What is Web Personalization?
The Web Personalization is the practice of tailoring messages and content to each website visitor, customer or contact.
Although one of the most frequent uses of this methodology, as we will see, is the personalization of content with the name of the recipient, however, personalization is more than addressing customers by their name, but involves many strategies and applications for the various areas of web marketing, as we will explain in the following paragraphs.
Why create personalized digital experiences?
Because personalization affects consumers' perceptions of your brand and also how they shop:
- 74% of customers get frustrated when website content is not personalized. (Community Business 2)
- Nearly three-quarters (74%) of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content (e.g., offers, ads, promotions) appear that has nothing to do with their interests. (HubSpot)
- 77% of consumers chose, recommended or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience. (Forrester)
- Over 78% of consumers will only use offers if they have been personalised based on their previous brand engagements. (Marketo)
- Personalized promotions on the home page influenced 85% of consumers to shop, while personalized recommendations on the shopping cart influenced 92% of online shoppers. (Community Business 2)
In 2017, Accenture reported that due to poor personalization and lack of trust, 41% of consumers switched companies, which cost U.S. organizations an incredible $756 billion.
You can find more statistics in this article: 26 Essential Personalization Stats for B2C Marketers.
How customization is different from personalization
We often see personalization and customization confused. As much as both focus on providing a personalized user experience, they are not the same thing.
Personalization, as you know by now, is about creating a personalized marketing experience for your site visitors and customers. It starts with gathering broad, qualitative data about your audience.
Customization, on the other hand, is about giving people the freedom to be able to customize a product or service, according to their particular taste. Simply put, it puts them at the center, having complete control over everything they would like.
For example, Canva, a free online chart and graph maker, has many customizable templates. Users can make changes to fonts, color, layout, etc. And even add/delete elements in an existing design or start from scratch.
In theecommerce, the most commonly used personalization technique is product customization, but as we will discuss in the following lines, personalization could also be useful to increase conversions.
Digital areas of application
According to a survey by Evergage, when it comes to using personalization, this is the current breakdown of channels:
Increased conversion rates, higher visitor engagement and a better user experience are seen as the biggest benefits of personalization:
Examples and strategies for Web personalization
#1 Email Marketing
Did you know that according to one statistic, customers are 29% more likely to open personalized emails and these generate 6 times more transactions than generic emails?
Some statistics report a 19% increase in sales generated by personalized web experiences, and personalized email campaigns are 26% more likely to be opened.
Some marketers have even achieved a 760% increase in email revenue from segmented campaigns.
The segmentation in email marketing leads, according to DMA, to an increase in 760% in revenue:
Name attributes or variables, which you can include in the subject line or in the body of the email itself, are a great example of email marketing personalized base, as well as one of the most widely used strategies for increasing open rates.
Here is an example in SendInBlue:
#2 Remarketing
Statistics show that the remarketing or retargeting works well for the travel and hospitality industry. When you keep your brand in front of customers on different marketing platforms, it can lead to future bookings with your company.
#3 Landing Page: Headline and CTA
Research shows that personalized Call To Action (CTA) perform better than 202%. The same is true for Headlines, which can be customized by adapting them to the ad (as you can read in the following lines) with the Dynamic Text Replacement technique, available in some Builders for Landing Page such as Unbounce.
#4 Google ADS
The message that matches your ad to your post-click landing page lets visitors know that the page is relevant to the ad.
One way PPC professionals like Google ADS engage in personalized audience targeting is with geographic personalization in the ad text. They work similarly to ad personalization parameters where ads are automatically updated and you specifically update ads based on a user's physical location or a location of interest.
When Nic D'Amato, Senior Paid Search Strategist at WordStream, tested this feature with his client POP Yachts, they noticed an 30% increase by CTR at a particularly slow time of the season. They also recorded a 13% increase in click conversion rate and a 50% decrease in CPA over a two-week period.
#5 PopUp
Certain PopUp such as OptinMonster allow customization based on specific parameters: let's see which ones.
OptinMonster and the Smart Tag feature
The Smart Tag function of OptinMonster (www.optinmonster.com) is a way to easily customize your website with smart dynamic content for increased engagement and conversions.
Using the drag-and-drop popup generator, you can add all kinds of tags: date or day of the week; city, state, zip code or country. You can also add any information submitted by the visitor, including name, email or phone number.
Let's see some application examples for 3 different areas, Lead Generation, Ecommerce, Content Marketing.
Lead Generation
Here is an example application, where, instead of the geographic attribute, the city is replaced:
Ecommerce
The importance of personalisation in theecommerce cannot be overestimated: according to the report Strategy Global Consumer Pulse Research by Accenture, companies lose billions of dollars each year due to poor personalization.
With OptinMonster's smart tags, you can grab shoppers' attention by addressing them by name, displaying their city, a specific date, and more:
A very effective use of smart tags is to reduce the 'smartness' of the tag.cart abandonment of purchases.
Over 66% of people who place an item in their online shopping cart never complete the purchase: smart tags capture the attention of abandon shoppers by showing exclusive, relevant offers that are personally targeted only to them.
You can also combine dynamic text replacement with the Exit Intent, page-level targeting, and geographic location targeting to convert even more abandoning visitors into customers.
Publications
Publishers need visitors to stay and interact with their content to make a profit, but today their attention spans are shorter than ever.
OptinMonster's smart tags help you keep your audience's attention and improve engagement by showing dynamic smart content to the right person at the right time.
Smart tags allow you to customize offers for your audience based on day, date, physical location, what content they're viewing, and more.
This content customization feature will help reduce the frequency of bounce and to increase engagement metrics creating customized marketing campaigns tailored to each visitor.
Smart tags require a subscription to OptinMonster Pro or higher: https://optinmonster.com/pricing/
In OptinMonster Smart Tag page you can elaborate:
- how to add a smart tag
- the different types of smart tag format
- Examples of smart tags: You can choose from predefined smart tags, for example from:
- name, email, phone of the visitor
- date and time of the visitor
- Geographic tags: city, visitor's zip code
- Customer journey tags: Page URL, time on site
- Campaign name tag: the name of your campaign
- Custom Smart Tags.
