Assuming you’re already aware of the importance of delivering relevant experiences, I won’t waste your time with another article on why digital personalisation is critical for business success. Instead, I want to address the challenge that personalisation managers face every day: ensuring the success of personalisation across various digital properties belonging to their brands or clients.
The 6Ws framework described below draws inspiration from Rudyard Kipling’s renowned poem, I Keep Six Honest Serving Men. Kipling’s clever personification of six questions has long been a valuable problem-solving technique. By adopting a curious mindset, I have employed the same approach to create the 6Ws framework for unlocking personalisation – a data-driven method that aims to deliver improved customer experiences.
These questions include:
- Why- Is the objective of the campaign clear and aligned with wider business objectives?
- Who- Have the correct target audiences been defined, and is the size of the audience sufficient to benefit the business?
- Where- Which digital channels/pages/screens will the personalised message be shown on?
- When- Will the decision to show a personalised experience be made in real-time or in a predefined way?
- What- Has the message that needs to be conveyed been finalised for every scenario and audience type?
- How- What is the delivery mechanism for personalisation, such as a targeted hero banner, a light-box, or a push notification?
By making these questions a mandatory part of the personalisation execution lifecycle, we can eliminate ambiguous and unclear campaigns that are more likely to fail, even if they sound interesting. You must choose between data-driven and gut-driven personalisation, and there is no prize for guessing which side you want to be on.
Through this series of seven articles, I aim to share my experiences on how to use data to drive digital personalisation, which has a better chance of success. I hope you find it helpful.