Do you create personalized offers for the people who visit your website? If not, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to grow your business through personalization marketing. Ecommerce experts agree, personalizing user experiences is the key to building rapport and turning curious visitors into lifelong customers. In fact, Gartner predicts that by the end of 2020, businesses that use personalization could see a profit boost of up to 15 percent!
Personalization is a type of marketing where you examine the behavior of individuals on your website to show content and offers that they will find relevant. Typically, this is done through retargeting cookies. Cookies are used on virtually every website, and they are used to see what people are doing while browsing your site.
We are going to show you four tips you can use to make the most of your marketing strategy using personalization.
Let’s dive in!
Personalize Your Homepage
User experience (UX) is essential for the success of your website and your business as a whole. If your customers have a hard time navigating your online store, there’s a slim chance they will come back again.
If you’re confident in your UX, you can use personalization to fine-tune the experience each individual has when they come to your website. One of the most popular ways to do this is by personalizing your home page based on your visitor’s past experiences.
For instance, the clothing company ASOS greets new users with a welcome home page. You have the option to redeem a first-time customer discount, and they do not pick a default clothing category. However, if I select ‘Men’ and browse for a bit, the next time I visit the site, it will automatically load to the men’s clothing section.
Small personalized features like this can improve your UX and result in customers spending more time browsing your website.
Use Product Recommendations
We are all familiar with product recommendations in one way or another. Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and many other big-name companies use product recommendations to keep their audience engaged and entertained.
Think about it, if a Netflix user watched nothing but horror movies, do you think they would go back if all of their recommendations were romantic comedies? Our guess is probably not. They would seek out a company that shows them the movies that match their interests.
You can apply this same concept to your return customers. Do you have a considerable number of people coming back to your website after their first shopping experience? If not, product recommendations may help you boost your retention rate.
Consider the way Amazon will suggest products to you that are similar to things you’ve purchased in the past. They use AI software to analyze data points to construct product recommendations. So if you bought cat food, the program would determine that you might also need cat litter, since those two things are commonly purchased together.
It’s not possible to roll out a product recommendation system overnight, but it is undoubtedly one of the most effective personalization tools you have at your disposal.
Segment Your Email List
If you’re like most business owners or marketers, you probably have a comprehensive email marketing campaign, right? Segmenting your leads based on their interests is a broader form of personalization that plays more on your customer personas instead of individual users.
Let’s say you sell pet products on your website. You would want to segment your emails for cat and dog owners. Why? Simply put, most people with just dogs don’t want articles or promotions for cat owners, and vice versa.
There are several ways you can segment your email lists. First, we are going to focus on your existing subscribers. Since you’re now implementing this process, it would be helpful to gather information from your current subscribers. We suggest sending out an email and letting users know that you want to send them emails that they will find relevant. Ask them to respond with the topics that interest them from a list that you selected.
You can use this same practice on your contact form that new visitors fill in when they join your list. Put a simple checkbox system and ask them to select the type of offers and content they want to receive in the future. As your email list grows, you’ll start to gain more insights about your target audience through this process.
Segmenting your list allows you to make exclusive emails for each group, which personalizes the experience for everyone. Now your email subscribers are more likely to open your emails because they know that they are interested in what you’re sending.
Create Catagory Specific Promotions
Finally, we are going to talk about creating personalized promotions on your website. Your target audience segments likely all have slightly different interests, and thus, their browsing history on your site varies.
Creating custom promotions for different sections of your eCommerce storefront and blog will help you reach more customers through personalized marketing. Imagine if you were browsing for a specific golf club. As you’re looking through some of your options, a popup appears that mentions the club you’re the most excited about with a 20 percent discount. We don’t know about you, but we would be tempted to take that offer.
As your segmenting your email list, start thinking of various promotions that users on your site would appreciate under each segment. You can create as many or as few offers as you would like. Picking the right promotion could help you increase your sales and conversion rate.
Conclusion
There are more online businesses now than ever before. Due to all of these different companies offering the same or similar products, personalization has become a deciding factor for many small business owners. At this point, 67 percent of marketers plan on using personalization this year, and that number is only expected to rise.
Now that you know several ways to implement personalization marketing, you can start growing your business with this strategy. You’ll find that it’s easier to build rapport, help consumers through your sale’s funnel, and keep your audience engaged in your brand.
personalization – DepositPhotos
