Friday, October 25, 2019

What's the Big Deal About Personalization?

Personalization is defined as the process of tailoring user journeys and experiences according to each customer's needs and preferences. As marketing continues to evolve, personalization has proven to be a key approach in the way we deliver content to our customers. Research by Forrester highlights that personalization is “critical for marketers seeking to enhance customer centricity and engagement.”

If businesses want to stay ahead of customer expectations and understand the data around user behaviors and trends, delivering personalized experiences versus the typical one-size-fits-all marketing approach is the solution that not only increases customer engagement but will lead to an increase in revenue.

Personalization strategies can be used across all industries, whether it be:

  • Displaying that pair of boots a user has added to their cart but not yet committed to buy
  • Serving up travel destinations based on places the user has been browsing previously, or
  • Showing tailored messages as a user moves throughout an auto insurance funnel looking for a quote.

Personalizing a user’s online experience can make all the difference when it comes to engaging with your website versus taking that extra step to convert on your website.

Displaying personalized messages based on trend and behavioral data offers marketers an incredible opportunity to stay ahead of their competition while tackling business objectives like increased engagement, reduced cart abandonment, and new revenue opportunities.

So, What Is the Key to Personalization?

The key to personalization is identifying customer segments and understanding your customers within these segments. It is critical to uncover who your customers are and how they engage with your brand at every touchpoint. Once you have the data to satisfy those details, you’ll be able to develop personalization strategies tailored to each segment and begin serving content that’s relevant to them.

How Can I Really Leverage the Data Uncovered from These Customer Segments?

There are infinite ways you can leverage the data drawn from your customer segments. To use one example, let’s say, based on your data, you discover that one of your customer segments is not performing as well as the other segments on your site.

Based on your analysis, you can conclude the content you are currently serving is working well for most of your customer audiences, but not quite as well for this one. That being said, this is a perfect opportunity to implement a personalization strategy specifically targeting this underperforming segment, in an effort to bring them up to a level of performance that is more in line with the rest of your customer segments.

When attempting to increase performance for this particular group, it’s helpful to set a target goal to reach. For example, let’s set a goal of increasing conversions for this customer segment by 15%. From here you will need to determine the specific tactics you will use to target this segment’s needs through tailored content served only to them.

What Would Some of My Personalization Tactics to Achieve this Look Like?

Personalization tactics for achieving a specific performance goal are always going to vary depending on the customer segment, and what exactly their needs and wants are. A few places good places to start are as follows:

  • Serving content based on device type: Oftentimes users behave and convert differently on desktop vs. mobile devices. Displaying content tailored to the device type they are using could be the key to increasing conversions.
  • Serving content based on whether the users are new or returning: Depending on whether it is a user’s first time visiting your site or they are a previous customer, different experiences addressing these two types of visitors can make a big impact on their user behavior throughout the rest of your site.
  • Serving content based on personal interests or previous site behavior: Utilizing all the customer data being collected, including how they have previously engaged with your site, will allow you to highlight those interests and significantly impact conversion rates.
  • Serving content based on location: Displaying content based on the user’s location can be critical in achieving an increase in conversions.

Just like one size does not usually fit all, we can’t assume that one version of our website is going to appeal to all audiences. That is why having personalization strategies in place and delivering tailored content is critical in impacting customer conversion at every stage of the customer journey.

                                                                                                           

Personalization plays a key role in ABM. Find out where to start with “The Account-Based Marketing Handbook.”

Read the handbook.

 


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