Episode 6 – Personalization

Rokture Ramblings – Episode 6 – What Can Personalization Do For You?

Hello everyone, and welcome to Rockshore Ramblings, where I discuss topics around digital 

marketing, marketing technology, and marketing operations for the financial services industry. 

My name is Fernando Pena and I’m the founder of Rockshore, where I can help you take advantage 

of the digital channel. And today’s topic is one that, again, I get asked about quite often, 

and that has to do with personalization. But the bigger question is, what can personalization 

do for you? So today, what I’m going to cover is what is personalization? Why personalize? What 

are the potential pitfalls? And also, where do I start?  

So what is personalization? And that’s a pretty broad term. So I’m just going to break it down 

into what it means from a marketing and a customer experience perspective. So it’s really the 

process of providing an experience that is optimized for that individual session or customer. 

If you think about, for example, a branch visit, oftentimes that teller will make sure that 

that experience and that discussion and conversation and that transaction is very specific 

to that point in time with that individual. On digital, this is sometimes difficult to replicate, 

but with personalization, you can get pretty close to it. And that’s the reason that we do it. 

It also offers a point of differentiation with your competitors. So if all of your competitors 

are basically offering that same generic, plain vanilla experience, and you’re offering 

personalization to a level that is actually acceptable and really expected by a customer, 

then that will give you an advantage over your competitors for various  

reasons that we’ll get into a little later. There’s the increased likelihood that your message 

is going to resonate with your audience. So personalization really does help to make that a 

reality. And then it helps to create consistency between digital and the other channels. So 

I mentioned the branch example. That’s one where you want your branch experience and your digital 

experience to really be closely aligned. And with personalization, that really does help 

to make that happen. So what I thought I’d do now is to go ahead and provide some examples of where 

personalization might be relevant. So I’m not picking on Wells Fargo by any means, but I just 

wanted to use them as an example here. And so what you’ll see is that my arrows are pointing to 

areas that can potentially be personalized. Now, granted, this is just a public session, and 

there are some limitations in what you can personalize because there’s not really a lot of information 

available to the systems to do personalization. But  

let’s assume that you do have some data that is able to be captured and you’re in a secured session. 

In that case, then you have the ability to, like, for example, modify this top menu so that it’s 

prioritized based on the specific needs of that individual. The bottom here where it says good 

afternoon, obviously that’s based on the local time zone. But you have the ability, again, 

to change that greeting so that it’s something that maybe resonates more with that individual. 

One that often is forgotten as well is that the buttons themselves. So even the color of the button 

might create more of a response based on that individual’s preferences. So maybe they prefer 

it green. Now, I know that you have to observe the brand standards, but there might be some other 

colors in the brand palette that are more likely to create and generate a response than the standard 

color that is being utilized here. And maybe instead of using the word sign on, maybe it’s log 

in. And, again, that’s just a point  

of differentiation. On the right here, we’re looking at the offer that is being provided and 

that offer, not only the offer itself, but the language within it. So you’ve got to think about 

each of these as being modules where you have maybe a headline module, a body of the offer module, 

and then maybe a visual representation. So all of these can and should be personalized. Same 

thing on this bottom, on the center row here. Each of these, same thing applies as the top here. 

So if I log in, I may see a completely different set of offers than if someone else logs in. And 

then, again, I’m here showing that everything is likely to or can be personalized if that is 

something that you’re looking to do, including this imagery here, maybe even the background. 

And that’s why I’m using this arrow here. So there’s a lot of different options, a lot of variations 

and permutations. And all of this really is under that category of personalization. Next, 

we’ll look at an email from PenFed. And this is one  

where, again, this is an offer that’s coming through. But, again, instead of a webpage, we’re 

looking at an email. So some of the same tactics and principles apply here where this offer, 

maybe this cashback honors advantage card is not relevant to this individual. So you have to 

make sure that it’s the right product or service. The language is something that can be modified 

as well as the icons, the text under the icons. The read more, same thing applies in terms of the 

language around the call to action and also the color that is being utilized. So all of these 

same things, regardless of whether you’re on a website or you’re on some sort of a marketing 

offer or a push tactic, those are all applicable when it comes to personalization.  

