Personalised brand messages are no longer just a nice-to-have feature in the fast-paced world of digital marketing; they’re essential to your engagement strategy.

But true personalisation involves more than just plugging a recipient’s name into a one-size-fits-all template. Your ability to nurture a profitable long-term connection with your audience is built on a more sophisticated approach. Here are five key tips from a computational linguist on how to craft personalised brand messages that truly resonate with your audience.

Tip 1: Embrace comprehensive personalisation dimensions.

Personalisation is about more than just adding a few extra data points into your messages. Effective communication demands richly tailored messaging, built on a wide range of data attributes and a clear understanding of each recipient’s specific context.

And that means looking beyond templated language to contextual language.

Templated language is found in traditional merge tags like “Hey {{first_name}}, you left something in your cart”. This approach tends to sound formulaic and impersonal – leading to reduced customer engagement.

Contextualised language goes beyond merge tags to allow for greater creativity and showcase brand personality more effectively – while also using additional layers of information that reflect a deeper understanding of the recipient’s situation. And by factoring in additional dimensions like seasonal language or product features, brands can tailor their language to better match an interaction with a customer’s interests.

For instance, fashion purchases may be driven by feelings and occasions. A personalised message for someone interested in the dress category might read, “Here’s exactly what you need to be party-ready this summer”. Meanwhile, tech purchases are typically influenced by product features when deciding between different models. A tailored message for a potential headphone customer could say, “Take another look at the HH123 noise-cancelling headphones. With 30 hours of battery life, you’ll be singing along all day long!” Leveraging contextual language enables brands to craft more engaging and relevant messages that resonate with their audience.

Tip 2: Master context and language nuance.

Find? Or discover?

Cheap? Or frugal?

House? Or home?

Language is filled with subtle nuances. The meaning of your message can shift dramatically depending on word choice and context. Crafting personalised brand messages requires an understanding of these nuances to avoid misunderstandings or irrelevant content. Because while you might have a “brilliant” high-quality product in the UK, customers in the US might wonder why you want people to think that product is visually striking or super smart.

• Industry context: Common retail phrases like “Snap up” or “Grab” wouldn’t be appropriate for customers in industries like insurance.
• Product context: A phrase like “Run don’t walk” may play with customers looking for new running shoes, but not make sense with someone shopping for a new bicycle.
• Environmental context: A cosmetics brand or fast food chain can tell customers about a new product line that’s “going viral”, but a healthcare provider must show greater consideration.

Contextualised language goes beyond the superficial to recognise a recipient’s unique qualities and mirror the subtleties of natural conversation. This tailored and thoughtful approach will always resonate better with prospects and customers than a generic blast that could apply to anyone.

Tip 3: Maintain your brand voice.

Tone and language are fundamental to your brand identity, directly influencing the relationships you develop with your customers. And as important as it is to tailor your messages to the needs and interests of each recipient, it’s even more vital to ensure that every message retains and showcases your brand voice. Because it can be far too easy to lose control of that voice – and undermine brand equity – by over-personalising your messaging.

Contextual messaging also gives your brand more opportunity to inject personality into your messaging. You can create variants that are tailored at an individual level – adjusting tones to deliver a more personalised and engaging experience for each recipient. All within the clearly defined parameters of your brand voice.

So a luxury fashion brand can avoid sounding inauthentic by using Gen Z slang like “slay” or “lit” – and strike the right balance between personalised language and a consistent brand tone of voice.

Tip 4: Leverage feedback for continuous improvement.

Personalisation should not be a one-off experiment. Effective personalised messaging relies on continuous refinement and optimisation. The brands that see profitable results from their efforts collect feedback and analyse performance data at every opportunity. This ensures they understand which messaging strategies are driving the most impact with different audience segments. 

For example, insights might reveal that specific phrases or tones are better at reactivating lapsed customers than acquiring new ones. By continuously testing and refining your messaging based on this feedback, you can enhance its relevance and effectiveness over time. 

Our customers have proven the value of this approach again and again:

• Loyalty-focused language resonates more with customers in higher tiers of a leading beauty brand’s loyalty scheme. 
• Female shoppers of menswear engaged more with lines that explicitly mention menswear than male shoppers.
• A top pet services brand found that dog owners respond to “Appreciative” sentiment, cat owners to “Surprising”, and owners of other pets to “Urgent” – While “Helpful” sentiment resonated with everyone.

Tip 5: Scale with machines.

Scaling personalised content for a large audience requires a balance between human creativity and machine efficiency. While humans excel at crafting nuanced, contextually aware messages, machines are invaluable for scaling content production.

Making intelligent use of large language models (LLMs) allows you to generate vast amounts of content quickly. But it’s also well known that these models can sometimes overlook subtle linguistic and contextual details essential for maintaining brand consistency. Google AI’s ‘pizza glue’ misstep illustrates the potential pitfalls of relying solely on machine-generated content. So it’s essential to take a considered approach that makes room for human oversight.

Bonus tip: Explore the power of a human and machine partnership.

Jacquard combines human expertise with machine efficiency to create personalised brand messaging that truly resonates. Our team of language specialists ensure that every piece of content not only reflects your brand’s voice but also leverages the power of LLMs to produce content at scale.

We start with a deep understanding of your brand’s tone of voice and previous content. This allows us to establish unique brand parameters tailored to your needs. We continuously gather feedback to refine and adjust our approach, ensuring your messaging remains fresh and relevant.

The qualitative nature of language can make it challenging to understand why certain words, emojis, and tones resonate better than others. But our team’s linguistic backgrounds enable them to expertly analyse and decipher language trends across audiences – offering actionable insights into what works and why. This deep understanding of language trends allows us to fine-tune content for each brand, ensuring that it remains impactful and authentic.

Integrating human creativity with machine efficiency enables us to deliver personalised content that connects with each individual while preserving your brand’s integrity. It’s a powerful approach to creating meaningful connections with your audience and represents the future of brand messaging at scale.

Crafting personalised messaging that truly resonates involves more than simply inserting names and product categories into pre-written templates. By embracing comprehensive personalisation dimensions, understanding language nuances, maintaining your brand voice, leveraging feedback, and combining human creativity with machine efficiency, you can create personalised brand messages that genuinely connect with your audience. As digital marketing continues to evolve, these strategies will help ensure your messaging remains relevant, impactful, and aligned with your brand’s identity.