Was there a day in your life where you went to a restaurant, read through the menu card and didn’t know what to order? Or a day where you sat in front of the TV and didn’t know what to watch?

On such days, would you have appreciated it if the waiter suggested something, you ordered that and ended up loving it? TV suggested a few programs, you picked one and now that is the best program you have ever watched?

Studies say that customers desire brands that understand their needs precisely and give them what they want. For instance, advertising meat to a vegan is not an effective utilization of resources. Rather, advertising vegan alternatives for dairy and eggs might help both the seller and the potential customer. Hyper personalization is just that. It is a way to make the brand stand out by giving the customer a very targeted and highly personalized service.

Definition of the term hyper personalization

By definition, hyper personalization is to provide products and services to the customers based on their real-time behavioural data. Deep down, it is an amalgamation of artificial intelligence(AI) and automation with this behavioural data to achieve the single purpose of presenting the most relevant content to the customer.

But then, almost all brands send emails and notifications addressing their customers by their names. Is that hyper personalization? As a matter of fact, not really. Hyper personalization is more evolved and advanced and it involves a lot more algorithms that work on myriads of user data.

Personalization vs Hyper personalization

Personalization has been around for quite some time now. It merely takes data like user name, user location and purchases history into consideration. Whereas hyper personalization takes into account additional information such as the browsing history of users, or data of any product that is left in the cart without purchase during online shopping, the pictures/pages/videos liked by the user on social media, time spent researching a particular product and other traceable data. 

It uses such real-time behavioural data to formulate a digital model of the person with help of AI and then show suitable content to the user in mails, advertisements and shopping suggestions.

Some examples

Netflix has different versions of teasers and display-images for the same show. Based on the subscriber’s viewing history, an appropriate teaser is picked and displayed to the viewer by the recommendation engine as push notifications. For example, if the subscriber has watched 2 shows starring a hero x, Netflix will recommend a third show to the subscriber and show the teaser with x’s footage. The subscriber will recognise the hero x in the teaser and there is a higher chance of viewer engagement

Amazon’s homepage is also a good example of captivating the customer’s attention with hyper personalization. Various deals and discounts are offered on products that the algorithm picks based on the customer’s browsing pattern and previous purchase data.

In India, another apparel e-commerce website Myntra, predicts whether a dress will fit the buyer based on previous purchases of the individual.

Advantages of hyper personalization

For the customer, hyper personalization comes with the advantage of reduced effort. One need not spend much time and energy browsing for products of one’s liking from an ocean of options and researching the suitability of the product. 

The customers are not presented with infinite choices that would ultimately overwhelm them. Rather, thoughtfully picked suitable choices are presented before them thereby streamlining and easing the transaction

The organisation using this is likely to see the customer coming back to avail their services. This is because hyper personalization adds a personal touch to the process of picking products and services making the customer feel at home. This ensures higher customer satisfaction which largely translates to increased sales

The early bird catches the worm

Hyper personalization is not adopted by most businesses yet. Regular marketing contents are beginning to bore potential customers. Thus, early adopters avail advantage of captivating a large chunk of their target audience.  

The initial investment for data collection and formulation of a precise AI algorithm will churn out profits in the near future.

Conclusion

Hyper personalization is a sure-shot way for emerging businesses to stand out in the competition.

Many customers do not have a clear idea as to what they want. They would appreciate it if options that match their tastes are laid out before them. With the average attention span of the human brain being reduced to 8 seconds, it is very important to catch their attention within that time frame. Hence, hyper personalization makes it to the list of the most sought after IT trends in 2021.