Category: Personalization

Built to Wow: An Introduction to Launching Personalization At Your Company

The promise of personalization is enticing: a complete 1-to-1 experience for every customer, driven by every detail and data point about that person: who they are, their interests, needs and history. Their customer experience is completely optimized to deliver the right content at the right time, influencing brand engagement, purchase activity and “wow”-worthy customer experiences. […]

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The promise of personalization is enticing: a complete 1-to-1 experience for every customer, driven by every detail and data point about that person: who they are, their interests, needs and history. Their customer experience is completely optimized to deliver the right content at the right time, influencing brand engagement, purchase activity and “wow”-worthy customer experiences.

For years, this vision has been a pipedream among marketers, product managers and customer experience professionals. Many clients come to us wanting to “do personalization” but face significant challenges in doing so.

Part of this is due to the fact that “personalization” is so ill-defined.

At Brooks Bell, we define personalization as any experience that is delivered to a user based on known data about that person. By that definition, personalization exists on a spectrum: it can be one-to-few, one-to-many, or one-to-one. In the digital environment, product recommendations, customized search results and even segmented experiences are all considered examples of personalization.

But while many companies are already implementing these experiences, there’s still an overwhelming sense that many brands have yet to arrive in terms of personalization.

Got a bunch of burning questions about personalization? Submit them using the form below.

We’ll use this information to make sure we cover these topics in our upcoming posts.

A 2018 study of 300 marketers by Evergage and Researchscape International found that 98% of respondents believe personalization helps advance customer relationships, but only 12% were “very” or “extremely” satisfied with the level of personalization in their marketing efforts.

This is because (not unlike experimentation) personalization is a business strategy that should evolve in order to deliver long-term value. And while it’s true that many brands already have the ability to do personalization, they’ve also found that elevating and scaling a personalization program is difficult, costly and, frankly, can feel pretty darn impossible.

So, how to do this? In addition to the fundamentals for a standard optimization program, there are three critical working components that need to be established for personalization:

  • Technology: you need top-notch tools to centralize user profiles and deliver personalized experiences;
  • Data: personalization requires a clean, unified view of relevant customer attributes, and
  • Strategy: you need research and planning to purposefully and effectively launch, scale and benefit from personalization.

In the coming weeks, we’re going to break down personalization further by each of these components. We’ll outline the best practices, advice, strategies and tips to go from scrappy to smart when it comes to introducing and scaling personalization at your organization.

Struggling to execute a scalable personalization strategy? We can help. Contact us to schedule a free 30-minute consultation.

The post Built to Wow: An Introduction to Launching Personalization At Your Company appeared first on Brooks Bell.

Why Personalization Matters As Explained By Your Thanksgiving Feast

It’s the night before Thanksgiving, and you’re still trying to plan the menu. While you are thrilled that some rarely-seen relatives have decided to journey to your home for the holiday, they’ve also presented you with a culinary challenge. You realize that with only one turkey, and room on the table for only a few… Read More

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It’s the night before Thanksgiving, and you’re still trying to plan the menu. While you are thrilled that some rarely-seen relatives have decided to journey to your home for the holiday, they’ve also presented you with a culinary challenge. You realize that with only one turkey, and room on the table for only a few side dishes, you won’t be able to give everyone the perfect Thanksgiving feast.

You decide to try and tackle the turkey first since it’s the centerpiece of Thanksgiving. Uncle Bob has requested a fried turkey this year, but cousin Alice from Austin thinks a smoked turkey would be better. You’ve never smoked nor fried a turkey before so it seems like an easy decision to stick to the traditional, which should be good for most of the group.

However you feel bad that Bob and Alice won’t get the turkey they want, so you decide to prioritize them for the sides. They’re both on board for your garlic mashed potatoes. This means though that the mashed sweet potatoes won’t fit on the main table, and will need to stay in the kitchen. Your mother will only eat the sweet potatoes and has a bad ankle. Is it fair to make her walk to the kitchen every time she wants more?

You could move the green bean casserole to the kitchen and leave all the potatoes on the table. Meanwhile your brother-in-law, Caleb, asked if the green bean casserole could use gluten free fried onions, and you’re still trying to decide if that would work for everyone or if it would taste noticeably different.

