The short answer is YES!

Personalization is no longer a nice-to-have, but rather a need-to-have. But when a small marketing team is relegated entirely to supporting sales and partnership efforts, they have little time for much else. And even the smallest efforts in personalization can seem large, time-consuming, and unattainable.

But technology is making it easier to do more with less.

Though the marketing automation category is vast, platforms are being built around making your job, as a marketer, less cumbersome. These platforms can automate repetitive tasks, including personalization, creating more opportunity for you to go further with your efforts.

Once upon a time, personalization was limited. Maintenance and requests were manual endeavors, and the bounds of personalization were finite. Personalizing a piece of sales collateral for an agent wasn’t difficult to accommodate, though it was tedious and could result in a stockpile of collateral iterations on a drive somewhere. But it couldn’t go much further beyond the bounds of contact name, email address, phone number, and the like.

It was a manual process, limited, and resulted in an overabundance of collateral iterations. These are just a few of the reasons a small marketing team might shy away from taking personalization outside of email.

Yet, through technology you are now no longer limited. You can automate more than email personalization. And personalizing your individual collateral pieces no longer needs to be a manual process.

But how does this automated personalization work?

When you’re trying to automate your personalization efforts, it’s usually done through some type of technology and through the use of “edit tags.” These tags are pieces of code that instruct the technology to pull specific information from its database.

Here is an example of what this might look like:

Hi, [first_name],
Let me tell you how you can save on XYZ.

The [first_name] in the scenario above is an example of an “edit tag.” The actual naming conventions of the tags may differ from platform to platform. But the technical aspects of how they function remain the same.

Rather than using concrete personalization (e.g., typing in a recipient’s name), you use the tag instead. The tag will then pull the data from the database to fill in the information requested.

And you’re not just limited to email.

Also, since you’re pulling personalization into a platform, you no longer need to keep multiple templates on hand to facilitate individual personalization. This can all be done within your platform, using a single template. And it can be done at the hands of the individual needing the resourcing, taking the fulfillment load off your marketing team entirely.

What customization options do you have?

You know it all too well.

You have a handful of agents or partners who all want a specific flyer or brochure customized with their contact and branding information. Traditionally, this task is completed manually by marketing support.

You’ll open the template, make the edits, and save the template as a new PDF. This results in multiple copies of the same marketing piece, all branded to different individuals or partners. This manual process makes it nearly impossible to scale your customization efforts on general collateral pieces such as PDFs, landing pages, slide decks, etc.

But technology is making it possible to personalize at scale.

Through our Distribion platform, for example, users can access marketing collateral, predesigned for wide-scale personalization. Little to no editing is required. When the user opens the piece of collateral in the asset manager, the document will already show their custom contact information – pulling data from their profile for instant personalization.

The user will then have additional options, including sending the PDF flyer to a preferred print vendor or downloading an electronic copy directly to their PC.

It makes editing and storing multiple copies of the same document obsolete.

Though it’s nice to think about being able to lessen your support expectations and having the capability to automate all types of personalization in your communications, here’s another thing to remember…

Not all platforms are created equal

If you decide you want to invest in a marketing automation platform, start with research. Though the industry is vast and filled with all types of technology, it doesn’t mean all of the technology does all of the same things.

Some technologies (like Distribion) are geared toward more niche markets and may or may not be the best fit for what you’re looking for. Likewise, not all platforms will be able to help you automate personalization in all of your communications. Or, if they can, their functionality might be much more complex than what you’re looking for.

So let’s talk about Distribion

Where do we fit in this discussion of personalization at scale? And are we the right fit for you?

Distribion’s strength lies in personalization, and we are our most successful when we’re supporting corporate marketing structures with large teams and partnerships who are focused on executing hyperlocal marketing to the end user. Our solution is explicitly aimed at bridging the gap between corporate, remote, and local stakeholders.

If you’re a corporate marketing team that wants to take back time, then Distribion can help. You retain control over the brand, vision, and compliance while your teams are empowered to craft and send their own company-compliant communications. And each piece of communication will be personalized to the user without any heavy lifting from you.