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Personalisation 101 in Marketing: Strategies, Tools, and What’s Ahead in 2025
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2025 Personalisation Strategies: Insights from a Leading Brisbane Digital Marketing Agency
Personalisation is here to stay, becoming more vital as we move into 2025. For experienced marketers, personalisation isn’t a new concept—it’s always been about connecting with customers on a personal level. Whether you’re a small café, a trade business, a small club, or a sporting body, advancements in digital tools have made it easier to tailor marketing messages, offers, and experiences across channels. As a Brisbane digital marketing agency, we’ll explore how personalisation can build brand trust, loyalty, and sustainable growth for businesses of all types, from cafes with loyal customers, and trade businesses, to member organisations with diverse communities.
What is Personalisation?
Personalisation in marketing means customising messages, offers, and experiences to align with each customer’s unique needs and preferences. The goal is to make each communication touchpoint feel relevant, fostering strong connections with your audience. Personalisation can include:
- Customer Experience: Giving your audiences a personal experience, from how your team talk and responds to them – to how you reward them for loyalty matters.
- Personalised Emails: Sending messages based on customer value journey, interests, past interactions and preferences.
- Dynamic Web Content: Adapting website content and banners to match a visitor’s browsing history.
- Targeted Advertising: Using Facebook Ads to deliver ads tailored to demographics (age, gender and location), psychographics (interests), and browsing behaviour.
- Product/Service Recommendations: Suggesting items based on a customer’s purchase history.
- Audience Segmentation: Grouping audiences by demographics (e.g., age, gender, location), psychographics (e.g., lifestyle and interests) and customer journey (awareness/consideration, conversion and loyalty).
When done well, “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing,” as Tom Fishburne says, blending seamlessly with the customer experience.
Why Personalisation Matters
Today’s consumers expect brands to understand and cater to them. According to a McKinsey study, 71% of consumers expect personalised interactions, and 76% feel frustrated when they don’t get them. Personalisation can help meet these expectations, providing meaningful benefits to organisations that embrace it.
The benefits of personalisation go beyond simply meeting customer expectations. By delivering relevant, tailored experiences, organisations can drive stronger engagement, boost customer loyalty, and improve conversion rates. Personalisation allows businesses to build deeper connections, making customers feel valued and understood, which in turn increases retention and lifetime value.
For organisations, the insights gathered from personalised interactions can also refine their strategies, helping them to stay competitive and respond swiftly to changing customer needs. In an age of abundant choice, personalisation can be a powerful differentiator that keeps your brand top of mind.
Understanding Your Audience for Enhanced Personalisation Insights from a Trusted Brisbane Digital Marketing Agency
To personalise effectively, organisations need to know their audience deeply. As a Brisbane digital marketing agency, we know personalisation helps create stronger relationships by addressing unique customer needs across every touchpoint. Here are practical ways to gather audience insights:
- Surveys and Feedback Forms: Annual surveys or project-specific feedback can reveal customer needs and refine your approach.
- Data Analytics: Tools like Google Console, Google Analytics 4, Sprout Social, and Hubspot CRM reveal behaviour and engagement patterns.
- Customer Interviews and Focus Groups: One-on-one conversations can uncover motivations and preferences, offering insights that data alone might miss.
- Social Media Listening: Monitoring social media lets you keep up with audience sentiment.
- Competitor and Industry Analysis: Tools like SEMrush help track content performance and uncover new opportunities.
- A/B Testing: Testing different versions of emails, ads, or website pages reveals what resonates best, allowing for more effective personalisation.
Personalisation Across the Customer Journey
Personalisation varies by where each customer is in their journey. Here are some examples on how to approach each stage:
- Awareness Stage: Create targeted social media content based on interests. For example, we create social posts (shared with relevant Facebook groups) for Birkdale Hire a Hubby around Christmas to appeal to local homeowners getting their homes ready before relatives arrive.
- Consideration Stage: Share relevant content or testimonials. For a new client like Larsen’s Lifestyle Constructions, the content we have drafted highlights the owner’s personable approach, custom-quality builds, past projects, and testimonials.
- Decision Stage: Offer tailored calls-to-action to convert leads. Our client, K&G Automotive, offers a $50 discount voucher and loan car for services to increase conversions.
- Retention Stage: Keep existing customers engaged. The Little Ship Club’s discounts, events, communications and access to club facilities (24/7 via Fobs) deepen member relationships and loyalty.
Personalise content for your brand story.
Personalised content must reflect your brand’s unique story and key messages to truly connect with your audience. While AI tools can aid research and content refinement, delivering authentic, engaging messages that resonate with your audience requires experienced marketers with strong branding and writing skills. Personalisation isn’t just about adding customer names or segmenting audiences; it’s about crafting a message that feels like your brand at every touchpoint.
Recently, a trade client of ours had a team member draft a social media post using AI, and the difference was noticeable. The post felt generic, lacking the warmth and depth of the brand story, and it could have easily described a competitor. This kind of content doesn’t create engagement—it risks disconnecting with your audience.
We use various AI tools to improve productivity and make our services more cost-effective. Still, we rely on skilled marketers to shape each piece of content, ensuring that it reflects your brand voice, adds value to the customer journey, and builds a lasting connection with your audience. Personalisation is most powerful when guided by human creativity and strategic brand insight.
Personalisation for Different Types of Organisations
Personalisation varies depending on industry, size, and resources. While small businesses may personalise in person, larger organisations may need technology to scale personalisation. Selecting technology that integrates well with existing systems and is easy for teams to use is essential.