You’re completely lost when it comes to desserts. Your family will only eat pecan pie but your mother-in-law is severely allergic. It seems logical to make pumpkin, but how can you not have the pie that half your guests want?

Luckily you’re only faced with this conundrum once a year. Destination marketers, however, face this challenge daily. Instead of a turkey, they need a homepage hero that still appeals to in-state, out-of-state, and special interest visitors. They might not need to worry about someone walking the extra steps to the kitchen, but they struggle with keeping content easy to find so that brides looking at wedding venues or business travelers coming for a conference don’t need to dig through page after page of general vacation trip ideas.

Reimagine this Thanksgiving feast/website with personalization. Most guests would see the traditional turkey hero, but Uncle Bob and cousin Alice see the turkeys they want. Your mother doesn’t need to “walk” to the kitchen, because you’ve set a fly-in on the sides content that takes her right to the sweet potatoes. That pecan pie that can’t get near your mother-in-law? You’ve set rules to exclude her from ever seeing it.

We hope YOUR Thanksgiving is delightful and there are no challenges with planning. If you’re interested in learning how to take your website to the next level with personalization request a consultation to see how we fit in with your current marketing strategy.

The post Why Personalization Matters As Explained By Your Thanksgiving Feast appeared first on Bound.

Who’s Hiring in October?

 Here are our picks: A/B Testing & Personalization Analyst – Barnes and Noble is looking for a candidate in New York to “execute critical tests and personalization initiatives alongside business units such as merchandising, UX, creative, editorial and technology to ensure the most optimum experience for customers to drive greater conversions.” Analyst, eCommerce Intelligence – Join […]

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Here are our picks:

A/B Testing & Personalization Analyst – Barnes and Noble is looking for a candidate in New York to “execute critical tests and personalization initiatives alongside business units such as merchandising, UX, creative, editorial and technology to ensure the most optimum experience for customers to drive greater conversions.”

Analyst, eCommerce Intelligence – Join the Perrigo’s Allegan Mi Facility in Michigan to help drive account specific eCommerce Intelligence strategy development, implementation, and maintenance along with providing analytic support to eCommerce Marketing enabling them to develop best in class go to market strategies.

Senior Data Scientist, SEM – “Using data science techniques that include predictive modeling and machine learning,” TripAdvisor is looking for someone in Needham, Massachusetts to focus on “optimizing SEM campaigns in such areas as auction bid optimization, user-based targeting, remarketing and landing page optimization.”

Marketing Manager (Strategy & Analytics) – GrubHub is looking for a Manager in New York, to “support the Marketing Strategy and Analytics team by analyzing A/B tests, managing budget, building key-metric dashboards, overseeing ETL data pipelines, and analyzing trends.”

Marketing Personalization Manager – In Bolingbrook, Illinois Ulta Beauty is looking for Manager of Personalization Strategy to “develop strategies and tactics for leveraging the customer data collected through the loyalty program, Ultamate Rewards, to deliver personalized, relevant communications across all channels that foster long-term loyalty and drive enterprise sales.”

JavaScript Developer – Brooks Bell is looking for a front-end JavaScript Developer with experience in modern technologies like REACT, AngularJS and Backbone.  This role will work closely with the execution and consulting teams in Raleigh, North Carolina coding test variations on complex sites along with interacting directly with clients.

Personalization Manager – Rooms To Go is seeking a Personalization Manager in Atlanta, Georgia.  “This position develops and executes e-commerce personalization strategies based on real-time data in partnership with analytics, email, merchandising, content, other marketing teams and business units.”

Manager Digital Optimization – Mayo Clinic is looking for a candidate is Rochester, New York to be “responsible for developing, implementing and leading the Digital conversion rate optimization program with AB and MVT testing discipline, focused on data-driven continuous improvement of Mayo Clinic’s™ digital customer experience.

Data Analyst, Personalized Customer Experience – Join Bose Corporation in Framingham, Massachusetts as a member of the Personalized Customer Experience (PCE) program Insights for Action (IFA) team and collaborate with business and technical stakeholders to produce reports and dashboards to drive decision making.

