Personalization is the path to customer loyalty for media, entertainment, and telecom

Consumers across the board are becoming more and more accustomed to hyper-personalized experiences. This means it’s more important than ever for media, entertainment, and telecom firms to dazzle their audiences with personalization if they want to reap the rewards — higher conversion rates, deeper engagement, and greater customer lifetime value.

To get an idea of what this looks like for the industry, we sat down with Jose Cebrian, vertical lead for media, entertainment, and telecom at Merkle. He brought a wealth of knowledge and industry experience to the conversation. He also offered compelling insights and responses to Personalization At Scale: Media, Entertainment, and Telecom Industry Spotlight, a Forrester Consulting paper commissioned by Adobe. Read on to learn what Cebrian had to say about success in the industry — now and into the future.

Let’s start by having you introduce yourself.

I’ve been at Merkle for about eight and a half years, and I’m responsible for making sure that we’re delivering value for our clients and that we’re truly helping them.

Can you talk a little bit about the state of the industry when it comes to personalization at scale? Was there anything from the Industry Spotlight report that surprised you or stood out?

Something that stood out to me from the report is how the operating model can often get in the way of success. You can have a lot of technology, a lot of data — but new ideas require a new approach to the work.

Another thing that stood out was how having a robust digital transformation strategy can positively impact employees as well. When companies streamline processes and employees can focus on more creative tasks, it can significantly increase engagement internally. And beyond overall business revenue — people become happier with their jobs and their roles as it becomes clearer how they can directly impact the customers they serve.

You mention that having the right tech but wrong approach can be a challenge. What other challenges might industry leaders be facing?

Organizations often struggle when they lack centralized buy-in or centralized audience management. When stakeholders aren’t aligned on the tech’s goals and use, or there is a lack of coordination and communication with the intended audiences, the adoption will fall flat. This creates an incongruent customer experience where it’s hard to manage touchpoints.

I’ve found that when teams have budgets for specific channels like email or social, they rarely work beyond that silo. There’s often not enough cohesion and focus on the enterprise benefit as a whole, and instead it becomes a struggle between a specific channel benefit versus a holistic enterprise benefit. One of the things we see specifically in media, entertainment, and telecom is the idea of decision engines helping make the best decision for the enterprise at the customer interaction level versus at the channel level. That way, a strategy can be implemented from a certain channel but then leveled up all the way across the enterprise to reduce redundancies or worse, conflicting offers or messaging.

You started touching on the action steps that companies could take, which leads to our next question. How have you used data to provide a more personalized customer experience?

One example is tying call center data with sentiment analysis right into your data pool. A customer data platform (CDP) can be used as a tool for suppression when dealing with an angry customer by ensuring that you don’t send more communications to someone who’s already upset. Another example is in email. It’s important to know what customers prefer, so you can then recommend similar items or items that others like them tend to view. It makes the email that much more valuable and improves the customer experience in simple ways.

Imagine you’re an associate at a retail store. A person walks up to you, and you can read them — maybe they’re happy, maybe they’re angry, or maybe they’re carrying a box or a bag. You use all the information you have to tailor how you interact with them. You can adjust your disposition based on what you see at that moment. Now, apply this to what we do digitally. It’s about putting all the pieces together to make a decision around how we’re going to interact with a person in real time. That’s what personalization is.

On the topic of recommendations, have you ever run into a situation where personalization and recommendations make customers feel uncomfortable?

The historical example of the “creepy factor” is the abandoned cart that follows you around the web. But that’s an execution problem in the sense that someone’s not being creative about their approach. I think many times you don’t want to be as direct as saying, “This was in your cart, buy it now.” That said, it’s important to be aware of how you’re using data to best reach people as well as what message you want to communicate with them.

The study showed that, statistically, recommendations themselves drive better engagement — meaning when done correctly, they’re something customers actually want. They just want brands to be mindful of how their information is being used to enhance the customer experience, not detract from it.

Netflix is a great example that I have read about. They use customer data to not only know what movies customers like but also which actors they enjoy so that they can feature them in recommendations too. Things like this draw audiences in and truly work.

Like you said, it’s all about the strategic approach and asking the right questions. With that in mind, do you have any other strategic advice for media or telecom companies as they get started with personalization?

“Personalization” is a word that means a lot of different things to different people, so it’s important to be clear in how you define it and why it’s valuable. For example, adding a name into an email subject line is technically personalization — but is it impactful? I think you have to go for the heavier hitting pieces.

Beyond that, my advice is to know what you want to do and don’t stop. Define your goals when it comes to personalization, see if it’s feasible, and then prove it. Prove that it provides business value or, at the very least, customer experience value. Not enough companies are spending the time to isolate where personalization actually improves results — it could be a revenue result, an engagement result, anything. When you have a long-standing program and you want to use data or an attribute, you must isolate your results before and after to see if it matters.

Once you do this, just keep going. You can personalize a website visit based on X or Y. Great — but can you do it better? Can you provide more versions? Can you bring in another channel? Can you connect that recommendation across channels? It’s pushing beyond a single channel that drives the greatest value.

That said, another core challenge is content. A brand might have the data and tech, but creating and delivering relevant content is a collective effort that often proves most difficult due to cost, time, and antiquated ways of producing and approving content. And making that content relevant goes beyond what you might want them to see — you need to know what they’re trying to achieve when they come to your brand. What are they trying to do? What’s their mind state? It’s more than just the offer you put in front of them. It’s about how you’re going to support them.

Now that we’ve touched on where the industry is and the steps to get started, we’d love to get your thoughts on what some of the main benefits of investing in these processes could be.

At the end of the day, a positive customer experience increases revenue and profit.

Consider peak-end theory, where people remember their last interaction with you as well as the most intense, whether positive or negative. How your business shows up directly impacts how people perceive your brand. Add to that the collective emphasis over the last several years on improving customer experience across all industries. If you’re lagging, your business will decline.

But ultimately, the benefits of personalization should always be a better customer experience. If you’re seeing that the experience is improving — higher conversion and retention rates — those are the positive outcomes you want.

To wrap up, what does the future hold for personalization in media, entertainment, and telecom?

I predict that the industry will continue to improve personalization in the obvious places like web and email, but brands will also start to dive more deeply into the less obvious places like call centers or television. I think we’ll become a lot more creative and much more oriented on the results.

Organizations will also need to focus their efforts on proving that personalization produces tangible results. So many companies are trying to prove the value of their technical investments, and that value comes from personalization. They have to measure it. Once use cases are proven inside of company walls, investment and velocity accelerate. Incorporating value engineering as part of your programs is key to success — and scalability.

Push the limits of personalization

The big takeaway from our discussion with Cebrian — and for media, entertainment, and telecom brands — is to keep testing the possibilities when it comes to personalization. With so much data and technology available, the sky’s the limit as we look to the future.

At Adobe, we know what it takes to unify your data, content, collaboration, and customer journeys to bring personal, relevant experiences to life. But above all, we’re always helping brands find new ways to connect with their customers — and take their experiences to the next level.

Check out how we help leading firms transform their experiences and succeed with personalization every day by visiting the media & entertainment webpage.

Read the complete Forrester study Personalization At Scale: Media, Entertainment, and Telecom Spotlight to get a more detailed look at industry trends and insights.