Strategies that marketers implement to make each customer engagement more profitable.
It’s no secret that personalization is key to a successful eCommerce business. Research shows that 63% of consumers will stop buying from a brand with poor personalization tactics. So how can you go about implementing the personalization tactics on your eCommerce site for your customers?
These personalization tactics are founded on data and maintaining an optimal customer experience. The data you collect at different phases of the buyer journey can fuel personalization. Behavioral and demographic data depend on the marketing technologies you are utilizing. But most likely also has to how much you are engaging with your customers for first-party data.
Personalization and Customer Experience (CX)
We are not talking about the different categories on which you can print a name if you have come this far. To be clear, personalization, in this case, is the act of tailoring a service or product to accommodate each individual’s needs. Personalized services and goods are centered on who you, as an individual customer, would want them to be fulfilling your particular desires with their style in mind. We are not talking about the different categories on which you can print a name if you have come this far.
Customer experience marketing is the process of putting our clients at the center stage and driving their user adoption rates for new services or products you provide so we can fulfill customer needs in ways that are most convenient for them. At first, customer experience and personalization seem the same; the nuance comes in fulfilling a need at a particular point versus maximizing usage of a product to influence will fill the need.
Five personalization strategies that lead to data-driven eCommerce customer experiences
1. Personalize the shopping experience based on customer location or demographics.
2. Build customer profiles based on past purchase behavior and browsing history.
3. Use traditional and behavioral retargeting to keep interested in your products.
4. Leverage social media data to influence browsing behaviors and target audiences.
5. Create cross-sell opportunities for more products based on the customer journey.
1. Personalize the shopping experience based on customer location or demographics.
Personalization used to be so much easier when the customer went to a retail shop. You could tell where a person was, ask if the purchase was for someone else, suggest a product that goes with it, Don’t let the location data fool you. There are plenty of people in flat Ohio that buy skiing equipment. You need more demographics to segment customers and behaviors in a campaign that suggests interest.
When evaluating eCommerce transaction data, you can’t always guarantee that the buyer’s address and the shipper’s address will match. Not the assumptions you make because it can introduce bias in the data set later.
Marketers can also get audience profiles from customer data companies such as Experian and Personix if you have more first-party data like address, first name, personal email address. These audience profiles can give you more details into your family buying behaviors like income brackets, the brands they are most likely to trust, where they shop- down into the type of cars they drive.
My numerous experiences getting $1 coupons each time I drive past the McDonalds is a great treat for my kids and does bring me there more often. Go geo-location!
2. Build customer profiles based on past purchase behavior and browsing history.
We’ve mentioned how Spotify lets you save favorite genres and playlists with just two clicks. You can create a new playlist in a few minutes with just a few clicks, then listen to it in your car. Here the personalization tactic makes it easy to save and purchase based on what you were doing.
We’ve noticed questions like, “Would you like us to automatically add this product to your cart for your next visits?”. If you know they are frequent shoppers of the product, why not reduce the friction of repurchasing?
3. Use traditional and behavioral retargeting techniques to keep interested in your products.
Retargeting is a very popular advertising method that has been around for years. With retargeted ads, you can show your advertisement on websites other than the one where it was originally displayed and track how many times someone clicked to get more information about them or their purchase history. Retargetting will be impacted as we go cookie-less, but through partnerships, google, and first-party data analysis, you’re personalized ads can still appear at the appropriate time on the appropriate web page.
One of the most popular ways to market your business is through social media. But what if you could reach potential customers but also them again and again? With retargeting in place on sites like Facebook or Instagram, for example – where users typically spend more time than other platforms- this becomes possible! Retargeting allowed companies with strong branding and targeted advertising based on previous browsing history to get higher conversions rates because people know exactly where they need to go next after seeing an advertisement located somewhere relevant (i.e., right alongside content).
4. Leverage social media data to influence browsing behaviors and target audiences
Over the holidays, I got to hang out with people through the different generations, and you see how they use their smartphones differently. Many are stuck on social media apps such as TikTok and Instagram. Others are on other social platforms digging into crypto and NFTs. My parents are still stuck on their respective news sites, although they use youtube quite a bit now. Regardless of the platform, they are reading to influence their chosen community.
More and more purchases decision are being made through influencers and brand ambassadors. If you establish a brand on mobile that sells products resonating with the consumer’s values like the environment or athletic performance, then your brand fits into communities that people trust. It’s like word of mouth but through a keyboard. A couple of people walked me through how they shop from social media influencers who share a discount code they can use, combined with other promotions.
5. Create cross-sell opportunities for more products based on the customer journey.
According to Shopify, e-commerce cross-selling “is a sales technique used to get a customer to spend more by purchasing a product that’s related to what’s being bought already.”
Cross-selling is a common practice in both online and offline environments. Online, it involves identifying related products to offer customers who have shown interest in your site or app, while physical stores can also benefit from cross-selling opportunities by implementing training on effective approaches for generating more money from satisfied consumers.
With the help of a CDP, you can use personalization strategies to create more personalized shopping experiences that cater to your customers’ needs. Building profiles for each customer by using traditional and behavioral retargeting keeps interest high, so they don’t wander off, which is key to keeping them engaged through social media marketing channels. Personalizing the shopping experience based on customer location or demographics will make it feel like they are in an exclusive boutique where their tastes and preferences matter.
Personalization is big business. And, with the advancements in technology available to marketers today, it’s never been easier or more cost-effective for companies of all sizes to implement personalization techniques into their marketing strategy. But how do you start? The first step is deciding what type of customer experience you want your company to have and finding out where they are along the conversion funnel. Once you know this information, try implementing any of these five strategies above on your storefront based on the stage a visitor falls within your conversion funnel. Need a little more help, reach out to customer experience and data experts here for you.
