5 Personalization Quick Wins

Personalization leads to improved customer relationships. Brands that get personalization right endear themselves to their customers by giving them the right information at the right time.

But most marketers haven't quite mastered the personalization game yet.

According to McKinsey, only 15% of companies believe they're currently getting personalization right. They see it as a must-have but aren't exactly sure how to go about implementing a personalization strategy.

To alleviate that issue, we've compiled five easy ways to help boost your website's level of personalization and get your marketers going on the right track.

But before you start on the road to personalization, there are some things you should consider doing first to get the best results.

The first step in a personalized marketing strategy is to make sure that your website is set up correctly.

Just as your website design implementation should be thoroughly planned out before you launch a new project or campaign, similar things should be done before you start personalizing.

Personalization helps to boost your conversion rates and get more customers buying your products instead of simply leaving your website. But to know how well your personalization strategy is performing, you need to be tracking the right metrics.

Set up your analytics to gather data before, during and after you implement these personalization tactics. This data will help you to see what your visitors value the most and help you to tailor your personalization to meet their needs better.

Now for the quick ways to boost your personalization strategy.

The banner on your site is the first thing that visitors will see when they come to your homepage or any of your landing pages. It needs to tell them who you are, what you do and entice them to learn more about your company in a few split seconds.

That's a lot of pressure for a single piece of your page, but by personalizing the experience, you can make sure that it's done successfully.

Remember that not all of your customers will be from the same country or even the same continent. Many of them will also speak different languages. A quick way to personalize this experience is to offer different banner variations for the various regions where your customers live.

Adding notable cultural references or adjusting the language used on your banners will also help to expand your audience.

Creating multiple versions of your homepage and using localization and translation as part of your content, personalization efforts will go a long way towards making your customers feel like you know what they want.

For ecommerce stores, the checkout process is a key aspect of getting customers to convert. Checkout processes that are too long or complicated can result in cart abandonment and is a reason for 21% of shoppers doing just that.

Once you can get the checkout process right with personalization in ecommerce, however, you can turn those abandonments into new sales.

Two of the ways of doing that are through upselling and cross-selling.

The upselling strategy helps get customers to buy another product that is usually at a higher price than what they were considering before. While a customer may consider a lower-priced option they think fits their needs, you might suggest another option with additional features or items that can improve their overall experience.

If you understand your customer well, then you can upsell them on a product that better solves the problem they were having.

On the other hand, cross-selling is something everyone will be familiar with if they've ordered a product from Amazon. The ‘frequently bought together’ option that shows up at checkout is an example of cross-selling.

Whereas with upselling your focus is on getting the customer to buy a higher-priced product that solves their problem, with cross-selling the goal is to provide them with additional products or features that can help make the experience better.

Read more: Ecommerce Personalization: Everything you need to know.

Geolocation lets you add shipping costs before checkout automatically, and is a simple way to personalize the buying experience for your customers.

Shipping costs can vary from country to country so it can be difficult to offer one price for shipping and handling to all of your customers.

Also, buyers hate to be surprised with high shipping costs and will often abandon their shopping carts if the price is too high.

With geolocation, you can estimate the shipping cost for your customer before they get to the checkout and enter their information. This way, they have an idea about what they will be expected to pay for shipping before going through the entire checkout process.

Using your customer's name is a crucial part of any content personalization effort.

By now, most companies are utilizing the low hanging fruit of email marketing personalization. This merely involves greeting members of your email list by their first name with every marketing email sent to them.

When the customer sees their name often, it showcases the human element of your brand and makes them feel like they are truly connected to you, and they aren't just a name on a spreadsheet.

Taking this a step further, however, companies can let their customers login to their websites to personalize the experience.

Welcoming them back after they have logged in or mentioning their name during the buying and checkout processes and at other points throughout the customer journey can help you succeed with personalization.

The goal of any brand should be to turn their loyal customers into brand ambassadors who promote the company and their products for them.

This is something a company like Apple does very well with their products, especially the iPhone.

But there's an easier way for brands to get started with growing their community of brand ambassadors without emulating the cult-like following that Apple has created with the iPhone.

The answer is personalized discount coupons.

Coupons and discount codes are great ways to improve your brand image and customer loyalty. When a customer makes a purchase, you can send a simple follow up email or run a social media campaign that encourages them to share a coupon with their friends for further discounts.

Knowing that someone you trust has already purchased from a company encourages you to do the same.

With discount codes, you turn your customers into partners who can share the codes on their social media platforms and more.

Delivering on these quick personalization wins can help your brand go to the next level and convert more customers.

But to get it done right, you need a companion on this personalization journey.

A personalization-ready CMS has all of the features necessary to build your website, gather data and use it to improve your content.

Magnolia is a hybrid headless CMS platform that acts as your content personalization engine or content delivery engine if you choose to integrate external data platforms as well.

A company that understands the importance of personalization is Ancestry, the world's largest genealogy company. Ancestry needed to satisfy its growing subscriber base with personalized multichannel experiences and multilanguage availability.

With Magnolia CMS, they found a system that could not only do that but was also marketer-friendly, providing the necessary user experience for their non-technical team members, and integrating seamlessly with their existing infrastructure.