Top tips in the quest for the personalisation paradigm

The case for personalisation has been well made; a more tailored web experience increases the likelihood of sales and recommendations. However, as our recent Quarterly Intelligence Report revealed, a significant number of digital marketers aren’t making the most of their personalisation strategies.

According to the findings, less than 30% of respondents run tests to see how different types of personalised content perform, while only 31% of agencies say that they use data effectively to maximise conversions.

This one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work and businesses need to be smarter in how they approach personalisation if they want to realise the very real benefits on offer.

To help marketers avoid some of the most common pitfalls in personalisation, I’ve pulled together some top tips:

 

Quality rules over quantity

Lead generation takes on a more important role in both the marketing and sales efforts of B2B orientated companies. Campaigns today should be more focused on what leads they send to the pipeline, rather than how many they can channel through – remember that it’s quality not quantity that counts. 

 

Let the data do the work

Creating relevant marketing campaigns for numerous customer segments is hard; doing so for individuals is practically impossible. Once you’ve invested in great creative content to engage the visitor, and great data to understand their motivations and interests, let the data do the hard work and decide what the most relevant content and offers are to serve the customer at the detailed level.

 

Understand your inventory

Use your analytics data to do some detective work. Are there specific search terms that are rendering null results? Make adjustments to display related products or consider bulking up your product inventory so that no search comes up empty.

 

Analyse the customer’s digital journey

Identify points along your customer’s virtual path where conversion is highest. Is it the homepage, search results page, landing page banner, add to cart button, cross-sell promotions? Now ask yourself where a more personalised experience has the most potential to grow conversion or engagement.

 

Wave goodbye to ‘spray and pray’ emails

Mass broadcast email marketing is on its way out. As you capture insights into your customers’ interests and preferences, personalise campaigns and speak to them as individuals. Consider recommending products and content to increase average order value and integrate dynamic content and product views to increase engagement and drive subscribers further down the path to conversion.

 

Make searching easy

A search box should be one of the most prominent elements on your homepage, second only to your company logo. Visitors who search on your site are three times more likely to convert than those who only use navigation to browse.

 

Make friends with templates

Use marketing content that uses the same template and dynamically assembles the perfect creative asset combination and permutation – images, copy, video, and even lay­out – in real-time based on observed on– and off-site behaviours. This will ensure you get the right content, to the right person, at the right time.

 

Don’t get mired in the maths

While per­son­al­isa­tion relies heav­ily on data and analytics don’t relin­quish­ all con­trol of customer experience management to the machines. There is still a role for set-and-forget behav­ioral tar­get­ing providing that you test against it regularly. A blend of data-led and gut-feel marketing often works the best.

 

If you’re interested to hear more about personalisation do check out the Adobe Digital Marketing blog or follow me @jamiebrighton.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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