Which was the last sales email you ignored or marked as spam? Probably it was an email that didn’t speak to your needs, feeling like it was meant for everyone and no one at the same time. That’s why personalization in sales is no longer optional and is the future for sales in any industry.
Creating truly personalized experiences at scale isn’t easy. If you wonder how to personalize sales for your business, remember that big data, the right tools, and best practices can make it achievable.
Let’s explore how to get there.
What Is Personalization?
Personalization in sales and marketing involves using verified data to tailor products, services, and experiences to the needs of a specific individual or group.
Personalization can be straightforward, like including the recipient’s name in an email, or more complex, such as using algorithms to recommend products and solutions similar to what the customer has searched for or purchased before.
Data is at the heart of personalization. The main goal of personalization is to satisfy the needs and preferences of customers.
Personalization is also about familiarity. Whenever buyers are interacting with a brand, they want to feel like the brand knows them and understands what they really want.
This is not an easy task, but it can be achieved with a lot of data research and analysis.
Why Sales Personalization Matters
Today, data-driven personalization matters more than ever in sales. What does this mean?
Modern customers are no longer satisfied with one-size-fits-all solutions and seek custom solutions that best meet their specific needs.
A study by McKinsey has revealed that 71% percent of customers want companies to ensure individualized interactions. Moreover, a striking 76% even feel annoyed when this doesn’t happen.
Taking the time to understand your customers' needs shows that you value them and care about resolving their pain points.
Personalization makes customer relationships easier and more lasting, leading to repeat business and higher retention rates.
Additionally, personalization helps you stand out from competitors by providing more meaningful customer experiences.
Personalization vs. Customization
The terms "personalization" and "customization" are often used interchangeably. However, these are different concepts, especially in sales.
The main difference between these two concepts is who manages the experiences. In terms of personalization, you handle experiences for customers and prospects. For example, you create customer segments and craft personalized messaging for each segment.
Before applying personalization in your sales processes, you need to obtain data. Data is key here as it can make or break your personalization strategies. Being armed with enough and correct data about an individual or a company can give you a deep understanding of their pain points and needs, leading to effective personalization.
In the case of customization, the customers manage their experiences. For instance, you allow each of your website visitors to select their preferred services or actions to match their needs and wants. Here, the customers control the experiences directly.
You may wonder when to use each of the concepts in practice.
Use personalization when:
- You need to tailor customer experiences based on demographics, customer preferences, and past experiences.
- You aim to guide the customers proactively using personalized email communication, product recommendations, and similar.
- You want to scale personalizing content for a large group of customers.
Use customization when:
- You want users to navigate and choose how to interact with your products or services.
- You aim to let the customers choose services based on their individual preferences directly. For example, choosing their preferred pricing plan.
However, it is always a good choice to combine personalization and customization to maximize the effectiveness of your sales strategies.
Tools And Technologies For Personalized Selling
Effective personalized selling requires the right team and technologies. Below are tools and technologies to help you automate, analyze, and tailor hyper-personalized customer experiences. Using these tools will help you significantly save time and increase conversions.
Pipedrive CRM
Pipedrive is a sales-focused, all-in-one CRM software designed for simplicity and pipeline visibility.
The tool is ideal for initiating personalized sales strategies. The personalization features of Pipedrive include:
- Sales pipeline with the ability to keep an eye on any touchpoint with leads and customers.
- Smart contact data, enriching profiles automatically for relevant personalized sales outreach.
- Email personalization options, including custom email templates and personalized mass email fields.
- Workflow automation, triggering tasks depending on the phase of the deal or activity.
Additionally, you can enhance your sales personalization strategy with Pipedrive CRM integrations, connecting with 500+ platforms.
Apollo
Apollo.io is an AI sales intelligence and engagement platform, integrating data, sales outreach, and automation.
The personalization features of Apollo include:
- Admission to more than 265 million verified contacts to create targeted prospect segments.
- Email and LinkedIn sequences to search for prospects based on industry, job role, and similar.
- Advanced messaging filters based on purchase intent and activity.
- Integration with advanced CRM systems, including Pipedrive CRM.
Make (formerly Integromat)
Make is an all-in-one automation platform, connecting applications and moving data between them automatically.
The personalization capabilities of Make include:
- Custom no-code workflows, triggering messages based on customer actions like submitting a web form, reaching a deal stage, etc.
- Personalized communication based on CRM data, user’s real-time web behavior, email fields, etc.
- Integration with tools and technologies like Pipedrive cRM, Slack, Apollo, Mailchimp, etc.
Dexatel
Dexatel is an omnichannel messaging platform compatible with SMS, Viber, WhatsApp, and other messaging apps.
The personalization capabilities of Deatel include:
- Application of special variables or tokens (for example, names, companies, products, etc) for sending personalized bulk messages.
- Scheduling messages based on user actions.
- Comprehensive analysis of message engagement.
- Integration with CRM software and other work automation tools.
CloudTalk
CloudTalk is a cloud-based call center software built for sales and support teams needing real-time communication insights.
The personalization features of Cloudtalk include:
- Extracting customer and deal data from your CRM system during and before calls.
- Using custom caller IDs to route calls based on customer profiles.
- Personalized follow-ups using automatic call logging and transcription.
- Real-time comprehensive data analytics.
- Integrations with CRM tools and other sales personalization and automation platforms.
Sales Personalization Best Practices
Personalization plays a key role in modern businesses for closing more deals, increasing customer base, and bringing high conversion rates.
Below are case studies of leading global companies that place personalization at the heart of their customer experience strategies.
Amazon
The pioneer of sales personalization worldwide is Amazon. The secret of Amazon’s upsell and cross-sell strategies is personalization. It is not surprising that almost 35% of Amazon’s sales come from personalization.
What does the company do? The formula is simple. They illustrate to each buyer products that make sense based on what they’ve looked at or bought before. Amazon collects a huge amount of customer data, including browsing history, purchase preferences, search keywords, and items in the cart, and only then creates personalized recommendations tailored for each customer individually.
Your personalization journey starts right from the Amazon homepage, where you can see the top recommendations for you.
The aim is to make the customer’s homepage feel personal. This keeps customers around longer and increases the likelihood of buying.
Starbucks
Starbucks is well-known for adding the buyer's name on their cups. The thing is, they don’t only write names but also remember purchase preferences, orders, and custom requests.
Starbucks’ sales personalization strategy aims to make the process of buying special.
They simply turn coffee into loyalty. Customers return to Starbucks for not only coffee but for the experience, the convenience of mobile ordering, the atmosphere at the cafe, and more.
Starbucks is also an example of a business using both personalization and customization. You can easily customize your products on their website, choosing the product type, the add-ons, the cup size, etc.
Both the Starbucks mobile app and in-store ordering systems offer extensive personalization customization options, letting the buyers feel special.
Netflix
Most of what users watch on Netflix is the result of personalization. Netflix, once a DVD-selling company, today is one of the leaders in the industry, due to offering personalized experiences for users.
The luck isn’t their guide to success; it’s just using the right data and the powerful recommendation algorithms showing the right audience what they might like to watch.
According to Netflix, 80% of the viewed media on the platform originates from the Netflix Recommendation Engine (NRE).
The company performs hundreds of A/B tests, choosing around 100K users to test to make the most of personalization and make sure no two people have the same experience on Netflix.
Sales Personalization Matters More Than Ever
Modern sales are about relationships, and not merely transactions.
That’s where personalization becomes the bridge, connecting businesses and sales representatives to the right buyers at the right time, with the right message.
Personalization drives engagement, builds trust, and significantly boosts conversions.
