By Amanda Zantal-Wiener

One great example of personalized marketing is the Charles Duhigg New York Times article titled, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets.”

Charles wrote this article as a sequel to a public showdown. In this incident, a furious father stormed a Minnesota Target store to demand why his teenage daughter received coupons for baby products.

Later, the father found out his daughter was pregnant.

It turns out the retailer was able to predict her pregnancy and personalized the promotions she received. How? The retailer collected ‌(completely legally) and analyzed a ton of data. Creepy or great marketing?

We’re still asking ourselves that question. Beyond this edge case, many brands exemplify how businesses should approach personalized marketing.

In this post, you’ll learn how personalized marketing works and see examples of brands that practice it without sounding creepy. Here are 14 brands that nailed personalized marketing in a fun, non-intrusive way.

14 Personalized Marketing Examples

1. Shutterfly

Shutterfly is a website and app for creating canvases, photo books, and calendars. It’s also great for designing personalized gifts with the faces of people or anything you want.

One of Shutterfly’s hallmarks is the creative emails it sends. But more than that is the personalized item offerings on its app.

If you download the Shutterfly smartphone app, you can create an account and permit Shutterfly to access your photos.

With this permission, Shutterfly automatically identifies photos with faces and places them on items you can purchase from the app. An example is these mugs.

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The Takeaway

If you sell personalized products, it’s helpful to show your customers what they could get. Seeing their photos or words related to their life on your product could entice them to buy.

However, when you do this, ensure you get explicit permission to go through someone’s information to pull this data. Without proper permissions, getting the personal data of customers could come off as untrustworthy or downright creepy.

2. Funko

Personalization can be a value proposition and generate buzz around your brand. Looking for an example? Check out Funko, a toy manufacturer best known for its bobblehead-like figures of pop cultural icons.

In 2023, the brand launched a new POP! Yourself line, where customers can make Funko figures of themselves, their families, and their friends. This allows customers to interact with the brand, creating something in their image.

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The Takeaway

Personalization gives your audience a unique way to interact with your brand. Funko figures have a cult following among collectors.

This new offering allows brand enthusiasts to create something totally unique — a figure they can’t get anywhere else.

Folks who know Funko lovers can also create a gift that their loved one doesn’t have in their collection.

3. Penguin Random House

Personalized marketing isn’t just about making custom products. Often, personalized marketing focuses on pairing your current products with folks …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog