Brands worldwide have tapped into the power of marketing personalization and its ability to improve customer experience, drive revenue and create consistency across channels. A whopping 94% of senior-level executives believe delivering personalization is critical or important to reaching customers according to a joint study conducted by PwC and Forbes Insights.
Across industries, brands large and small are scrambling to incorporate an ever-stronger personalization focus into their marketing strategy. While some have tried and failed, there are a few brands out there who have nailed the concept almost flawlessly.
Here are 4 examples of personalized marketing campaigns from brands that took things to the next level.
1. Orangetheory Fitness Gets to the Heart of It
For a brand whose winning formula is rooted in something as personal as your health, data-driven marketing personalization just made sense for Orangetheory Fitness.
Experts at leveraging heart and caloric burn rate data to empower members to understand their workout and goals better, the fitness brand took the same approach when designing its year-in-review campaign.
To increase attendance and inspire its members to keep at their goals in the new year, the brand drew from its data to create personalized music videos that highlighted each member’s fitness achievements.
But that wasn’t even the most impressive part. In doing so, Orangetheory took personalization to a completely new level by creating unique soundtracks that matched each member’s BPM.
These special tracks were brought to life with visuals and data points unique personalized for each member, including the number of workouts, calories burned and challenges completed. The campaign more than paid off. In the launch week alone, Orangetheory Fitness achieved:
- over 45,000 additional classes booked
- a record-high 97% attendance rate
By delivering a personalized experience, the brand surprised and delighted its members into staying excited about and loyal to Orangetheory Fitness.
2. easyJet Celebrates 20 Years of Memories
To mark its 20th anniversary, low-cost airline easyJet launched a highly personalized marketing campaign that engaged customers emotionally by showcasing their travel experiences with the airline and suggesting places they could next travel. Those recommendations were, of course, based on the customer’s personal experiences and interests.
Alongside a TV ad campaign showing one family’s journey, the easyJet team made their customers feel part of the airline’s history through personalized emails. With a strong focus on customized copy and eye-catching visuals, they crafted a series of emails based on customer data, telling stories about traveling with easyJet that were unique to each customer.
On social media, the brand invited customers to share their favorite holiday photos from an easyJet trip using the #TimeFlies hashtag, planning to print each photo on a plane as part of a giant memory mosaic.
We're 20! To celebrate we're giving away flights every week. Tweet @easyJet with a holiday pic & #TimeFlies to enter pic.twitter.com/7AJGi2Qis1
— easyJet (@easyJet) September 14, 2015
Asking easyJet fliers to get involved sparked an organic, customer-driven snowball effect. With personalization driving the project, the responses and results were phenomenal:
- The social media campaign reached over 680,000 people and gained more than 1.1 million impressions.
- The email campaign saw open rates over 100% higher than their average newsletter and 25% higher click-through rates.
- Globally, over 7% of easyJet customers who received the personalized campaign made a booking within 30 days.
The campaign was expertly crafted to instill a sense of nostalgia, reminding the audience of the role easyJet played in their favorite trips and ensuring that the airline would be the first pick for the customer’s next vacation.
3. Personalized Video Reaps Sweet Rewards for Cadbury
Cadbury, one of the largest confectionery brands in the world, is renowned for its creative and novel approaches to marketing.
Recognizing the unprecedented effectiveness of marketing personalization in connecting customers emotionally with brands, Cadbury launched a Personalized Video campaign to promote its new line of Dairy Milk flavors to the Australian market.
For the campaign, Cadbury created a “Flavor Matcher” app, which leveraged data-driven personal profiling to match users with one of 12 different flavors. Users then received Personalized Videos celebrating their Flavor Match that integrated their Facebook profile photo. They were encouraged to share the video with a hashtag created for the campaign — and they did!
The campaign resonated with customers’ sense of fun and appreciation for novelty, both of which have become synonymous with the Cadbury brand. Combining the compelling nature of video with the uniqueness of personalization captivated viewers. With this incredible campaign, the brand saw the following results:
- 90% of viewers watching their Personalized Video to completion
- A 65% CTR from campaign recipients
- A 33% conversion rate from viewers who completed a subsequent promotion form
Cadbury did a great job showing that, even in industries that are typically light on CRM data, it’s possible to deliver personal and engaging experiences that wow customers.
4. Nike Outdoes Expectations With Dynamic Video
Another excellent example of hyper-personalized video marketing comes courtesy of sportswear giant Nike and their year-end “Your Year” campaign.
In a bid to appeal directly to its biggest fans and most social users of their apps, the brand dug deep into the data accumulated through its exercise-tracking products, such as the Nike Fuelband and Nike+ Running app, which consistently track users’ performance.
Nike then used the data to craft over 100,000 supremely detailed personalized animated videos. The animated videos captured each individual’s athletic achievements from the year and formed the crux of a major campaign that encouraged people to “Outdo You.”
These videos even factored in the location of where people worked out, incorporating associated landmarks and local weather in the animations. Tiny details like these can make the difference when it comes to personalization. Thanks to new Living Video technology, you can now incorporate data like local time and weather based not only on where your customer lives but also where they’re viewing the video currently.
At the beginning of the new year, a time associated with renewed resolve and dedication, the Nike team sent the personalized videos to every single one of their active Nike+ users, as well as widely disseminating a more generic version of the video across its social media platforms.
The dedicated community of Nike+ members went online en masse to share their opinions — and pledge to achieve the goals identified by their data.
This campaign wouldn’t be the last time that an iconic sportswear brand looked to marketing personalization. As a sponsor of the Boston Marathon, adidas tackled the challenge of creating Personalized Videos for more than 30,000 runners within hours of them completing the race, a campaign that helped drive product sales from email up an astonishing 1,189%!
Bonus: Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke Campaign
While it’s certainly an older example, a round-up of the top personalized marketing campaigns would be incomplete without mentioning Coca-Cola’s iconic campaign.
In 2011, Coca-Cola launched its “Share a Coke” campaign for the very first time in Australia. Hoping to appeal to younger consumers, Coca-Cola produced personalized Coke bottles adorned with 250 of the most popular names and nicknames used by millennials, including Bestie and Wingman.
Beyond customized bottles, Coke also created interactive billboards and websites, as well as traveling kiosks where people could get more uniquely named Coke products. After seeing a massive 7% increase in Coke consumption (despite a dwindling soda industry on the wrong side of the millennial health and fitness fad), Coca-Cola decided to roll out the campaign in the U.S. in 2014, a move that ultimately led to a 2.5% increase in total sales.
Coca-Cola’s marketing team threw all their weight behind marketing personalization, and it paid off in a major way. The success of the campaign taught marketers worldwide that people love personalized products — especially when they are unexpected.
Having a mega-brand like Coca-Cola take the effort to print individual names on bottles made customers feel valued and sparked an organic social media campaign that ultimately led to increased sales in the U.S. for the first time in roughly four years.
All in all, while implementing personalized marketing campaigns may seem complex and daunting, when done right it doesn’t have to be. And the rewards for hitting a home run are endless, from casual customers turning into brand ambassadors to unparalleled engagement and a wow factor that immediately upgrades your CX.
Time To Get Personal
Now it’s your turn. If you found these examples of personalized marketing campaigns useful and would like to learn how to take advantage of the latest trends in a fast-paced and ever-evolving marketing landscape, we invite you to download a copy of our “How to Stay Ahead of the Game in the Marketing Industry” guide for CMOs.
