetitions by scheduling your messages, including a good enough buffer in between them
With ScoreApp, you can automate personalised nurturing sequences and follow-ups for each segment.
That way, they’re always relevant, valuable and delivered at the right time based on previous interactions.
6. Poor segmentation
One of the best personalised marketing tactics involves dividing your audience into groups and sending different messages to each of them.
So, if you don’t get that segmentation right, you’ll keep showing generic or downright irrelevant messages to your customers (and can you really blame them for getting annoyed and unsubscribing?)
How to avoid this personalised marketing mistake
- Segment your audience strategically – Divide your leads and customers into groups based on the most relevant criteria (such as their pain points, goals or preferences) or behaviours (like their past interactions)
- Update your segments – Review these groups regularly to make sure they still match your audience’s situation
ScoreApp quizzes do this automatically! For example, you can create different segments and nurturing sequences based on someone’s highest- and lowest-scoring categories, their answers to a specific question, conditional logic and much more.
7. Not measuring your personalised marketing results
By planning the right personalised marketing strategy, you’re already off to a strong start. You can’t just forget about it, though!
If you don’t test, track and analyse its effectiveness, you’re relying on guesswork, and you could waste a tonne of time and money on tactics that aren’t bringing you results.
How to avoid this personalised marketing mistake
- Run tests – For example, show different versions of your landing pages and emails to see what resonates the most with your audience
- Track your results – Review your analytics regularly to understand what’s working well and what isn’t. Then, tweak your strategy accordingly to maximise your results
With your ScoreApp quiz, you can A/B test your landing pages, trial different sequences and make the most of your analytics (in-depth but easy to understand).
This will allow you to measure your quiz performance and customer engagement, knowing exactly what to optimise.
8. One-time personalisation
First impressions matter but that doesn’t mean you should put all your personalised marketing eggs in that initial basket!
If you only personalise your first interactions and then fall back into generic messages? You’ll disappoint your customers, lose their interest, and miss out on sales.
How to avoid this personalised marketing mistake
- Plan beyond that first interaction – Map out your personalised marketing strategy so that it’s consistent throughout your entire funnel and different tactics
- Keep adding to your data – As seen before, centralising your data makes this a lot easier. You can then use it to personalise your communications at different stages of the customer journey
With ScoreApp, you can take this to the next level! The first interaction is already personalised thanks to the interactive nature of quizzes.
Then, your participants will receive relevant nurturing sequences based on their answers. By connecting your quiz with your CRM, you can keep track of all this data, too.
Then, reference each prospect’s situation when recommending the right products or inviting them on a call. And guess what? Your sales team can also personalise their entire approach thanks to your quiz data, improving their calls and increasing both their closing rate and customer satisfaction.
Use a ScoreApp quiz to convert more leads with personalised marketing
As long as you avoid these common personalised marketing mistakes, you can use this strategy to boost your engagement, customer experience and revenue.
With ScoreApp, it’s a breeze to master personalised marketing! You’ll get to:
- Reach more people and obtain more sign-ups by offering a compelling quiz lead magnet
- Impress your participants with an interactive experience and valuable results
- Collect their contact details and data in a GDPR-compliant way, connecting it to your CRM
- Use their answers to segment them into groups
- Set up strategic nurturing sequences for each of them
- Send them emails and content that’s relevant to their situation
- Reference their initial results when inviting them on a call
- Close more sales
- Review your analytics to optimise your strategy even further
So, bypass those personalised marketing mistakes, and set yourself up for success: create your ScoreApp quiz today and for FREE.