1. Local Small Business: Bean & Leaf Cafe
Bean & Leaf, a popular café in Cleveland, uses low-tech personalisation by training staff to greet customers by name and remember their preferences. This warm, personal approach is reinforced by a manual loyalty card system. The café shows how even simple, low-cost personalisation can foster customer loyalty.
Tools
- Stamp Me: A digital loyalty app replacing punch cards.
- Square POS & Loyalty: Integrated POS with loyalty features.
- Bopple: Ordering and loyalty platform with custom points.
- Touchpoint MX: CRM for segmenting and targeted campaigns.
2. Trade Businesses
Trade businesses, such as plumbing, electrical services or air conditioning specialists, can personalise engagement at each stage of the journey using CRM systems and targeted marketing. This approach builds lasting relationships and encourages repeat business.
- Awareness and Consideration Stages: Targeted Google or social media ads address seasonal needs (e.g., promoting air conditioning systems in summer).
- Decision Stage: CRMs enable timely follow-ups with offers like discounts on new products.
- Retention Stage: Automated emails or SMS reminders encourage existing customers to book seasonal services, e.g., annual AC service.
Tools
- Jobber: CRM and field service management for scheduling and follow-ups.
- Mailchimp: Email marketing with segmentation.
- Active Campaign: CRM with automation for follow-ups and offers.
- Podium: Messaging centralisation for real-time communication.
3. Membership Club: Little Ship Club
The Little Ship Club, a waterfront club with 500-600 members and over 10,000 patrons annually, uses H&L for bar and bistro POS, stock management, performance reporting, and membership records (including the points system). Member and patron communications are handled through Mailchimp, social media and tourism websites (for tourists).
Personalisation for potential members includes social media posts highlighting membership benefits. For full members (with boats), the club sends out targeted newsletters about bay outings. The recent addition of Zen Global Loyalty software, integrated into H&L, allows the club to tailor promotions based on demographics, interests, and past behaviour.
Content Personalisation:
- Prospective Members: Social media posts focus on benefits and joining ease.
- Full Members (Boaters): Newsletters provide boating and bay outing updates.
- All Members and Patrons: Newsletters promote social events.
Tools
- H&L: POS and membership software.
- Zen Global Loyalty: Tailored loyalty promotions.
- SurveyMonkey: Surveys to understand member needs.
- Google Analytics 4: Tracks online engagement.
- Mailchimp: Email marketing platform.
4. Sporting Organisations
Sporting bodies can segment audiences by variables such as membership level (prospect, new, long-standing), skills (beginner, experienced, competitions), discipline type (power boat vs sailing boat) and gender. This enables targeted messages based on customer value journey, skill, discipline and gender, creating a supportive community.
Content Personalisation:
- Prospective Members: Emails and social media posts promote sports benefits.
- Beginner Members: Educational resources tailored to skill level.
- Advanced Members: Updates on specialist training and competitions.
- Discipline Content: Updates and event invitations by sport type.
Tools
- SurveyMonkey: Surveys to understand member needs.
- Google Console: looks at site traffic, performance and site issues.
- Google Analytics 4: Understand customers across platforms, customer journeys and improve marketing ROI.
- SEMRush: Provides in-depth online insights.
- Mailchimp/ ActiveCampaign: Email marketing and segmentation.
- Oviond: Dashboard reporting for data insights.
5. Large Organisation: Starbucks
Starbucks exemplifies large-scale personalisation with its mobile app and rewards program, tracking customer purchase history to recommend drinks and promotions. They use geolocation for nearby store offers and leverage AI to optimise stock, reducing waste.
Tools
- Mobile App and Rewards Program: Tracks purchase history for tailored drink recommendations.
- Location-Based Offers: Discounts for nearby store visits.
- AI and Predictive Analytics: Forecasts demand and preferences.
What’s Coming in 2025: New Technology for Personalisation
Personalisation is evolving, with emerging tools and technologies offering exciting opportunities:
- AI and Machine Learning: Real-time predictive recommendations tailored to individual preferences.
- Chatbots and Conversational AI: Enhanced customer support with personalised suggestions.
- Real-Time Customer Data Platforms (CDPs): Data aggregation across platforms for immediate insights.
- Augmented Reality (AR): Immersive product experiences in customer spaces.
- Affectiva: Real-time mood analysis through AI.
- Predictive Analytics Software: Anticipates needs based on past behaviour.
- Voice Search Optimisation: Conversational content tailored to voice queries.
- Omnichannel Personalisation Tools: Integrated, seamless experience across all customer touchpoints.
Getting Started with Personalisation: A Sustainable Journey, Not a Sprint
Personalisation is a journey of progressive improvements, not a sprint. Begin with small changes, testing and refining your approach based on real customer insights. This ensures your strategy is manageable, cost-effective, and aligned with customer needs.
Key Benefits of Progressive Improvements:
- Cost Efficiency: Incremental investments minimise financial risks.
- Resource Management: Gradual adoption reduces team strain.
- Long-Term Success: Builds lasting customer engagement.
Personalisation strengthens customer relationships and drives growth without overwhelming your resources when aligned with a solid marketing strategy. By making data-driven decisions and moving forward in phases, your organisation can enhance personalisation in a sustainable way.
Sustainable Marketing Services is an award-winning Brisbane digital marketing agency with a long history of delivering sustainable success for our clients.
If you would like some help to build a personalised marketing strategy that connects, converts and grows, book a complimentary meeting on 07 3446 5837 or via email us here.