Predictive intelligence for marketers: 1:1 personalization at scale

Let’s face it: We all appreciate some special attention every now and then. Who doesn’t love being treated like a superstar? For marketers targeting a widespread audience, it seems nearly impossible to give everyone the one-on-one treatment. How do you make a customer feel like they’re being personally cared for without it coming off as generic?

Thankfully, the answer on how to specifically market to your audience isn’t as secretive as you would think. In fact, you’ve seen this practice in motion whenever you log on to Facebook, Netflix, or Amazon. It’s called machine learning and it’s responsible for figuring out the type of posts you want to see on your feed or what items to add to your wish list. By analyzing the trends associated with your users, you can figure out how to cater to your user base and attract new ones in the process — and predict how they will behave.

Need to bring in an audience that spends money like they breath in air? By identifying the buying patterns of consumers, you’ll be able to find out what draws in big spenders, thereby giving you the knowledge needed to persuade them to your side. Or, in regards to your current users, you can determine how to market products to them they didn’t even know they wanted to buy — as in the case of Target, who used machine learning to sell pregnant women on baby products before the day of birth.

As exciting as personalization aided by machine learning may be, there’s certainly a balancing act to it. When Target marketed baby products to a teen who hadn’t even told her pregnancy to her father, the company acknowledged it made consumers queasy on the entire practice. In addition to possibly coming off as a creep to your customer, the outright act of analyzing data to identify specific spending patterns can appear overwhelming to anyone unfamiliar with the concept.