You've invested in personalisation for email, so why is your site the same for all users?

Your email marketing is up to par; it’s personalized, automated and monitored. Exactly like it should be. But what about your website, does it adhere to the same standards? Probably not, since 95% of anonymous website visitors, remain just that - anonymous. The main reason behind this is that your Website Visitor Experience isn’t personalized. Which is strange, since ALL B2B conversion action is happening on-site. The same way your email marketing is personalized, so the on-site experience you offer to visitors should be.

Why 95% of Anonymous Visitors Don’t Convert?

It’s a staggering number, one that marketers need to stare at. There are three main reasons for this: Irrelevant content, product or services False promises Sometimes people are just not in the mood…

Which channels are best for delivering more personalized communications?

Relevance - Relevance - Relevance! should be the mantra of digital marketers since we know that serving more contextual messaging to our prospects and customers will give an improved experience and boost response. There is certainly no shortage of marketing services to deliver personalization, but it seems from this recent survey from Venturebeat that ability to customise messages to the individual varies a lot by channel. It's clear that email is 'streets ahead' in its usage for personalisation although, as the report notes this can vary in sophistication from name personalisation to recommendations based on behaviour. It's surprising that web personalisation is relatively rare, although we can expect it's higher in Ecommerce sectors such as financial services, travel and retail. Venturebeat:  Marketing Personalization: Boosting Relevance …

Content Marketing is evolving into an era of hyper-personalisation

One of the more advanced pieces of advice we tend to give to people looking to improve their content marketing is to make better use of personalisation. It's easy to see why. If you can target people will content that is far more likely to appeal to them based on what they're interested it, then they're far more likely to engage with that content, spend longer on the site and once you've hooked them in you can set about trying to convert. It's a simple narrative based on simple logic. But does it hold up to rigorous analysis? When we're A/B testing various different types of messaging on Smart Insights, it's not always the one that you'd logically think should work best that ends up performing optimally. The best way to find out the answer is to test, test and then test again. To…

3 strategies to ensure you are using customer data ethically and effectively

If your career revolves around selling products on the Internet, you’ve probably had people ask, “How do they know I was looking for a new (insert product here)?” “They” includes everyone from social networks like Facebook and Twitter to Google (and just about any other website where ads are shown). By using personal data, advertisers are able to create highly targeted ads, which usually either go unnoticed or are only mildly unsettling. Some promotions, however, can come across as full-blown creepy. People love personalization, so they’re not unnerved by relevant content. The creep factor comes in when they don’t understand how the data is exchanged that powers these sorts of retargeted ad campaigns. People assume that the website showing the repeat ad has access to their search data.…

Demystifying personalization for retail e-commerce - examples of the three ways to do it

Personalization is either 'freaking people out' or enchanting them. It’s scary for people who believe that it may freak out their website’s visitors. But it’s blissful for those who believe that it will provide an incredible experience for them and the facts about consumer preferences support this too. Even if you’re scared of personalization, or you love it, more than 70% of consumers get frustrated when website content has nothing to do with them. Instead of waiting until Amazon tries something new and test it on their website, you can be more aware of your capabilities right now. To understand what personalization is all about, I’m going to share with you what types of personalization are available now on the market and how they…

10 practical recommendations for choosing the right retail personalisation service for your online store

Although ecommerce is now a relatively mature industry, the software solutions that underpin the industry are still very much evolving. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the personalisation field. Recommendation engines were perhaps the first tools to promote personalisation, but it is now a common feature espoused by many ecommerce tools, in systems designed for both marketers and online merchandisers, with each often having a very different take on what it means and the benefits it brings. If you’re in the process of selecting personalisation software where should you begin, what questions should you ask?

#1 KNOW YOUR GOALS

It may seem obvious, but knowing what you hope to achieve by selecting a personalisation solution is critical to selecting the right product. Although a ‘no brainer’, don’t fall into the trap…

How to sell more products using quizzes and the power of personalization

What if you could be more like Amazon and offer just the right products at the right time to personalize your product recommendations in an almost creepy way? If you could do that, you'd experience an immediate 7.8% increase in sales, you'd also have a much better understanding of your customers, and your boss would definitely give you a thumbs-up. This all sounds amazing, except for one problem - you are not Amazon, you don't have thousands of engineers to work on perfecting every single aspect of your personalization program. Most likely you also don't have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to build personalization into your product CMS, and you are a marketer, so doing any coding yourself is incredibly daunting. Trust me, I've been there. Which is why what I'm going to show you today is so…

When used effectively, Personalisation based on Geo-targeting can be a powerful way to increase your conversion rate

People arrive at your website from a variety of different locations. This means they will have different nationalities, languages, currencies, climates and even cultural expectations. Geographic targeting allows a website to render content that is personalized to the location of the visitor. In other words, it determines the exact locality of your visitor, and then dynamically tailors the content on your website to be more meaningful to that shopper. The benefits of this are immense. Below are just a few examples of how geo-targeting can improve the visitor experience for your Ecommerce site.

1. Display Products Relevant to the Local Climate and Culture

Altering the type of products displayed depending on where the customer is from is a technique widely used by many online retailers. For example, take a clothing store that delivers to customers in the USA. Because…

Personalisation is no longer a luxury reserved for the big players in e-commerce

While Amazon continues to lead the way, a personalised shopping experience has now become an expectation for the savvy customer. And, with a plethora of automated personalisation tools available, it has never been easier for retailers to employ big data in their quest to deliver personalised content.

There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that personalisation is now a crucial component of an effective digital marketing strategy. Websites employing personalisation are likely to see higher numbers of conversions, AOVs, and improved customer loyalty. And yet, there is still a large number of retailers who are stuck in the personalisation slow lane, who are yet to fully explore the opportunities offered by targeted segmentation.

In particular, there is one often overlooked area in which personalisation can be incredibly effective - customer retention. …

The growth of omni-channel marketing will only make personalisation more important

It probably won’t come as huge surprise that many organisations whether B2C or B2B still don’t engage in even the most basic levels of personalisation in their engagement marketing activities. But as we move (some faster than others) from a multi-channel to an omni-channel ecommerce experience, personalisation triggered by the behaviour of the customer and not just their name has in many respects become the most important element in the optimisation of the customer journey.

How many emails do your receive claiming to be private and confidential but are addressed ‘Dear Occupier’ or ‘Dear Customer’. It does nothing to trigger the desire to act, other than to hit delete, as I know that the content is likely to be neither private confidential nor indeed…