Here we are tackling one of the hot topics for an effective marketing automation strategy: the profiling users. We have chosen to collect in a dedicated section of our blog, User Profiling, a series of articles and insights with the aim of offering all readers a smart, concrete and easy reference to find insights and tricks to improve user profiling. This section will be constantly updated and expanded, so…stay tuned!
But let’s get started: knowing your users is the fundamental starting point for any marketing strategy, and thanks to new technologies based on artificial intelligence, it is possible to profile users as never before.
The key to personalized marketing is being able to give the right message, to the right person at the right time and this is possible through profiling; this allows the user to have an engaging and rewarding experience that will be able to improve the results and performance of different campaigns.
User profiling in the current digital environment
In the digital age, user profiling is a key tool for companies wishing to optimize their marketing strategies, personalizing the shopping experience and improving the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. This practice, defined as the analysis and collection of data related to the behaviors, preferences and activities of online users, allows the creation of detailed profiles that can be used to predict future actions and interests. Despite the many benefits of profiling, such as increased advertising relevance and the ability to deliver tailored content, it raises important issues regarding privacy compliance and the need to comply with stringent regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ). Therefore, it is crucial for companies to implement ethical and effective profiling practices that not only improve marketing performance but also respect consumers’ rights and expectations in terms of personal data protection.
The benefits of profiling for marketing strategies
In digital marketing, user profiling proves to be an invaluable tool. Through accurate data collection and analysis, companies are able to deeply understand their target audience’s needs, preferences and behavior, thereby optimizing their communication strategies and delivering personalized experiences that increase customerengagement and loyalty.
This ability to tailor specific products and messages to well-defined user segments not only significantly improves the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, but also enables more efficient use of marketing resources, reducing waste and increasing ROI.
In addition, data-driven profiling makes it possible to anticipate market trends and adapt quickly to changes in consumer behavior, giving companies a decisive competitive advantage. However, it is crucial that this practice is carried out with full respect for user privacy and in compliance with current regulations such as the GDPR, ensuring transparency and security in the management of personal data.
Profiling Users: let’s start profiling from VIP users
In defining this profiling segment it would be easy to rank the users who bring in the most revenue! This is certainly true, but it is important to be able to define how these users generate it.
Let’s take, for example, two users who, with an extraction from our company’s management system, will turn out to have bought €500 in the last year. In the first case, let’s imagine, that we are dealing with a customer who made a one-time purchase worth €500 and then did not buy any more and, in the second case, on the other hand, let’s imagine that we are dealing with a customer who made 5 purchases of €100. As we can well understand, these are two completely different situations, and even in the first case, it remains to be investigated whether it is a purchase of a single high-value product or several items with a lower unit value.
All of this serves us to understand how the marginality brought by the two customers is, in fact, completely different, just as the absolute value represented by these two types of customers is different: the first is a sporadic customer, who may have taken a price opportunity and then never come back-the so-called opportunist customer-the other may instead be a very valuable user for us since its value over time is bound to multiply.
If treated properly, the latter may even become ambassador of our brand and be the subject of campaigns that will incentivize it to get us new leads. They will be among the first users, for example, to be targeted by a member get member strategy.
We introduce, thus, three possible types of customer profiling, which will help us distinguish the “real” VIP users:
- HERO: User who buys a lot, in absolute value.
- REPEAT: User who purchases with a certain frequency
- VIP= HERO + REPEAT
But what characteristics must customers have in order to fall into one of these types of user profiling? A useful exercise in user profiling is to determine precisely the values for which to classify different customers and perform an analysis of how many current customers meet these characteristics
It will thus be possible for a brand to profile the users it has managed to “snatch” from the market, i.e., those who upon the emergence of a need will not perform a google search, but will immediately think of that particular company. That’s LOVE!
Hero, repeat and VIP users: how to identify them with customer profiling
In order to profile these users, recognize them, and thus be able to create personalized experiences for them, it is necessary to rely on profiling systems, based on A.I. engines, that allow us to value individual segments by analyzing their value and how this varies over time. Before proceeding with profiling, however, it is important to note the characteristics that these users must have:
- How many products should they buy?
- How often do they visit your site?
- How do they interact with your communications?
Once profiled, it is possible to imagine how we can create an experience for them that enhances their status and makes them literally fall in love with the brand.
The tools for effective customer profiling
s this research conducted by Demand Metric points out, the creation of personalized experiences is still very much an issue today because of the availability of innovative profiling technologies that are enablers for implementing these types of strategies.
Therefore, for profiling, it is important to be able to equip yourself with systems that can actually track users based on their behavior and put a value on these segments so that you can define which ones are actually most important to you and on which to focus.
At the foundation of any successful personalized and automated marketing strategy, it is essential to have full knowledge of your audience: user profiling, is but the first step! Good strategy!
