Ever wonder how websites seem to just know you and your interests?
It’s called real-time personalization and it’s changing the way potential customers are targeted. This process allows marketers to tailor the presentation of a website’s content to match a specific user’s instructions or preferences. These changes happen in just milliseconds and they’re ultimately about user engagement.
For example, you may be searching for scarves this time of year to complement your winter wardrobe. Of course, you naturally search for scarves at your favorite online store or even Amazon, to get the best deal possible. You may step away from your phone or computer for a bit, maybe get distracted by reddit or the latest breaking news. Next time you look up scarves, you’ll probably get PLAs (Product Listing Ads) that showcase varying scarves from popular brands with different deals (like free shipping over $50). How convenient, right?
Every time you’re looking for something, or even browsing, this helps marketers personalize your experience. But how does it all work?
This intense personalization is accomplished by the user choosing from a menu of available alternatives or by tracking his/her behavior on the site. Marketers can see which pages are accessed and how often using advanced software like Marketo. This information also comes from location, behavior, and contact data.
What happens is the end user gets personalized content (like an offer or a promotion) that’s based on what they are or have been searching. Now companies can nurture potential and current customers into lifelong users. Not only can these visitors see real-time personalization on websites, but they can also see it on social media, email, and video.
An April 2015 survey from marketers worldwide on the types of personalized web messages/content found that 53% of them uses pop-ups of varying sizes on a page, 53% use inline content, 42% use information bars, 41% used callouts, and 22% used survey questions. (Source: Evergage)
Another survey on the benefits of using real-time personalization saw a 73% increase in user engagement, 54% improvement in customer experience, 53% increase in conversion rates, 45% increase in lead generation and/or customer acquisition, 34% increase in e-commerce revenue, 28% increase in customer lifetime value and/or loyalty, and a 26% improvement in brand perception. (Source: Evergage)
According to Janrain, 74% of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content has nothing to do with their interests. (Source: Janrain) If you don’t want to get left behind, now is the best time to start implementing real-time personalization. You’ll improve customer engagement, which will lead to more conversions, thus increasing revenue. So using this marketing solution can benefit everyone!
