What Marketers are Getting Wrong About Personalization

Remember when personalization was the big thing? The allure of tailoring brand experiences and messages to a specific audience of one became impossible to resist. Before you could say “third-party cookies”, many marketers were falling over themselves to implement personalization in their own output – from targeted emails to recommended purchases on websites, based on previous actions.

And the trend continues to be as popular today as it was in 2019, when personalization was triumphantly declared ”Word of the Year.” Yet, despite its on-going popularity within the industry, two authors (Weinberg and Lombardo) have put forward a compelling argument that personalization “doesn’t make any sense.”

In the article, they highlight two primary issues preventing personalization from ever reaching its true, utopian potential:

Data

All good companies understand the inherent value of data. But volume of good, accurate data needed to create personalized experiences simply doesn’t exist. What data there is unreliable and can often be badly applied.

Tastes

Good marketing, like any creative output, succeeds when it shares universal truths that get people talking, thinking, acting. And that’s before you consider the resources needed to accomplish that.

So, what does this mean for financial institutions (FIs) focused on (or considering) personalization in their marketing now?

Data: Future-proof your marketing strategies against a reliance on third-party cookies

It’s been in the cards for years, but in the second half of 2024, Google is phasing out third-party cookies from its Chrome web browser. According to the search engine giant, “improving people’s privacy, while giving businesses the tools they need to succeed online, is vital to the future of the open web.”

Third-party cookies have been a key weapon for marketers, helping them track visitors, actions, and other data that should – in theory – help marketers more effectively target individuals with personalized content.

Google’s controversial decision is forcing FIs to rethink how they operate. Without ready access to the data third-party cookies provide, personalization as it’s currently defined and understood is going to dramatically shift.

As data sourced via third-parties falls away, a first-party cookie strategy will be essential to being data driven in your marketing strategies.

With the end of third-party cookies in sight, building out a marketing strategy that won’t be impacted by the upcoming policy changes is a necessity. While 2024 may seem a long way off and there is, admittedly, still data to be had – for the time being, now is the ideal time to pivot. Doing so can give Fis a head-start in future-proofing any personalization plans. It also offers opportunities to assess and refine current processes. Is the company getting the right data? Where is it coming from? What is it telling us? How can we action this information?

Because of the change in Google policy, Fis will find themselves increasingly reliant on data collected by first-party cookies. These will most commonly be drawn through the website or through affiliate website partners. As data sourced via third-parties falls away, Fis should be using both channels to maximize their first-party data yield.

Tastes: Go broad in both your reach and resonance

Today’s audiences are broad, and they’re only growing bigger – in 2021, the number of internet users worldwide hit 4.9bn, up from 4.6bn the year before. That makes genuine personalization at the individual level almost impossible to achieve.

No financial institution has the resources to design creative content for every personal taste, at every level. Even if they could, would they? Should they? Many of the most successful marketing campaigns speak universal truths that bring us all together; they don’t fixate on our individual differences.

Genuine personalization at a granular, personal level is an impossible dream. Our tastes are too rich and diverse. Even if it were achieved, it risks isolating audiences. Imagine a viewer asking their friend “did you hear what influencer X said?”, only for the friend to say “they never said that, they said this.” At best, it’s jarring; at worst, it deconstructs the emotional underpinnings of marketing content. The gold dust that gives it power.

The solution is to focus on reach.

According to Weinberg and Lombardo’s article, “reach is, and has always been, the greatest predictor of marketing success.” Effectively, reach allows FIs to personalize output based on shared sentiments across a particular group or sub-set.

For example, let’s imagine a bank is offering a booklet of free movie tickets for opening a new account. Taken to its natural conclusion, traditional personalization would see you reference different theatres and bank locations, different films, even different background music. For. Every. Viewer. Even the ones who never go to the movies.

Personalization based on reach, on the other hand, makes it far easier to appeal more generally to a broad, but mutually aligned target market. As such, the bank might partner with influencers and affiliates within a particular genre of film to spread the word, fairly confident that their message – as a whole – strikes a chord with viewers.

Reach has historically been the greatest predictor of marketing success. Brands that focus on reach can fare better than those attempting to over-personalize marketing content for limited audiences.

Ultimately, instead of over-curating to be as personalized as possible at every turn, successful FIs must focus on reaching the intended target audience – a universal group of people that have some level of sentiment with the content.

When you’re on the right channels, harnessing the power of the right influencers and affiliates to reach the right audience, it’s far more cost-effective versus trying to appeal to all of the people all of the time.

Look at Personalization Objectively, not Aspirationally 

Personalization as we recognize it isn’t just changing. It’s being radically redefined, helped in no small part by Google killing off the once-ubiquitous third-party cookie. That evolution is forcing smart FIs to get ahead of the game – whether they’re challenging the industry status quo or looking to retain their position at the top of the market.

Personalized experiences, whether online or in branch, are a common strategy among any FIs that are looking to gain a competitive advantage. However, it’s important to look at personalization from a realistic perspective and evaluate what actually works for the FI – whatever the size.

See, the shift isn’t just benefitting mainstream mega-banks. Community banks, regional banks, and emerging fintech may find focusing on reach more beneficial to get the brand name out there and target new markets on limited resources. And influencers, today, are the modern masters of reach – authentically building communities of mutual interest.

Influencer partners offer a cost-effective way to boost reach. With our unique influencer affiliate platform, Fintel Performance helps you place your brand in front of right customers right now.