Experience Center, Front End Developer, Senior Associate – PwC is looking for a Senior Associate to join their team in New York to help clients change customer behaviors through the experience journey from strategy to implementation bringing interactive tools in the form of mobile apps, websites, or other digital platforms.

 

Have a job posting within the testing space?  Send it to us and we’ll post it in next month’s blog!

 

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Free Resource: How to Staff Your Testing Program to Meet Your Velocity Goals

Say you’re getting some work done to your home—you wouldn’t want plumbers painting your walls, right? What about electricians doing your landscaping? Or HVAC technicians repairing your roof? The same thing goes for your experimentation program. When your budget is tight, it can be tempting to have members of your team take on multiple roles. […]

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Say you’re getting some work done to your home—you wouldn’t want plumbers painting your walls, right? What about electricians doing your landscaping? Or HVAC technicians repairing your roof?

The same thing goes for your experimentation program.

When your budget is tight, it can be tempting to have members of your team take on multiple roles. For example, your analysts might be okay with managing the entire process of launching a test, developers could do full QA on their own tests, and project managers could oversee both test strategy and the tactical work required to execute tests.

But here’s why this is a bad idea: if you want something done right, you need to not only make sure you have the right people on the job, but also the right amount of people doing the work.

As you finalize your plans for 2019, we’ve put together a free guide to staffing your testing team according to the number of tests you want to launch per month. Download it today.

 

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Images and Stories Inspire Us to Travel

Photo courtesy of Tupelo.net When you see an image of a beautiful location or hear a great story about a destination, your natural response is to want to experience it yourself. The first step in that experience is often looking at the pictures of other travelers and reading their thoughts, opinions and narratives of their… Read More

The post Images and Stories Inspire Us to Travel appeared first on Bound.

Photo courtesy of Tupelo.net

When you see an image of a beautiful location or hear a great story about a destination, your natural response is to want to experience it yourself. The first step in that experience is often looking at the pictures of other travelers and reading their thoughts, opinions and narratives of their experiences. We respond strongly to this user generated content because we can relate to the creators and we can relate their experience to what ours could be like.

In our 2018 State of Personalization Report, we identify user generated content as a major driver in online engagement. That’s the difference we see between user generated content and advertiser or marketer generated content. Travelers trust other travelers over advertisers. According to a study by Elon University, 65% of consumers trust word of mouth on the Internet more than content produced by advertisers.

Incorporating user-generated content into your destination’s digital marketing campaigns is a great opportunity to include an undeniable level of authenticity. In the report, we look at how leveraging local audiences to create content creates three benefits:

  • Modern consumers are visual decision makers.
  • Real people don’t feel like an advertising campaign.
  • User generated content establishes credibility.

As part of a bigger initiative to turn all marketing directives from professional photos to user-generated images taken by real visitors, Bound customer, Tupelo Convention and Visitors Bureau, started their #MyTupelo campaign. While Elvis’ hometown draws crowds from far and wide, many visitors only come for one specific attraction — so the challenge for the marketing team at Tupelo CVB was to increase overnight/weekend stays. Tupelo realized that it could take its marketing goals and initiatives to another level with a strategy that involved leveraging their locals.

“With UGC it’s not just us telling you to use our hashtag; it’s us saying there’s another traveler who stood in the exact same spot you’re standing in right now, and telling their travel story with a level of authenticity we just can’t provide on our own,” said Will Crockett, Online Content Manager at Tupelo CVB.

San Francisco Travel Association launched their “I am San Francisco and You Are Always Welcome” campaign as part of an initiative to let international travelers know that all people are always welcome. The first phase addressed the visitor directly in a dedicated video and #AlwaysWelcome hashtag. Phase two involves a nine-feature campaign leveraging locals with the goal of showcasing San Francisco as a diverse and welcoming destination. Titled “I Am San Francisco,” it’s an online series sharing the stories of both natives of the city and those who came to visit and found a home.

“We wanted to tell stories that are real and authentically San Francisco,” President and CEO of SF Travel Association, Joe D’Alessandro said. “This is what San Francisco is all about–not just acknowledging diversity but celebrating and defending it around the world.”

