You’ve heard how AI is a game-changing technology, but what’s the grit behind the gimmick? How can you make it work for you?
For brands and marketers, hyper-personalisation is AI at its dazzling best. It takes customer experience, buyer personas and market segmentation to a few stops beyond the next level.
Luxury retailer Saks Global has rebuilt its website around AI-driven personalisation. The result? A 7% rise in revenue per visitor and almost 10% increase in conversions.
You don’t need to be a retail giant to take advantage of this technology. Its scalability makes it great for ambitious SMEs.
Let’s dive in.
Hyper-personalisation builds on your market segmentation strategies with machine learning (ML) to deliver individualised marketing copy.
There are two stages.
The first is using ML and data analytics to get a clearer idea of customers’ individual preferences. While this is not new, AI allows for faster and clearer interpretation of customer behaviours. Simply put, AI tools allow marketers to identify and act on consumer trends fast.
The second stage involves the use of Generative AI to deliver automated variations of marketing copy. These variations are based on insights from your analytics and produced at scale. This is the key to hyper-personalisation.
The trick is balancing data-driven insights with engaging copy that makes the reader feel like they’re listening to a friendly voice.
As WriteArm.ai’s chief innovation officer Martin Lucas puts it:
“Every brand runs on two systems.
The machine system, which optimises for speed, cost, and precision.
The human system, which operates on meaning, rhythm, and feeling.
True hyper personalisation happens when those two work together. When data recognises context, and communication feels like care.
Emotion, when understood as data, is the missing layer of intelligence.”
Slight variations in messaging can make marketing copy feel more like a personal conversation and less like a sales pitch.
Copy can be varied in all sorts of ways, such as:
With good data and a little imagination, brands can deliver optimised copy to receptive audiences.
This can result in:
Hyper-personalised content can resonate strongly with audiences. Getting the right message to the right person at the right time can seriously impact conversion rates. It can generate more leads, increase sales revenues and draw more customers to your brand.
Automated personalisation allows for uniquely tailored messaging. Everything from the wording of the copy to the artwork to the products offered can be infinitely reiterated at scale. Each prospect sees the most effective version of your communications for them.
This can make a powerful impression, make brands feel more relevant and improve customer attraction and retention.
A principal benefit of AI is its ability to quickly and effectively perform repetitive tasks. It can make near-instantaneous iterations to marketing copy based on individual customers’ data. Automating this process allows marketers to respond quickly and cost-effectively to consumer needs. The personnel cost of creating new iterations plummets. The usual testing logjams start to clear.
Hyper-personalisation is relatively new, even in the AI era. Early adopters gain an opportunity to differentiate their offerings from those of their competitors. Quick access to infinitely variable content allows brands to make their message more immediate, unique and personal.
The fast and effective automations offered by AI platforms lend themselves very well to scalability. Within seconds, they can create iterations of copy that might take design teams hours or days. This allows marketers to quickly and affordably scale up their creative output.
This approach to personalisation is still in its infancy, so the data is fairly sparse.
What we do know is that consumers increasingly expect a highly personalised user experience. Salesforce found that 84% of consumers felt being treated as an individual was the key to winning their business. A 2021 study by McKinsey found 71% of respondents expect personalisation and 76% get frustrated when it’s absent
So, there is clearly a hunger for more personalised messaging.
Hyper-personalisation allows for granular messaging at a larger scale than ever before. AI allows better tailored content to be made and distributed at scale. This meets the need for greater personalisation without prohibitive time and cost implications.
Still, there remains an important balance to strike. Martin reminds us that:
“Hyper personalisation only works when it feels invisible. The moment it becomes noticeable, it turns manipulative. Humans are wired to detect intent, and when a message feels too perfect, it triggers a defence mechanism. Cognitive science calls this reactance, the instinctive resistance to persuasion.
Netflix gets it right. Its recommendations feel intuitive because they follow the natural rhythm of behaviour; what you skip, pause, or finish. In contrast, most retail systems use guesswork disguised as intelligence. They track a product view and flood you with reminders for the next two weeks. One feels predictive. The other feels invasive.”
Hyper-personalisation plays to a core strength of GenAI – the ability to reiterate existing content at scale. As Alex Cheeseman, Head of Outbrain’s Enterprise Brands for Northern Europe told Creativepool,
“AI’s ability to produce endless variations and iterations is an excellent gateway to hyper-personalisation… The technology can be brought on board to meet and improve creative strategies – whether that’s tailored imagery for different audiences, which allows brands to optimise engagement and effectiveness in a way that resonates, or in content creation efficiency.”
As we’ve discussed at length, AI excels when supporting a brand’s creative output. It can’t (and shouldn’t) supplant it.
Even the World Economic Forum maintains that AI’s role should be to support and enhance human creativity. GenAI can be used to scale up production and change iterations in line with customer data.
What makes the copy compelling is the human touch.
AI continues to evolve at pace. Nevertheless, human input remains the difference between “good enough” and “great”. To quote Cheesman,
“A lot of generative AI produced content hovers just above average… Hyper-personalisation through AI is an effective way to scale at speed, but human creativity is still king.“
Time will tell whether AI becomes a pillar of tomorrow’s economy or a headline-grabbing case of Amara’s law.
Still, hyper-personalisation is a compelling use case for GenAI.
One that plays to its fast turnarounds, modest operating costs and scalability. Leaving human creatives to spend more time writing quality copy and less making tedious iterations.
If AI currently helps you target customers, we’ll help you speak their language.
Let’s have a chat about how we can give your AI strategy a human voice.
