In this solo episode of his six-part series on the Ideal Customer Experience Journey, Shaun Whynacht explains why personalization is crucial for building stronger relationships and closing more deals. He illustrates how to gather aspirational data on intake forms—using a vacation‑preference question as a case study—to trigger highly relevant direct‑mail postcards. He then walks through practical CRM merge‑field tactics: inserting a prospect’s name throughout email copy, customizing subject lines with location or day‑of‑week, and other dynamic content ideas. Shaun advises entrepreneurs to design intake forms that capture high‑impact data points without overwhelming prospects, emphasizing that even a few well‑chosen fields enable powerful personalization later. The episode closes with a brief promotion of his 12‑month Customer Journey Amplification System and a sponsor plug for eWebinar.
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Let me ask you a question. Do you like it when a business remembers you? They call you by name, they know something personal about you. Of course you do. It's called personalization, and that's what today's episode is all about. Hey, welcome back as we track our way through the last 2 episodes of our 6-part series on building the The Ideal Customer Experience Journey. Today we're going to be talking about personalization. I heard at the top of the show that I mentioned, do you like it when a business or somebody that you do work with remembers your name or something about you that makes that transaction, that experience feel more personal? I don't know anyone that wouldn't like that. So the big answer to that question is going to be obviously yes. So We call that personalization in the automation world, and this is where using personalization to make that experience more relevant, more relatable, will help you actually close more deals, build a better relationship. So how do we do that? Well, if we think about how automation systems work, databases, CRMs, They only know as much information as they are given. So how do we do that? Well, we need to be cognizant of, of the information that we are collecting at different points. And this can start early on in a, a contact form field. Now I'm going to give this example here where it was a financial advising company who did an initial contact form and they had a, a question On that form, and this was just somebody inquiring about whatever service or product they had, but on there it said, if finances or financial constraints, I don't know the exact wording, were no issue, which of the following would be your ideal vacation? I think there was 4 options. There was a cruise, a beach vacation, touring Europe, or a Disney vacation. I think those were the 4. Okay, very, very thought-provoking, aspirational type of questions because everybody would love to have that. Now, that question had nothing to do with what they were inquiring about yet. Now, what they ended up doing was in their, their whole sales process and everything is they actually had a direct mail element to that where they would send out a postcard. Now, they were able to obtain a mailing address for them, and maybe that could have been out of the consult that they did. But what was actually sent to them in the mail was a postcard to either promote the firm or a product or service. But on the COVID of this, what it was was a photo, and they had 4 of them printed. Now you can probably guess where I'm going with this, is that there was one that had a, cruise, one that had a beach vacation, one that had a, a Europe touring vacation image, one that had a Disney vacation image. And if you chose one of those in the initial consult, the initial form, that was the postcard you got. Now why? It's because it comes back to how our brains are wired. If that is the thing that you aspire for, you are going to be tuned into that. So Now you're opening up your mailbox and you have a bunch of letters and mail in there and you see a postcard with an image that you aspire for, it's going to stand out. That is just something that they were able to visually do to personalize their journey. Now, a lot of this comes down to any of the questions that you ask in consult. So you have dropdowns, which are a lot easier 'cause you can frame the wording of those, but then you can fill that out throughout the entire, email sequences that are coming in all those different nurtures. Most commonly, the easiest ones to use are names, and most people will just put it in the beginning of the email, right? So, you know, hi Shaun, or hello Shaun, or whatever that is. But if you start to inject the name through the copy, through the body of the email, like asking a question, or, you know, wouldn't you agree with that, Shaun, right? That is like how you would be writing a personal email to the person, calling out the name. If you know where they're from, subject lines. If you're a landscape company, I know we used that example in previous episodes. So if you know that somebody is in Toronto or, that's probably a bad example if we're talking about lawns, but maybe it's, we live in a town called Coldbrook, we'll use that as an example. So if I filled that in and my record had that on there, the subject line could be like, have the greenest lawn in Coldbrook. Now it's going to stand out to me. Personalize that communication. You know, the day of the week. A lot of CRMs like Keep allows you to actually merge in the day in which the email was sent. So you can say, hope you're having a great insert day of the week— Thursday, Tuesday, Monday, Sunday— whatever that is, is going to make it more personal. Now we can have hundreds and thousands of ideas of this, but think about that in your business when you're starting to Architect the initial intake forms, the initial contact forms, the initial lead magnet forms. Are there any specific data points that you can do without having to have 500 questions that you can use down the road to personalize that experience? When you do things that are personalized, it will stand out and people will remember it. So think about that. Think about personalizing your experience. Last series, in the next episode, we're gonna be talking about balancing your automation with human touch. Hey there, fellow entrepreneurs. It's Shaun Whynacht, the host of this podcast. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever wanted to transform casual customers into raving fans? Well, I have a program that will do exactly that. It's called the Customer Journey Amplification System, and it's more than just a program. I personally feel it's a game changer for any small business. Together, we'll dive into every touchpoint of your business and your client's customer journey, creating brand advocates who just can't stop singing your praises the whole way. You know, it doesn't just stop there. With our 12-month ongoing support, I'll be with you every step of the way for an entire year, ensuring that your customer journey is working for your business. So if you want an experience that resonates above your competition, I invite you to visit AmplifyMyJourney.com today and find out exactly what it can do for your business. And let's start crafting that legendary customer journey together today. I want to take a moment and thank the sponsor of our podcast, eWebinar. If you've been doing webinars for any time now, or you've even just considered starting to do a webinar, you should consider eWebinar. This platform allows you to do evergreen webinars with a feature set that is just like hosting a live webinar. Those that are in attendance can chat with you, can engage with your content, all in a recorded format. Check it out. You want to learn more? Go to BlueCowMarketing.ca/eWebinar.