User generated content is just one of the topics we cover in our annual report. You can download the Free Guide: State of Personalization 2018 Report to learn how destination marketers like you are leveraging:

  • Website personalization benchmark statistics
  • Strategies for implementing personalization
  • 2018 trends in content and personalization
  • Real case studies from successful destinations

Related Posts

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Changing Your A/B Testing Software? Read These Tips First.

With the number of testing and personalization tools available, it can be difficult to choose one to invest in. But once you’ve already selected a software, making the decision to transition to a new tool altogether can feel overwhelming. But this happens quite often. For many clients, cost is often the deciding factor in making […]

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With the number of testing and personalization tools available, it can be difficult to choose one to invest in. But once you’ve already selected a software, making the decision to transition to a new tool altogether can feel overwhelming.

But this happens quite often. For many clients, cost is often the deciding factor in making the decision to switch testing tools–there are a few testing tools that offer similar capabilities at a lower price point. On the flip side, if you’ve increased your program budget and capabilities, it may be time for an upgrade.

And although all testing tools offer similar functions, each has unique features that are important to consider. Personalization, for example, has become a point of focus for many testing programs – perhaps you’re interested in transitioning to a tool such as Evergage or Dynamic Yield that puts personalization at the forefront. Or your testing program has enough velocity to run multiple experiments simultaneously, and you feel you’d make good use of Optimizely’s built-in mutually exclusive experiments feature. Maybe your company uses other Adobe products, like Adobe Experience Manager, so you feel Adobe Target is a good fit.

Regardless of which tool you select, once you select a new software–the next major obstacle is implementing it. Here are our tips for going about the process:

First, examine your testing roadmap.

Take inventory of the tests that will be running close to the date when you plan to stop using your previous tool. Make sure they will have reached significance and be ready to be turned off before you lose access. 

If your budget allows for it, we recommend giving your team a period of time where both tools are available. This will ensure your testing cadence isn’t affected while your team gets up to speed on using the new tool and allows you to transition more seamlessly – you’ll be able to let current tests run their course in the old tool while launching new ones in the new tool.

Then, test your testing software.

While you might be excited to dive in and start launching tests left and right, it’s important to take the time to ensure your new tool is implemented correctly.

Run a QA test that visually changes the page to check that the code is being delivered and the flicker looks reasonable. If there are a lot of flickers, you may need to move the testing tool tag higher up in the head of your HTML.

We also recommend running a live test without visual changes, just for the purpose of checking metrics. This enables your analyst to see that metrics are being tracked correctly within the testing tool, or if you’re using an outside analytics tool, that those metrics are being passed accurately to it. 

Once you’ve confirmed that visual changes are showing up as expected and metrics are tracking accurately, you’re ready to start using your new tool!

Switching testing software comes with its challenges. However, in the right circumstance, switching can offer substantial benefits to your testing program. Taking the time to pinpoint your reasons for switching, plan your testing roadmap carefully around the transition, and having patience as the new tool is implemented will ensure your tool transition goes smoothly.

Brooks Bell has over 15 years of experience working with enterprise brands to establish and scale their experimentation programs. We take a holistic approach to our technical diagnostics and analytics services, providing technology and data recommendations based on your business, your goals, your team, and your unique challenges.

What can Brooks Bell do for you?
✓   Clean, organize and centralize your customer data.
✓   Help you select the right a/b testing and personalization tools.
✓   Ensure your tools and systems integrate with one another.
✓   Train your developers and analysts.

Contact us to learn more.

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What Marketing Performance You Should Expect from Your E-Newsletter Sign Up

Across our many Travel & Tourism customers, e-newsletter sign up is a key website metric because it builds a destination’s email list and creates a connection with potential visitors. It enables you to maintain an ongoing – albeit long-distance – relationship with a potential visitor to your destination. Think about it, when a website visitor… Read More

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Across our many Travel & Tourism customers, e-newsletter sign up is a key website metric because it builds a destination’s email list and creates a connection with potential visitors. It enables you to maintain an ongoing – albeit long-distance – relationship with a potential visitor to your destination.

