Activate Win a Trip Post 4: Beyond Buzzwords The Future of Marketing is Personal

In our case, it is very important to work closely with our Customer Insights team. The conduct in-depth surveys and focus groups and can have a ton of great qualitative data that helps us find what would be the best type of "personal touch". Iterable has helped us both ways: first by allowing Customer Insights team to reach our own database and find the segments that would be part of focus groups, etc (leveraging our first-party data). Second by allowing us to carefully scale the "personal touch" (and even automated it a bespoke way) in our email communication.  

I’m working on building a system that scrapes slang and local terminology from different geographical areas. This will help create more personal and authentic messages instead of generic ones. More than just using a customer’s name, adding familiar language makes messages feel like they’re coming from a real person.

At nesto (mortgages), we personalize all greetings in our communications and sign everything off on behalf of the client’s dedicated advisor (when possible). We had a journey built that would trigger “drop off” comms that would call out where in our application our clients stopped - but, that just isn’t enough!

We are starting to adapt our comms to our various segments (buyers, mortgage renewers), as they all behave differently. We are starting to send more “educational” communication to our “first time home buyer” segment. In Canada, the mortgage industry is not easy to follow - and, buying a house comes with a lot of stress. This segment responds particularly well to concise, informative comms when they are easy to digest. 

We review comments on videos, emails to customer service, and social media comments to get a sense of how our community speaks and then find certain trends or words that resonate and use those in our communication. In this way it feels authentic to the customer and we can adapt our voice, while still staying on brand, to feel personal.

For me, making marketing feel more human is all about balance. It's that age-old challenge of sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time (without feeling like spam).

Tone and voice should match both the brand and its audience. Whether you're playfully unhinged like Duolingo or minimalist like Apple, authenticity matters. Whenever possible, I like to lean on zero-party data and behavioral signals to make messages feel personal, not just personalized.

Segmentation and relevance are key. In my role, that means understanding where someone is in their job search and how we can best support them (not just send more emails or SMS but send the most relevant communication). Each message should complement, not interrupt, their journey. This is all easier said than done when balancing messaging with business goals, but it still remains a goal. Which is why testing is everything. It’s not just about opens and CTRs. Real impact comes from measuring conversion, engagement, and long-term value. The more we refine, the more we can understand what works and what doesn’t. 

Because at the end of the day, holistic marketing is about connection, not intrusion. You wouldn’t walk up to a stranger and immediately start pitching them something without first a greeting right? You’d start with a greeting, let the conversation flow naturally, listen, and try to understand who they are before responding in a way that makes sense for them. If you want a real exchange, you observe, collect context, and respond in a way that feels relevant to them and not just what you want to say. Digital marketing should work the same way. When done right, it feels less like another plain old message and more like a meaningful, well-timed conversation or nudge. 

At my company, our user lifecycle team collabs very closely with our Community team and our UX Research team to understand the human needs of our users and what resonates with them. By building out clear segmentation groups, we are able to direct our messaging in a way that is supportive while being conversational and hopefully inspiring. 

Storytelling is a big component of how we connect with our users, and at the moment we are investigating how to embed user testimonials into key areas of product via in-app messaging. We’ll want to segment to ensure that our Power Users and our Newbies are getting relevant tips and tricks based on where they are at with their experience in our products, this is where Iterable segmentation will step in and support. 

At the end of the day, we love to focus on the small details that can make a big difference. Like visually engaging designs and thoughtful thank-you’s and CONGRATS (event triggered emails and in-app messages). We align all our design with our product design team to ensure cohesion, and we really focus on building relationships with our users. For us, customer marketing is about moving beyond generic messaging and delivering experiences that resonate with our users on a personal level. 

At our health fitness company, we prioritize personalization as a core element of our marketing strategy. We go beyond generic messaging by leveraging club data and member usage patterns to create tailored communications that resonate on a personal level. By addressing members by name and referencing their individual fitness journey, we make each interaction feel more authentic and relevant. Whether it’s highlighting milestones like personal bests, or encouraging a member to try a new class based on their workout history, our messaging feels less like a sales pitch and more like a thoughtful recommendation from a friend or trainer. This level of customization not only boosts engagement but also fosters a deeper sense of connection with our brand.

In line with industry trends, personalized communication in health and fitness is becoming more integral to building long-term member loyalty. As fitness apps and wearables continue to collect vast amounts of data, the expectation for more personalized experiences grows. Members now expect brands to understand their preferences and provide tailored advice or content based on their progress. Additionally, the trend toward storytelling in marketing is becoming increasingly important. We incorporate storytelling by showcasing real member success stories and creating narratives around the challenges and triumphs they experience in their fitness journey. This humanizes our brand and creates an emotional connection that transcends transactional interactions, helping our company stand out in a crowded market.

Less robot, more human? Interesting question, these days, especially when everything is moving towards more robot less human.

Can I say ermmm, adding firstname makes it more human? Heh, well no matter how you look at this old advice, firstnames still make a difference!

But in all seriousness, it all depends on the company -- you don’t want to sound like a corporate robot, you want to personalize messages the way you/your tech/data allow you to. The creative you use, are they relatable to your audience? do they call out a feeling or they simply fill in a blank space in your email? 

I’m an old whale in the email marketing world, and I still value simple touches from brands, like happy birthday messages. While such emails might not be the lead generating email for the business, so more and more such personalized add-ons to email flows are being discarded due to lack of resources, time, priorities, etc. I still appreciate those and tend to wait to see which brands send such an email to me on my birthday. Or maybe I should go out more instead of waiting for promotional emails to land in my inbox 😅

This is a very fine line to walk when talking about Healthcare marketing. There’s a fine line between personalization and privacy. Also, unlike retail marketing, it has to be the right time for patients to use “the product,” so promotions and similar tactics to increase engagement aren’t tools we have at our disposal. I focus on personalizing messaging based on what kind of treatment patients are seeking with us in terms of the content marketing that they’re served up and which channels to use. Our brand tone is conversational rather than formal, which helps a great deal, but it’s still not a space where you can often employ humor or “cute” tactics. The transactional messaging side is also even more crucial than the pure marketing arm in our business, so employing ways to make those messages deepen engagement (like including helpful content) has been key.

Gathering qualitative data through surveys and interviews has been incredibly helpful for us - knowing the language, tone of voice, visuals, and messaging that resonate with our audience has helped shape the future of our communications.

In addition to this, segmentation has been key to ensuring our messaging stays super relevant and hyper-personalised to really create unique experiences for each of our subscribers

I think about marketing like I’m having a conversation—one person at a time. If an email or message would feel awkward or overly robotic if I sent it to just one person, then it’s probably not going to land well at scale either.

Even when I’m using AI to streamline or personalize, I always add a few lines that make it clear there’s a real person behind the message. The best marketing still feels like one person talking to another.

I try to be as personalized as I can with the data we have on hand. That goes beyond just putting their first name in an email. I try to understand who I am sending the message to, and that is a collaboration with the data team at the organization. The more you know about the person, the better the message can be.