Lesson #2. The truth behind 121 personalisation.

A little bit of help before I begin…

I’m currently at ~62,000 words in my book, The Person in Personalisation: Reclaiming the Personal from a Data-Driven, Overly-Commercial, Impersonal World. I’m looking for a few people who would be kind enough to read the odd chapter to help road test and see if what I’m writing resonates and isn’t just some heavily researched, 12 months of my life, words on a page whilst unecessarily growing a beard that, more than occassionally, gets food stuck in it. Would anyone be interested in such a gig?

I’m over 121.

The allure of 121. The hope. The fantasy. It’s the word that makes stakeholders stand up and listen, yet the reality always falls short. Why? You’re nodding, I can tell. You resonate. A foreshadow of whats to come.

In all my interviews, most laughed at the concept of it. I think we’ve been too long on the practitioner side of the fence, where our stakeholders will ask for it, and our brains immediately think of the immeasurable practicalities. Those practicalities of which send a shiver down our spine. As if the expectation for personalisation isn’t high enough, having to personalise at a level that is individual to millions of users seems like ... just too much hard work.

Heck. Some of those who I spoke to didn’t even believe the concept of personalisation is an achievable thing, let alone the allure of 121. This Marketing Week article talks about that in some detail, despite how opinionated it might be. I should really stop giving this thing some airtime; that’s exactly what the proletariat wants.

Definition and sexiness

What's interesting is that some who I interviewed seemed to only classify personalisation if it were firmly defined within the 121 category.

The argument being that personalisation is more than segmentation. It uses customer behaviour and interest data. It’s about predicting the next set of actions a customer will likely take and tailoring an experience based on that prediction. If that's our view, then personalisation is surely only able to be classified at a one-to-one level? The far right of this mythical maturity model.

This narrative isn’t too wild to believe. Personalisation has been crafted over the years of redefinition and reinvention to talk about one-to-one personalisation being the only form of personalisation. Everything else isn’t worthy of such a title. If we’re not doing one-to-one, we’re not personalising.

It explains why just changing a mobile experience for customers on a mobile device isn’t considered as personalisation; its just not sexy enough.

There are things that are hyper-personalised like your bank account, or your Sky account. Your bill is hyper-personalised. Every interaction and everything Sky know about you as a customer is on the bill; it’s literally 121 personalisation. But no one will ever say that’s a great use of personalisation, even though you can’t get more personalised than that. Simon Elsworth , Global Head of Experimentation, Whirlpool

The fact of the matter is that "121" is a term that's overused, overvalued, and overwrought. Over everything. I’m over it. Technically and philosophically, the concept of 121 can be achieved. But practically, it’s so rarely achieved that we either dismiss others for not applying it in a sexy enough example or have such high expectations of it that we ignore it, burying our heads in the sand like ostriches and accepting we’ll never achieve it. Unless we’re Netflix and generate $31.47bn in sales.

Which side of the fence are you on? The sexy side or the ostrich side?

What should 121 be, and can we achieve it?

I subscribe more to a philosophy where machine learning can make thousands of products and experiences relevant, but that is only one type of personalisation. The homepage of Netflix is truly individualised. The homepage of Booking.com is truly individualised. Amazon, too, with Jeff saying "if we have 4.5 million customers, we shouldn't have one store, we should have 4.5 million stores." But that doesn’t mean it’s truly personalised.

121 can come into play where data can be crunched, and automation can present the product or experience, but there are more times when it’s a one-to-many conversation, rather than a 121 conversation. Nathan Richter , Vice President of Program Strategy and Insight at Dynamic Yield,

Here, Nathan talks about how the products or services are personalised to the user using item-based rules and the histories of others like you—but there is a difference in the curation of thousands of items, making a store more relevant and having greater resonance. A big difference. The key difference.

I like to think of it as the difference between affinity and intent. Affinity is what a customer might be interested in because it’s relevant to them. Intent is what a customer resonates with because it matches their mindset.

Levinson (2007) describes it more wisely, saying that this distinction is that relevance helps your campaign pique the audience’s interest. Resonance comes after. Now that you have their interest, your digital campaign needs to inspire, affect, and drive your audience to action. You must reinforce your message and strike something within your audience that motivates them to participate. It’s the spark that activates.

This is where familiarity and trust are built; the precursors to personalisation. Relevance at scale is achievable, and others are doing it. Resonation at scale isn’t. It lacks the human element. We focus so much on the former that we inherently forget about the latter.

Conclusion

I learned that the value in personalisation lies in the simple; 121 is a distraction. Most believe this.

"121 is more of an unachievable end point, but there are some powerful milestones on the way there." Greg Anderson , Senior Manager, International eCommerce

Conceptually, "121" is the buzzword created by third-party vendors to reach the top of the pyramid. It’s the unattainable. As a consumer, you want to feel that this brand understands who I am, what I want to see, and how I prefer to be communicated with, but you are just one of many.

And so the question isn't: "Should we personalise at a 121 level?" It’s just not that binary. It’s "how much should we be personalising to help the customer on the axis of relevance and resonation?"