Think about it, when a website visitor submits the sign up form, they take a big step in their relationship with you — they move from an anonymous person learning more about your destination to a person who is sharing their information and asking to be updated when you have something of interest to share. Let’s take a look at:

  • Why people sign up for e-newsletters
  • What performance you should expect from your own e-newsletter sign up
  • How our experience and best practice strategies impact e-newsletter sign up

Why do people sign up for an e-newsletter? We see two main segments of website visitors signing up to receive an e-newsletter:

In-Market

  • Want to be aware of upcoming events
  • Weekly digest and weekend highlights are important
  • Will impact the business of key attractions and local partners
  • Will likely not impact hotel occupancy

Out-of-Market Pre-Visit

  • Are considering a visit but not immediately booking
  • Updates on key attractions and annual events are important
  • Will impact the business of key attractions and local partners
  • Will impact hotel occupancy

In-Market

Out-of-Market

Smart destination marketers message these two groups differently. Consider offering them a call to action or reason for signing up that aligns with their interest. Think of this as their ‘why’. Why should they give you their contact information? What’s in it for them? If they are in-market, focus on upcoming events content that is shared in the e-newsletter. If they are out-of-market, focus on the long-term reasons to stay in touch with your destination.

What performance should you expect from your own e-newsletter sign up? If we look across our customers’ sites for visitors who do not receive personalized messages (non-targeted visitors), we see an average of .12% conversion rate on e-newsletter sign up. Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of non-targeted visitors on site who sign up for an e-newsletter by the total number of non-targeted site visitors.

If we look across our customers’ visitors who see a personalized call to action related to their  interests, we see an average of .42% conversion rate on e-newsletter sign up. Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of targeted visitors on site who sign up for an e-newsletter by the total number targeted of site visitors.

How do we see e-newsletter sign up done really well?

Visit Sarasota uses simple, but powerful, personalization to drive engagement with this key goal.  Sarasota County, Florida — an award winning Gulf Coast beach destination with a thriving arts and cultural scene — encourages website visitors to sign up for their e-newsletter during their initial visit to the destination’s website. If they don’t sign up today, Sarasota’s personalization waits two weeks and asks again when the visitor returns to the site.

With support from their agency, Miles Partnership, Visit Sarasota introduced their e-newsletter pop up in January of this year. Within six months, this personalization campaign drove over 8,000 new subscribers — increasing the size of their email list by more than 250% as compared to the previous year.

With increased subscribers, Visit Sarasota shares upcoming events, sponsored places to stay, and unique local attractions on a monthly basis.

In our next post, we’ll take a look at how e-newsletter sign up compares with visitors guide download. We’ll discuss as a call to action and where each is used most effectively.

Download the Free Guide: State of Personalization 2018 Report — in this report you will learn how destination marketers like you are leveraging:

  • Website personalization benchmark statistics
  • Strategies for implementing personalization
  • 2018 trends in content and personalization
  • Real case studies from successful destinations

The post What Marketing Performance You Should Expect from Your E-Newsletter Sign Up appeared first on Bound.

B2B Digital Marketing Strategy Survey Results

Our most recent email series introduced a step-by-step approach to website personalization strategy. The strategy series outlined the five elements of a successful strategy: Solutions, Segmentation, Targeting, Tactics, and Optimization inspired by the Website Personalization Strategy eBook. In each email, we asked our B2B marketing subscribers one question about their digital marketing strategy. Let’s take […]

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Our most recent email series introduced a step-by-step approach to website personalization strategy. The strategy series outlined the five elements of a successful strategy: Solutions, Segmentation, Targeting, Tactics, and Optimization inspired by the Website Personalization Strategy eBook. In each email, we asked our B2B marketing subscribers one question about their digital marketing strategy. Let’s take a look at what you all had to say.

What is your #1 marketing challenge?

50% of marketers surveyed answered “Not enough qualified leads.” This echoes the most common goal that our customers seek to solve with personalization.

Are you segmenting your website audience for anonymous visitors?

Only half of respondents are segmenting for anonymous visitors—that means the other half are ignoring 95% of their audience.

How are you targeting with paid media?

A significant 86% of marketers surveyed said they are targeting their paid media based on buying role or persona attributes. It would be seamless for the majority of B2B marketers to mirror this persona-based experience on their website.

Where are your buyers abandoning their journey?

