One day I’m scrolling through LinkedIn and I see this ad.

It’s using hyper-personalization marketing to attempt to appeal to me by using my name and a company I’m associated with, but it’s unsettling to me.

It feels very similar to when I’m walking down the street, someone calls out my name, they come up and start talking to me, and I have no idea who they are.

This experience led me to dig into hyper-personalization marketing to help you understand when it makes sense to use and when it doesn’t.

What is hyper personalization in marketing?

Hyper-personalized marketing uses artificial intelligence (AI), real-time data, and predictive analytics to create personalized content, products, and messaging to appeal to you. The goal is to make you feel like the only girl (or guy) in the world.

According to McKinsey & Co. companies use hyper-personalization because 71% of customers prefer personalized interactions and it increases revenue 10% to 15%.

That’s great, but where should you draw the limit?

How do I know if I am taking my personalization too far?

When deciding how much to personalize your messages consider the:

• Information source: Use personalized information that the person gave you. That’s acceptable. Using AI to pull all public information about a person to target them with a highly personalized ad when you have never interacted with them is kinda stalkerish.
• Communication channel: Emails, messaging apps, and SMS messages are perfect places to use names. Ads and on your website when they aren’t signed in make you look like a creeper.
• Depth of the relationship: You should have lots of data on someone who has been a customer for years. They’ve shared it with you willingly. When you know as much about a prospect as Meta, you’re going way too far.

What is the best hyper personalization strategy?

The best hyper personalization strategy stays within the realm of reasonable behavior given your relationship with the person.

• Gradually build-up personalization.
• Avoid cyberstalking using AI.
• Use hyper-personalization in private communications only. Ads are not the place for it. Retargeting ads of current customers, not leads or prospects, might be ok, but monitor it closely.
• Provide useful recommendations.
• Make it easy to give feedback so you know when you’ve gone too far.

How can i implement hyper-personalization?

To implement hyper-personalized marketing:

1. Define your data collection policies.
2. Use AI to process the data you’ve collected about each person.
3. Define when, where, and how you will use personalization to improve the customer experience.
4. Gather additional information as the relationship builds.
5. Monitor customer sentiment about the hyper-personalization strategies you use.
6. Adjust based on each person’s input.

Conclusion

I get it. We all want to move fast and break things, but sometimes we all need to take a step back and question whether what we’re doing is really ok or would get you slapped with a restraining order. If you’d get a restraining order for doing it in person, don’t do it.