3 Methods to Overlay Personalization with Empathy in Marketing

When 71% of consumers are demanding red carpet treatment, getting personal with your customers is no longer optional. It’s a necessary part of staying competitive and standing out.  Let’s face it: Consumers are bombarded with corporate messages and ads every day. The ones that catch their attention tend to be tailored toward their unique needs, wants, and pain points. Yet personalization alone may not be good enough to differentiate your brand. That’s where a dose of empathy can come into play.

When you empathize with customers, you develop a deeper, more meaningful relationship with them. Empathy allows you to move raw past data points and start to see your buyers as real people. This doesn’t make your data any less important, of course. It simply allows you to see the “why” behind percentages and numbers.

You might think of empathy as a way to “read between the lines” when it comes to personalizing your consumer communications. When your emotional quotient (EQ) is high, you can better anticipate how to engage with customers. For instance, you might use empathy to know when to send reminders or recommendations at just the right moment. Or you might lean into your team’s EQ to identify which special offers and discounts would be levers to increase a customer’s purchasing habits — and simultaneously improve their lifetime value.

To begin overlaying your personalization efforts with empathy, incorporate the following new techniques into your marketing, sales, and service workflows. They’ll help you foster solid customer connections that will be tough for your competitors to beat.

1. Combine science-backed behavioral knowledge with your data points.
   You may already have a wealth of data on your customers, but do you know what it all means? It can be difficult to decipher without incorporating insights from other disciplines. At Inspira Marketing Group, CEO Jeff Snyder concentrates his organization’s efforts on analyzing reputable behavioral learnings with data to drive scalable, creative solutions that can be personalized at the individual level. Snyder recalls how this method worked for a wine industry client. “We identified a core subset of target consumers who crave new opportunities and believe that life is a collection of well-crafted experiences,” he explains. “Neuroscience also revealed that a multi-sensory tasting experience forges an authentic and lasting emotional connection. We learned our identified audience also appreciates learning directly from experts [and] meeting fellow enthusiasts with a shared passion.”

   Taking all the information, Snyder’s team devised an immersive virtual reality (VR) concept that engaged consumers. After undergoing the VR “journey,” 74% of consumers said they planned to purchase the brand’s wine in the future. Snyder notes that without taking a holistic, empathetic approach and letting behavioral data “bridge the gap,” they might not have been able to tap into buyers’ feelings.

2. Keep ethics and transparency at the forefront.
   Because empathy tiptoes around psychology, you may be tempted to start figuring out how to get consumers to do what you want. However, it’s much wiser to focus on empathy as a means to motivate, not manipulate.

   Remember: Nearly seven out of 10 people say they’re worried about their digital privacy. As a competitive business, you must keep this in mind. For example, you should have clear privacy measures in place. You should also be authentic and transparent about how you’re collecting and using behavioral data. If you collect behavioral information via surveys and other feedback vehicles, be sure to outline your intent.

   Consumers have shown that they’re willing to share their thoughts with brands, but only under the right circumstances. Being upfront about your data collection strategies will help you get better response rates and forge more trust with your intended audiences.

3. Stay open to pivoting as you make discoveries.
   The more you get to know your customers, the more likely you’ll have to change legacy processes. This could be something minor, such as altering the keywords you use, or something much more significant, like revamping how your customers receive messages within your sales funnel.

   During the pandemic, eBay took advantage of empathy to realign its offerings with its Up & Running program. The program improved its support and altered its fees to better fit what sellers (the brand’s customers) needed at the time. The move kept eBay top of mind for many consumers and showed it wasn’t putting profits over people.

Though changing processes in the face of new data and consumer expectations can be challenging, you’ll be better off if you remain open to the possibility. Being flexible, empathetic, and open-minded allows you to embrace your findings more fully and win over loyal fans.

Today, nearly any business can offer a degree of personalization. However, most brands aren’t harnessing the power of empathy. By empathizing with buyers, you’ll be able to stay on the leading curve of operations and keep pace with changing industry trends.

Written by Rhett Power.
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