How to Leverage the Magic of Content Personalization At Scale
“Dragons, unicorns, rabbits in top hats… there used to be loads of magic in the world. Now we’re on a mission to bring it back – and to make millions of children around the world more curious, clever and kind. How? By combining the power of amazing stories, with the possibilities of technology, to create magical, personalized experiences for kids. As missions go, it’s rather splendid.”
These are the inspiring words of UK-based startup Lost My Name, the company behind a revolutionary children’s book that has risen in popularity for cleverly fusing technology, creativity and content personalization to facilitate a memorable customer experience.
Ordering the book is a fairly simply process. Simply select the recipient’s name and their gender to create a personalized book. The “aha” moment comes as you preview your personalized book. Each character in the book corresponds with the child’s name. The characters are introduced in sequential order with the letters in the child’s name, shaping the story arc and narrative, until the child’s lost name is revealed at the end.
The hyper personalization in the book is made possible because of technology. In an interview with Fast Company’s Co.Create, co-founder Asi Sharabi said, “There are tens of thousands of lines of code behind every book we deliver. Everything we do is on software.”
Compare this with more than 600,000 books sold across 53,849 children’s names and a powerful trend emerges. In an era where more content and information is shared than ever before, consumers gravitate to what’s relevant and personalized to their interests. The right kind of personalized content can also do more than inform or entertain – it can also result in positive customer experiences.
The challenge and opportunity becomes how to do this at scale. In Lost My Name’s case, a clever storyline and the right software are facilitating content personalization at scale. For other companies, translating personalized content into a memorable customer experience happens in different ways.
For example, Nike and its agency AKQA created over 100,000 personalized one-minute animated films by leveraging Nike+ user data to identify and inspire its most passionate community member to outdo themselves in 2015.
KLM dedicated one week to surprising and delighting travelers – including those who weren’t flying KLM in the #HappyToHelp campaign. By analyzing conversations in real-time, the company was able to deliver personalized advice and in-person surprises to show their customers the extradionary lengths they would go to in the name of a positive customer experience.
American Express partnered with Digigraph to send all fans who re-tweeted content during a livestreamed Pharrell Williams concert a personalized digital photograph and signature.
Benefit Cosmetics sends cheeky yet sweet twitpics to consumers who tweet them in need of a #BeautyBoost as a way to make them smile with one-liners like, “You’re hotter than a curling iron.”
These campaigns, combined with the work of Lost My Name, remind us of the power content personalization has to deliver magical experiences. If a children’s book can go from zero to more than 600,000 copies sold in two years and attract funding from Google Ventures, it’s an inspiring reminder of the power we all have to bring our magic into the world – and of course, our content marketing efforts.
This post originally appeared on Convince&Convert.com.