Marketing it right: How intelligence-driven and personalised marketing can assist start-ups in improving user experience and driving business growth

Possibilities! In a world full of problems, hardships, and challenges, there simultaneously exists an imperceptible world full of possibilities. It requires a fresh new look at that same set of problems, those inefficiencies that for long went unnoticed, and those challenges which were assumed impossible to overcome. That – a fresh new outlook – was what you had when you came up with the idea for your start-up. It took you time, no doubt, to consolidate your idea, to nurture and grow it, to refine it from a promising idea to a robust business proposition.

But while you’ve hardly left any stone unturned to make your product the ‘Next Big Thing’, there’s something else that requires your attention – the user experience. It is this parameter that ultimately decides the success of your start-up, the traction it receives with its target consumer base. This is precisely where intelligence-driven personalised marketing steps in to offer your venture a considerable edge. Let’s understand the difference it can make for your business.

Why intelligence-driven personalised marketing?

Today, we live in a world governed by digital technology. It has penetrated and significantly changed every level of the modern lifestyle. Chatting, for instance, about a decade ago meant physically meeting and having a conversation with friends. In the present day, however, it means something completely different. The reason digital services have become so popular lies in the fact that they have considerably negated the shortcomings of previous approaches, offering us enhanced flexibility. A simple comparison between on-demand entertainment offerings with scheduled TV programmes and app-based payments with physical banking services is enough to highlight the difference. This convenience and flexibility drives increased usage of digital services, which in turn enables considerable advantages for businesses.

The key lies in one word – data. Rapid adoption of digital services is increasing the amount of data being generated. The digital footprint of a customer serves as high-quality customer-intensive data, which can be tapped by businesses to enhance the user’s experience. Data offers you greater insights into the preferences of your current and prospective customers. This can enable you to approach the customer with highly personalised and curated content through the most relevant marketing tactic. This enhances the user experience and brand affinity, simultaneously increasing customer engagement.

Consider this: A website or a mobile application offers you two different suggestions on the sidebar as you browse through it. One of them is a random suggestion of a product or a website. The other features a stylish smartphone with the specifications that you wanted and within the price range that you were looking for earlier. Which marketing prompt are you more likely to respond to?

In fact, personalisation delivers the desired results even for something as impersonal as a mass email. It was revealed in a research by Experian that personalised promotional emails which addressed the recipient with his or her name were opened 29% more on average, had around 41% higher click-through rates, and generated six times higher revenue per email than non-personalised emails.

The advent of technologies such as Big Data and data analytics can considerably enhance the degree of such personalisation. It involves leveraging multiple data points like browsing patterns, historic data, etc. to analyse and identify a customer’s behaviour pattern to generate an effective, real-time, and relevant customer experience. This not only increases the efficacy of the platform, but significantly brings down the query resolution time and establishes a positive brand image in the customer’s eyes.

In the age of digitisation, it is no longer sufficient to have a reactive approach anymore. The onus, therefore, is on entrepreneurs to build their start-ups to be intuitive, market-ready, and customer-friendly. This is something that intelligence-driven personalised marketing can help you achieve, serving as a strong market differentiator while taking you one step closer to success.