People are busy. We are all immersed in a noisy world full of marketing messages that are constantly competing for our attention. We ignore most of it. If a well-branded message matches our interests or immediate needs, however, we are much more likely to notice, engage, and even take action.
Today’s most personalized digital experiences are helping brands to break through the noise and successfully grow their reach, engagement, customer satisfaction, and conversions. Smart brands are consistently tailoring their digital experiences to targeted personas as well as individuals, personalizing relevant, timely, and contextual assets specific to targeted delivery channels. Personalizing DX gives people what they want, when they want it, and where they want it.
Personalization Strategies
At this point, nearly every organization has gone through the exercise of creating their customer personas and common journeys to create a “personalization plan” tailoring their digital web properties to these audiences. Many organizations have come up far short of expectations by their own measurement of success. Why?
To get to that answer, let’s take a look at one of the most prominent examples of consistently impactful digital experience personalization. What makes personalization so successful for Amazon? Amazon knows exactly who you are, what you’ve bought, and what you’ve recently viewed. That data is the fuel for personalization success. Without it, the personalization engine will not run. The engine is the strategy, content, and technology that gets continually maximized for excellent personalization of digital experiences.
We have identified common characteristics, or fundamentals, within the most intelligent personalization of DX projects in which we have partnered. They center around data management, technology choices, content management, and detailed measurement.
Data Management for Effective Personalization
Data management plays a critical role in impactful website personalization. The first step in successfully tailoring online experiences is to ensure relationship data is being maximized to enhance your business’s individual and persona profiles.
Effective data management begins with connecting and integrating data sources throughout your organization. Coordinated collection, storage, and analysis of more detailed user data, including browsing behaviors, purchase histories, and preferences build comprehensive user profiles. With integrated and comprehensive profiles, your brand can do more to capably personalize content, tailoring recommended resources, products, and services that align with individuals at the most appropriate right time and place.
Improved data management facilitates more sophisticated segmentation of users based on various criteria, such as demographics, behavior, and psychographics. This allows for more targeted personalization strategies, ensuring that content, messaging, and offers are relevant to specific user groups.
Advanced data management enables the use of predictive analytics tools that can forecast future user behaviors and preferences based on historical data. This predictive capability allows websites to proactively personalize experiences, anticipating user needs before they are explicitly expressed.
With the increasing importance of data privacy and the introduction of regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), improved data management also helps to ensure that personalization efforts are compliant with legal requirements. This includes secure data storage, proper consent management, and the ability to efficiently respond to user data requests.
Data management is foundational for successfully delivering personalized digital experiences that are relevant, timely, and engaging, ultimately leading to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and conversion rates.
Technology Choices for Effective Personalization
Today’s leading personalization solutions provide brands with a wide array of personalization, targeting, AB Testing and analytical capabilities. When selecting a personalization toolset, thoughtful consideration should be given the level of personalization your business wants to pursue. Each personalization tool(s) has unique capabilities to tailor digital content, recommendations, and experiences to individual users based on their preferences, behavior, and other profile data.
The technology choices that organizations make in building out their front-end architectures is incredibly important. Utilizing tools such as Sitecore Personalize, for example, gives organizations the ability to deploy personalization and AB testing quickly and effectively with a simple Javascript snippet embed. It doesn’t matter what CMS, mobile technology, or ecommerce system is being used, Sitecore Personalize is compatible across all platforms.
Content Management for Effective Personalization
Whatever personalization technology is selected, your brand’s marketing and communication teams, as well as all other content contributors, should be trained to maximize available content personalization tools within the platform or should easily access a CMS, DAM or other content repository. One of the biggest leaps for most businesses is to strategically generate content that advances specific relationships at designated engagement points on a customer’s journey.
Content management is a fundamental contributor delivering a personalized customer experience. When done well, it builds brand trust, affinity, and loyalty along clearly defined customer journeys. These days, content teams are identifying creative ways to use generative AI to increase efficiencies. Be careful, however, to cultivate content that is truly unique to your brand and faithfully represents your business voice, expertise, and perspective.
Advanced personalization toolsets also add AI-driven predictive analytics. Utilizing machine learning to associate common actions, needs, and preferences, preemptive customizations to DX can be made.
The more sophisticated personalization tools, those with composability at their core, also provide robust omnichannel customization and personalization solutions. They can capably adapt content, layout, navigation, and more to suit individual users who engage with brands via wearable technology, kiosks, mobile apps, social media, or other digital endpoints. The majority of composable toolsets utilize Javascript for integration, adding agility and efficiency when connecting personalization assets within a composable tech stack.
Detailed Measurement for Effective Personalization
To achieve personalization success, targeted content needs to be consistently developed, tested, measured, updated, and refined.
ROI is the ultimate benchmark for effective personalization. Brands need to measure outcomes. Is trusted data captured, stored, analyzed, and represented to key stakeholders? Is explicit and implicit customer data shaping informed decisions in regard to the personalization of DX?
“Why Don't You Just Tell Me the Name of the Movie You've Selected?”
Fans of the sitcom, Seinfeld, will surely remember this line. The “Movie Phone” episode that features Kramer attempting to satisfy the information needs of movie-goers is, unfortunately, a good example of many organizations’ unsuccessful personalization efforts. Many businesses identify a website user that has made a few clicks and try to immediately tailor their online experience. That site visitor, however, hasn’t yet provided nearly enough data to effectively personalize their digital experience. Kramer was wise to ask, “Why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you've selected?”
Bingo! Do not be afraid to ask new relationships who they are and what they are looking for. Most are willing to tell you, and that’s the most valuable data for your business. The key is getting users to opt into sharing more about them that can benefit their experience with your brand.
Americaneagle.com can be Your Website Agency Partner
Americaneagle.com is a Sitecore Platinum Partner. We have a high-performance team of certified Sitecore developers and architects who can help design, build, and maintain your future-focused digital presence with Sitecore. Whether you need a new Sitecore website, a migration from another platform, a Sitecore upgrade, or a Sitecore integration, we have the expertise and the resources to deliver.
If you are interested in our Sitecore development services, please contact us today at [email protected] or with this contact form. We welcome the opportunity to learn more about your business and discuss personalized digital solutions to grow your brand. It would be our privilege to partner in the acceleration of your business with Sitecore.
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