How Much Personalization is TOO Much?

Personalization is the first step to making a relationship with the customer.

But too much personalization is bad.

SEO Company Milton Keynes says that over personalization appears as manipulation which decreases the purchase intent by around 5%.

It can ruin your business and declare you as an official creep.

Let us take a very real example. Some time back, Google started tracking your online purchases and it shows them on the SERP when you search for the same product on Google under the tag ‘recent purchases’. When I first experienced it, I was horrified. It was almost similar to a person stalking me to the store and seeing what I am purchasing. It was creepy and unexpected.

This feature soon became a topic of discussion and many people find it an evasion of the privacy. You can turn off this feature by going to the Google preferences, however. The aim of Google was to provide a centralized info about what user has already purchased so that he may not do it again accidently. Some people relate with the intention of Google while some simply do not. I, in fact, changed the setting to ‘do not use private results’.

That is just the right example to describe that too much personalization is not good. It can backfire on you badly. You may measure many aspects of your audience’s visit on your site but you do not have to mention that in the emails to scare them.

There are some brands who are just using the computerized automated emails without even addressing the emails. Some brands are just sending the same emails by just replacing the names. There are some brands which are going overboard with the personalization. Only a few are doing it right in the right proportions.

Not doing the Personalization?

Do you why the ads are not as effective as the emails and ROI from email marketing is far better than the marketing ads? The ads are the mere display of the brand and there is no customer element in it. It is not targeting the needs of the customer and it is not evoking a sense of belonging. The personalized emails are a completely different story. These emails are all about focusing on the customer and keeping him at the center. It is about writing something that would address the challenges and requirements of the audiences, offering relevant solutions and making them move down the sales funnel. The emails are not about delivering the message, it is about establishing a conversation.

The bot conversation and the automation become too mechanical. They can speed up the process, they can provide more solution than you can ever provide manually but the relevance of the solution is doubtful. The customers may get bad experience due to this and it can harm the sales.

Doing Personalization?

Now… now. At the same time, it is also good to know how much personalization  is good for the health of your business. You may have an excellent analytics data tool. It may be collecting a lot of information about you but you do not have to reveal that to your audiences. Consider Facebook. It has every information about you, your family and friends and your relation with them. It also knows about your likes and interests. If it tells you one fine day about the personal information that it has stored about you, you will scare to never use Facebook again. Too much personal targeting is like an invasion of freedom and people would like to break free as soon as possible.

It appears as a manipulation to them and they would think that you are playing with them just to sell your products.

The retargeting is all about making the customer experience better. It is to help them to complete the search and purchase that they intend to so. You just have to decide how you are going to increase the CTR and conversions. You know something, doesn’t mean you announce it too.

That’s what most of the SEO services Manchester think, what do you think? Is your SEO becoming creepy or is it personalized well? Comment below to let us know.