Why Content Personalization is the key to success
By: Varun Narang
Tags: Content Personalization, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Content

Why Content Personalization is the key to success

It is the combination of technology, psychology and words to drive sales for a business. A digital marketing technique used by webmasters on websites to enhance the user experience, by catering the user with a tailored approach in the right place & with the right price.

The whole central idea is to make the visitor believe that they are benefitted by spending time on your website.

HubSpot analyzed more than 93,000 Call-to-Actions and reported that personalized CTAs have over 43% higher view-to-submission rate than the generic CTAs.

Just to make you realize the need for this phenomenon in Digital Marketing, in 2017 Accenture reported that due to poor personalization, nearly 41% of their customers switched to other companies which amount to a whopping $4576bn.

Let me ask you something here, is personalization equal to customization?

Well…

Think about this for 5 seconds.

Personalization is the combination of data, analysis and research to create a one-to-one marketing experience for you. You are able to relate the term ‘binge-watch’ with Netflix just because they personalize your viewing experience with the shows you love the most!

Whereas customization means allowing the customer to custom-make the products and services of a business according to their own needs.

For instance, with Canva you can create thousands of custom made templates according to your will.

Let’s begin with understanding what takes place in the background to present you the content that YOU WANT.

How customer journeys help

The customer journeys assist those in the strategy-making about your preferences, your maturity as a customer, how important are you for the brand & how to push you towards closing the deal.

To directly target the customer’s mindset, PIE is used.

PIE stands for Potential, Importance and Ease.

Potential — the scope of enhancing visitor engagement and the corresponding ROI i.e. Return on Investment

Importance — of the brand for the end-user

Ease — of identifying the visitor belongs to which target group or segment

Startling figures about Content Personalization

91% of customers are likely to deal with brands that deliver a personalized experience

71% of customers feel dejected when a shopping experience is impersonal

70% of millennials dislike when brands send them impersonal spammy emails and prefer to allow brands to track their shopping behaviours in anticipation of a more personalized experience

The Hospitality and Travel industries have begun to send 63% of their potential customers with personalized email contents

51% of the marketers believe that personalization is their №1 priority

The ROI of email marketing is about 4300%

Furthermore, people don’t mind getting interrupted if the ad’s message is interesting to them

Examples of Content Personalization

Luring the First-Time Visitor with an exclusive offer — Extra 10% off if you create your account or buy the product now. Yes, that works really well! Personalized recommendations during checkout — Everyone loves when you serve something on the platter. Product suggestions that correspond to the in-cart items make the visitor feel that they’re attended to exclusively.

Here’s how Amazon makes recommendations in three ways by taking into account the user’s browsing and shopping history

Interactive content in the form of Quizzes — The paradox of choices is eliminated through interactive quizzes and discussion with the customer. Imagine, walking into a store to buy the latest Nike shoes that you adore like anything. The salesperson would ask you about your size, the same way this feature makes use of customer’s inputs and suggests the product which suits the customer best. Creating a sense of urgency — here, you might differ from my opinion, but to me, the sale ending in 1 hour or the discounts will stay till stocks lasts is one the best way of engaging content and applies to every person irrespective of their demographic.

The technology that works in the background

The use of cookies and browser caching has enabled the effective utilization

Cookies were first developed in 1994, with the aim of making e-commerce shopping carts possible. It is basically a small piece of data that it stores on the user’s computer while web browsing.

Cookies let the search engine track and store every little information about your digital footprint. Every Call-to-Action you click, every other item you had added to the cart whale your last visit on the website and what not!

So, cookies are the little spies that reside on your systems benefiting the brands to cater to you with a unique experience.

Conclusion

A bad personalization is worse than no personalization at all as consumers tend to avoid those brands which advocate one-size-fits-all kind of strategy. People perceive brands as entities with a mind, heart and spirit. So, they want to hear from the brands that they love. The customer today isn’t merely a number, but it is much more than that. Customer loyalty increases with your efforts to personalize what you display in front of them.