Today we dig deep into personalization. Read here for 7 case studies that reveal what works and how to use it to increase your conversion rates. Ready? Let’s go…
Web personalization. Depending on who you ask, it is either downright creepy (just how much data do you want websites to have on your shopping and browsing habits?) or a very good thing (wait, there’s a page pre-filled with items that interest me? Awesome!).
Image: Pixabay
The Stats on Web Personalization
One thing is certain: Used well, personalization can help your site convert better. Consider the stats. According to research from Invesp:
- 53% of online shoppers believe that personalization is valuable
- 45% of shoppers prefer to shop on sites that provide personalized recommendations
- 57% of shoppers will give personal info if they benefit from it.
- Personalized ads convert 10 times better than ordinary ads
To back this up, an article on Business2Commuity says 56% of consumers are more likely to shop with retailers who offer personalization and a whopping 74% get frustrated by seeing content that doesn’t match their interests.
7 Tips on Personalization [Case Studies]
Image: Pixabay
Clearly, personalization is important, whether that’s using someone’s first name in an email newsletter, tailoring shopping recommendations or offering a coupon that’s valid at the shop you’re in front of right now (mobile and local, anyone?).
There are multiple ways to use personalization to achieve better conversions. Here are some tips for success, backed by case studies.
1. Segment Your Audience
Everyone’s different. Web personalization allows you to recognize those differences to tailor your marketing for better results.
All Web Leads used Neustar technology to make some sense of the data they were collecting on anonymous visitors to their website. With a little technical wizardry, they segmented the audience into four core groups, then created personalized messages for each of them. The result: a 27% uplift in conversions.
2. Provide Personalized Information As Needed
You don’t have to personalize every time. Sometimes personalization is about providing the right information at the right time.
A case study published by Qubit shows how UK retail chains Monsoon and Accessorize were losing out on sales because customers using their online store did not know when items were about to go out of stock. There was no sense of urgency; personalization helped to fix this.
Unlike Amazon which shows stock levels for all products, Monsoon and Accessorize showed stock levels only when people were about to buy. This resulted in a 10% increase in conversions and the practice is now standard on all the group’s websites.
3. Change Your CTA
Another good tip is to vary your calls to action, instead of showing the same one to all Web visitors.
Intuit Quickbase uses Hubspot to ensure that once a lead has seen a particular call to action and acted on it (for example, by downloading a resource), that lead will see a different call to action next time, encouraging them to take the next step in the process.
That has resulted in click through rates of more than 10% for these personalized calls to action and the click to submission rates are almost 100%. [I’ve seen this strategy in action on LinkedIn, too, where once I’d downloaded an ebook, the next CTA directed me to a related resource. I clicked, of course!]
4. Focus on Gender and Interests
Although we’ve been talking about Web personalization, email marketing often sends prospects to your site, so personalization is a factor there, too. It’s hard to pick just one case study from this extensive list by Econsultancy, but the Johnny Cupcakes example stands out.
The retailer segmented its list by gender, interests, media habits and brand preferences, then sent gender and interest-based emails. The result was a 42% rise in click-through rates and a 123% increase in conversion rates.
5. Use the Internet of Things
There’s a lot of information about the Internet of Things: the proliferation of Web-connected devices providing customer data.
Utilities giant British Gas worked with eBay Enterprise Marketing Solutions to use the data from smart gas meters to feed its email marketing strategy. Each recipient got individually personalized emails using data from their own meters. The result was 58% fewer unsubscribes, 53% more opens and a 39% increase in clicks.
6. Define the 3Ws
When it comes to copywriting, it’s often about the 6Ws (who, what, where, when, why, and whatever else), but only three of those applies in this case study from Marketo—who, what and where.
Software vendor Panaya used personalization to vary the Web content people saw depending on whether they were already using the Oracle product or not. The marketing shown to existing users resulted in a 113% increase in consumption of the content.
7. Personalize the Visuals
One innovative approach came from Zumba Fitness. The company wanted to attract instructors to its annual convention, so it personalized a video to grab their attention. The video included a personalized mockup of the recipients’ convention badge with their name already on it.
Not only did instructors share their badges widely, but the open rate rose from 31% in the control message to 40% in the personalized message, and the click through rate increased from 5.4% in the control message to 21% in the personalized message.
Bottom Line
The seven case studies are just a few examples of how companies are using personalization effectively to micro-target customers and, in some cases, give them a unique experience. But that’s just the beginning.
An eConsultancy study suggests that more advanced segmentation linked with content management is likely to become the norm across all customer-facing media. An article from Kula Partners agrees, suggesting that content can be targeted to visitors not just based on interests, but on title, industry, customer life cycle and more.
Other retailers feel that personalization soon won’t be enough, as consumers come to expect “contextualization”—a customer experience that is completely adapted to the person and the context. Lisa Leslie Henderson gives a few examples of how the combination of profile data, situational data and historical data can give new insight into individual customers and help with cross-channel, integrated and effective marketing.
Are you using personalization in your Web and email marketing? We’d love to hear your success stories.
Read other Crazy Egg posts by Sharon Hurley Hall.