So the question is, why personalize? I’ve brought up that there’s many different options and 

tactics that can be utilized in order to be able to personalize that experience. But the reasons 

why we do it is because it does create a sense of familiarity. And so what that means is that now, 

instead of being seen as something that is completely foreign or irrelevant to that individual, 

it creates that sense of, OK, they understand me and these are relevant to me. And that comes 

into my second point here, relevancy. So this one’s probably the most important, because if 

you are positioning or presenting irrelevant offers or language to your customers and prospects, 

it just goes in one ear and out the other or one eye and out the other, wherever eyes goes. So so 

with that, you want to make sure that you are presenting relevant content to them and personalization 

does help that. It allows you now to create more of a less of a sales pitch and more of a consultative 

type of discussion. So you’re  

presenting that this is in their best interest instead of saying, buy this, buy this. So with 

all of that, I believe and I have seen figures that show that it does increase customer satisfaction. 

And along with that, then you see a decrease in attrition. So all of these help to create longer 

lasting relationships, deeper relationships and hopefully more revenue and growth on the 

part of your portfolio.  

So, of course, I can’t use the word pitfall without using a screen of the screenshot of the old 

80s game that I spent a lot of time playing. But the first one here is use first party data. So I 

received marketing material the other day that said, hello, Ferdow. And it just cracked me 

up and instantly turned me off to whatever it is that they were trying to present to me. They forgot 

an entire syllable of my name. So because of that, I I’m completely consumed with that in my head 

instead of thinking about their offer. Now, obviously, I didn’t report that information because 

I would never put that as my first name. But somewhere along the line, they gathered that information 

and they decided to make it a primary part of their personalization. So this is a huge no, no. 

If you’re not sure that that data is 100 percent accurate, it’s probably better not to use it. 

It’s better now to present an offer that is maybe more generically worded to something that 

you’re more certain of, whether it’s  

their occupation, an affinity that they may have. But don’t use a first name that is collected 

or a last name, even for that matter, from a third party, because if it’s inaccurate, then you 

just basically wiped away that opportunity with that individual. Use contextual personalization 

as a fallback. So instead of using my first name, if they weren’t sure, then they should have 

used something according to maybe my where I live or what they’re trying to position to me that 

is related to what I might be searching for. The next thing is avoid that creepy personalization. 

So we all can think about the times where we talk about something. We open up our phone and bam, 

there’s an advertisement for it. So that creeps people out a lot of times because they think 

that they’re being spied on. So there may be a lot of information that is at your disposal, but 

be careful about how you personalize those experiences because if it seems a little too intrusive, 

that might also turn off your potential audience  

as well. So there’s a sort of balance that has to be played here when it comes to being proactive, 

but also being very conscious of the fact that privacy is very important to many people and they 

don’t want to assume that you are making use of their information for your own gains. Use A -B 

testing and control groups to track success. I’ll get into this a little bit more on a future 

video, but this is really important where you have to create variations of what it is that you’re 

doing and you also need to hold back some of your audience to make sure that your tests are successful 

and that you’re not seeing success that is as a result of something else that might be taking 

place instead of the treatment that you are providing to them. Also, don’t over personalize. 

So don’t look at every single, although I did go over those materials earlier where I said that 

you can personalize every single bit of it, but it’s best to probably not overdo this in the beginning 

because there’s going to be so  

many permutations it becomes harder to track. So start off easy and slowly and personalize 

certain things and then once you gain confidence and you see the results of what’s taking place 

and where you have some improvements, then you add some additional components.  

So where do you start on something like this? So it goes back to what I’ve always said, which is 

determine the goals and objectives of your organization and you have to make sure that whatever 

it is that you’re trying to push is in alignment with what the organization needs to get done. 

The next thing is develop your strategy and your approach. So how are you going to utilize personalization? 

Develop this in a way where it’s in alignment with other tactics and make sure that it’s consistent 

with messaging and the approach that’s taking place throughout the organization. Build up 

your infrastructure. So obviously there’s going to be some technology that’s needed here 

to make this a reality. AI is a big one here and I’ve done a video on that one that you can look for 

and so AI and also just decisioning in general will be very important in this personalization 

effort. Otherwise what you’re doing is you’re running a lot of A, B, C, or D testing and as a result 

of that it becomes very manually  

and resource intensive. Test, test, test. That’s always a mantra of mine. So just try different 

things. You can separate audiences or maybe take a random sample and try to apply a tactic to 

them. See if it works. If it doesn’t then not a lot is lost there. But with these tests you’ll be 

able to move on to the next thing which is to refine your approach. And this is a continuous type 

of action. This isn’t something that is once done and done. Really you’re looking at just refining 

this over time and continuing to do so for all of eternity. So if this sounds like it’s a little 

too much for you to even embark upon, please feel free to reach out to me and we can discuss your 

particular use case and see where we might be able to apply some personalization and develop 

a strategy on your behalf. All my contact information is on this slide here. So feel free to reach 

out to me. And again, thank you so much for your time today and we will talk the next time. Have 

a good one. Bye -bye.