A Deeper Dive into Personalization

Redefining Personalization to Modern Terms

Within a competitive marketplace, customers expect unique experiences that are driven by personalization. It’s more than having personal names in an email subject line, it’s about delivering customized experiences to every visitor throughout the buyer journey.

The importance of personalization

As technology evolves and becomes more innovative, consumer expectations are shifting radically. Especially with the rise of competition, consumers seek experiences that are driven by their personal intent rather than what a brand has available to offer. At that moment, personalization matters. Brands should shift their focus to listening and understanding their customer needs, as well as recognizing them as individuals rather than transactions. Through personalization, brands can contextualize messages, offers, and experiences to match customer intent.

Shopping experiences shifted from a simple “see ad, buy product” process, to digital conversations carrying substantial amount of data. Data acts as a fuel for personalization, where brands can collect, analyze, and utilize to better understand their audience. The conventional way of upselling is through sales representatives, but what happens when that conversation is shifted digitally? Personalization delivers relevant recommendations and offers to a product or service that was recently purchased. Customers are more likely to shop with brands that recognize, remember, and engage with them.

How does personalization really work?

The forefront of any business is its website. Often, data that websites track is unaccounted for or disregarded. We won’t dive into all the reasons behind that, but the most obvious are either not having the right team to extract or analyze data, or not having a solid and powerful digital experience platform.

Personalization requires marketers to understand their audience in order to meet their needs, hence utilizing the power of data and analytics. By collecting data about who a customer is, where, when, and how they’ve engaged on a particular page or product, and what their journey looks like allows brands to understand intentions and predict future outcomes.

Because today’s shopping experience doesn’t begin and end on one channel, data collected should reflect a 360-degree view of a customer. This brings us back to having a solid and powerful digital experience platform that has the necessary tools to process data in real-time and project necessary outcomes.

Simple approaches for your personalization strategy.

Make visitors feel welcomed, especially first-timers, by presenting useful directions that can help you gain insights.
Nurture returning visitors by recognizing and valuing them.
Leverage inbound traffic with personalized experiences by showing relevant content instantly.
Make use of geolocation services to increase your chances for conversion.
Tailor content and build relationships with new leads from subscription sources.
Don’t underestimate channels – optimize your user experience to various formats (mobile, desktop, tablets, etc.)
Track real-time data to deliver better experiences
Allow customers to engage with social media accounts.
Map the customer journey

Personalization is all about building a connection through relevant communications and fostering loyalty. Leverage consumer data to deliver unique and personalized experiences throughout the buyer journey. If you have any questions about digital commerce, please don’t hesitate to reach out for a no-cost, no-commitment consultation and a member of our team will contact you shortly.