Personalization is a great way to boost sales numbers and overall customer satisfaction with your website. Using data-driven personalization also gives you the opportunity to better understand your customers and to improve your offerings to them. It’s also much easier to implement than you think, and while being a developer is never a bad thing, you don’t have to be one to use a solution like Optimizely to improve your website experience for your visitors.
Just how effective is personalization? Some marketers have reported seeing an increase of 20% or more in sales when using personalization techniques, and while you might think that visitors would be upset with you for using their information for marketing usage, they actually prefer it.
In fact, 80% of respondents to a survey said that they are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized user experiences. It seems that for consumers, the benefits of personalization far outweigh the invasion of privacy, and that’s good news for you. In this article, we’ll be going over some of the many benefits that your business can experience by using personalized consumer experiences.
Increase order sizes with personalized recommendations
Impulse buys are a powerful thing, but if you’re not showing your customers relevant products then the time that you’ve spent marketing these things to them is wasted. Wouldn’t it be great if you knew exactly what your customers wanted to buy so you could show them only those things? You can! By using behaviour tracking and personalized recommendations, you can show customers only the products that you already know they want to purchase.
This means that if a customer was recently browsing for women’s snow boots, then you could show them some great boots that are on sale! Or, if they’ve already purchased their boots, then maybe they still need some socks or gloves to go with their winter wardrobe? Personalized recommendations help your existing customers find products in your store that they never knew they needed, and it goes a long way in increasing cart sizes and fattening your profits.
Show customers exactly what they want when they need it
Want to go a little deeper with your recommendations? How about using location tracking to show visitors items they might need based on where they live or the weather forecast. While a visitor in Florida likely has no use for a snow jacket, a visitor from a little farther north might welcome the recommendation and be quick to make a purchase.
By utilizing location and weather based personalization, you can easily offer these options and more to your website visitors. Want to up the ante even further? Try using some custom headers or offers tailored specifically to visitors in certain climates. If your guest’s town just received five inches of snow, then a targeted discount on winter wear might just be something that they’ll be happy to take you up on.
Grow brand loyalty by making customers feel valued
You can also use personalization to grow customer loyalty for your brand. Every business has a certain group of customers that provide a large portion of their income. It’s in your best interest to treat these customers like the goose who lays golden eggs, and you can make them feel appreciated by offering them a targeted discount.
Have some customers who frequently spend big bucks on your site? Send a special discount to their inbox to entice them to fill up their cart again. Even a small token of appreciation can be enough to turn a regular customer into a lifelong brand ambassador who will sing your praises everywhere they go. According to Nielsen, a whopping 83% of consumer trust a recommendation from a friend or relative the most when deciding to make a purchase. Want to really cash in here? Offer a discount to your current customer, and then an additional one to share with a friend.
Reclaim abandoned carts with personalized discounts
Cart abandonment is a gold mine that many businesses simply don't capitalize on as they should. They already did the hard work of getting the visitor, but they let them sit on the fence instead of nudging them into pulling out their credit card.
Personalization is a great way to reclaim these carts full of abandoned goods, and if you’ve already collected the shopper’s email it’s easy to turn cart abandonment into opportunity. You can automatically send off a personalized discount to their inbox to encourage them to complete the sale. This accomplishes two goals. First, it reminds them of the purchase that they probably forgot about. Second, it tells them that you valued them enough to extend a gift. However, even if the abandoned cart belongs to a new customer, it’s still possible to use tracking to send a special offer their way via a pop-up, effectively saving a lost sale.
Send only relevant emails
Email marketing is still one of the most effective means to squeeze more sales from your existing customer base. However, today’s consumer gets a ton of emails, and that means that your emails need to be expertly targeted to keep their attention. If you send emails which aren’t targeted, then the people on your list may begin to ignore all of your communications, or worse, they will unsubscribe and you’ll lose all opportunities to sell to them in the future.
By utilizing personalization in your marketing strategy, you can send only relevant emails to your leads. Not only can you send emails customized to that person’s climate or location, but you can actually send out emails that are tailored specifically to them and the kind of products that you already know that they want to buy! Even more importantly, you can skip sending out that email to customers who are not likely to appreciate it. This not only avoids angering your list, but it could save you a significant amount of money. Sending out emails through a top-level marketing platform is not cheap, and mailings that are not properly targeted are a waste of your marketing dollars.