Personalization helps win customers, but it requires understanding and a generous dose of common sense.

Being called by your first name. Winning a discount coupon or gift for becoming a loyal customer of a brand. Realizing that a certain website knows your interests well enough to suggest items you were looking for. When used well, the data provided at the time of purchase is useful for companies to personalize service and win customers. However, these same resources, if used excessively, can also be a source of great annoyance.

For Marcos Bedendo, professor at the Digital Channels Hub at the Higher School of Advertising and Marketing (ESPM) , such personalization is expected and even desired by many consumers. "Nowadays, it is possible to provide humanized service on a large scale; what happens is that, as you provide this service in some services, this raises the bar in the market and everyone starts to want this same treatment, even in places where it is not yet available," he observes.

As an example, he recalls a consultancy job he did for a construction company. At one point, the way in which the progress of the work was being reported, with a report written by an engineer, was criticized.

"There were complaints and we did some research to understand the reason for the problem. [Some customers] thought it was absurd that they could track where their food was through iFood, because you have a GPS on the delivery guy, in a better way than they could track a construction project that cost around R$50 million," he says.

'Qualified access'

For a personalized approach that is relevant to consumers, Bedendo highlights the importance of the quantity and quality of the information collected. However, according to him, even when you have a rich database about your customers, there are still many irrelevant emails sent. "It's a process that companies still do because they have a cost of accessing you that is close to zero. How much does it cost to send an extra email? But then they lose great opportunities to have qualified access to people. To reach 150 thousand people, I send to 15 million and bother 14 million and 850 thousand."

The fact that she only receives content that has been requested is what makes communications, research and documentation coordinator Carolina Guastaferro, 41, happy with the service she receives from a healthcare network that brings together several laboratories. She is pregnant and constantly uses the company's app to schedule her routine exams.

"They let you know, through the channel you choose, that the tests have been approved by the insurance company, that the results are out, and what the preparation instructions are," he says. "They are much less invasive than other labs, which send emails all the time asking you to do random tests, which I have never done in my life."

New profile

In marketing, the concept of target audience has always been widely used, which consists of categorizing a person by gender, age, and income bracket. Today, the most important thing is to identify the persona, which includes understanding their habits and lifestyle. "Personalization is understanding the customer, their consumer behavior, the reason they choose you over me. So, a personalized offer involves this understanding, which needs to be studied very, very deeply," says Guilherme Lui, business consultant at the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service in São Paulo (Sebrae-SP).

For him, the best tool for communicating with customers today is WhatsApp , something that is also accessible to small and medium-sized companies. "You only need a phone number, a device and a person to respond all day long," Lui summarizes. "But you also need to change the mindset of what you ask the customer. The customer's registration data should be the data you need to make new sales and new services, not their ID and CPF," he notes.

Fernando Nogarini, creator of a marketing platform specializing in food, Repediu, believes that understanding the consumer's profile well is also essential to avoid "blunders". "There's nothing worse than offering a beef burger to a vegan," he explains.

The main functionality of his startup is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management). "We integrate with the restaurant or delivery system, pull information and seek to understand customer behavior, such as preferred products, cycles and purchase frequency. This allows [the establishment] to carry out more creative marketing campaigns," he explains.

'Affective rewards'

For Henrique Machado, CEO of Di Matteo Açaí, which uses Repediu's CRM platform in all its franchises, "affective rewards" are also a good way to make consumers feel unique. As an example, he recalls a campaign in which he chose just one customer, the most loyal to his store in Jales, in the interior of São Paulo - where the chain was born - to have access to an exclusive recipe for a fruit cream, which was not on the menu.

"Many people think that they only have to give financial rewards, discounts, coupons, but sometimes, giving exclusivity to certain customers who are already fans of the brand is much more assertive", says Machado.