The "When" of Wow: Why Personalization Timing Matters More Than You Think

Personalization is everywhere in marketing, but are we doing it right? It's not just about starting an email with the name of the recipient. As sales leader Samantha McKenna [#samsales] points out, personalization is " show me you know me". True personalization is about showing you understand your audience needs and interests.

Here's why timing is the secret sauce of personalization:

Beyond Name Dropping: Aim for Relevance

Cheza Sports is a youth soccer academy in Kenya that my family has been supporting for years. I have two Cheza Sports jerseys: one blank and one branded with my name in the back. I wear my personalized jersey the most. Marketing messages are the same. The most impactful marketing messages are personalized. But let's keep in mind that calling your audience by their name is not personalization. Generic greetings are not personalization.

The Creep Factor of Early Personalization

Adding a name to an early-stage email or a landing page may feel inauthentic. I always feel uncomfortable when I met someone who call me by my full name before I got the chance to introduce myself. Effective personalization happens at the right time – when you've gathered some understanding of the buyer's journey, like their interests or downloaded content. This is also the moment when your audience is ready to hear from you and is receptive to your call-to-action. They somewhat know you because the award-winning or guerilla style (depending on budget) top-of-funnel and awareness work your marketing team did early on. For multiple reasons I will discuss another time, it took me two years to get my personalized soccer jersey. I don't recommend this, but when my personalized jersey finally arrived, I was wowed. I was sold.

The "Show Me You Know Me" Moment: Personalization with Impact

Real personalization takes effort. Understand your audience and use data to anticipate their needs. A personalized email with relevant content resonates more than a generic welcome message even though you know your audience middle name and other demographic information. AI-powered tools are game-changing because they allow marketers and sellers to get a clearer picture of the past and predict the future: where the audience were, where the audience is going. That being said, successful personalization is not about how, the tools marketers used, but rather when. There are only that many chances to make a good impression. When I received my personalized jersey, I was pretty impressed by the quality. I noticed that Cheza Sports had updated their logo and redesigned the neckline of the jersey. The branding made personalization so much more worth it. Branding, this is also a story for another time.

The Takeaway:

Personalization is powerful, but timing is crucial. Focus on delivering relevant messages that demonstrate a genuine understanding of your audience. That's when personalization wows and builds lasting connections.

Check out the latest entry The Personalized Soccer Jersey and click on this Vimeo showcase to view previous entries of the Journal of a Marketer.