30% of respondents don’t know where buyers are abandoning their journey and 60% know they’re dropping out of the journey in the Consideration and Decision phases. There is an urgent need for responsive nurture throughout the buyer’s journey.

On average, how often do you review your digital campaigns?

Over half of the marketers surveyed review their digital campaigns weekly. All of your digital campaigns drive to your website. How often are you reviewing and optimizing your website strategy?

Get the definitive guide to a successful website personalization strategy in the Website Personalization Strategy eBook.

If you’d like to receive our email communications, join the newsletter!

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6 Questions to Ask Before Selecting a Personalization Vendor

Your team has explored all options for improving conversion optimization. You’ve identified that a website personalization tool is the best option for streamlining your customers’ digital experiences. But how do you choose a personalization vendor that will help you get the impact you are planning for? We’ve put together a list of questions to ask […]

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Your team has explored all options for improving conversion optimization. You’ve identified that a website personalization tool is the best option for streamlining your customers’ digital experiences. But how do you choose a personalization vendor that will help you get the impact you are planning for?

We’ve put together a list of questions to ask your website personalization vendors to evaluate how well they fit with your strategy.

Does this vendor specialize in my industry?

Sure, every vendor wants to help you, but are they really built to? There are a few ways specialization benefits you: the tool with have the right set of features, the team will have the right set of experience, and the ecosystem (data options, tech connections, agency relationships, etc.) will fit your needs. If your industry does not fall within a vendor’s specialization, evaluate how much of their time and attention they will spend to learn your needs and act on them.

How does the solution personalize for first-time visitors?

This is a big one! Log into your website analytics platform right now. Look at your first-time vs repeat visitors. Which number is bigger? A good personalization vendor has both the data and the methodology to identify anonymous visitors. Listen closely to the attributes they list (hint: it should go beyond geography, industry, or account) and the approach they take for identifying as much of your anonymous audience as possible.

What is the vendor’s approach to personalization?

Let’s face it: you’re not looking into personalization for the sake of personalizing…or at least you shouldn’t be. We recommend looking for vendors that take an outcome-based approach. For example, you might be looking to grow traffic to targeted sections of your website, increase form submissions, or boost inbound contact requests. Have your goal in mind and ask how your vendor plans to support you in reaching it. Remember, strategy comes from people, not platforms.

What is the total cost of investing in this solution?

Vendors differ by what they include in the quoted price. Here is the laundry list of items to consider: platform access, data connections, technical support, initial implementation, training, strategy development, reporting, ongoing management, and ongoing strategy optimization. Be sure to ask about the scope, limits and in-house availability of these items.

How does this solution fit with the rest of our tech stack?

No technology is an island. Understand the flow of information and actions between this vendor and the rest of your stack. You are not looking for a vendor that connects with everything, just with the things that are necessary to meet your goal. If a vendor doesn’t connect with a technology you think is relevant, talk with the vendor about why you think this connection is relevant to your goal and ask if there are other ways to meet this need.

How long does it take to get started?

This question is fairly straightforward; however, make sure to clarify what “get started” means. Does it include time to configure the software, set a strategy, launch a campaign, and report on results? For example, with Bound, you could turn on your first campaign in less than 15 minutes. But do you really want to start fiddling with your number one marketing asset without an informed strategy? We didn’t think so.

We hope you find these questions and considerations for choosing a personalization vendor to be useful. If Bound isn’t already on your personalization vendor shortlist, please request a consultation to see if we are a fit.

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The Fundamentals of Website Personalization Strategy [Part 6 of 6]

Welcome to our six-part series on building a successful website personalization strategy. This is the final post in the series. Want the full picture? Start from the beginning! In the last post, we discussed tactics, the final planning stage of your personalization strategy. In this post, we talk about the testing, measuring, and learning necessary […]

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Welcome to our six-part series on building a successful website personalization strategy. This is the final post in the series. Want the full picture? Start from the beginning!

In the last post, we discussed tactics, the final planning stage of your personalization strategy. In this post, we talk about the testing, measuring, and learning necessary to optimize a website personalization strategy.

Personalization is in the website optimization category for a reason: optimization is a process—it’s never done. If you think about it, all of marketing is a process. How often marketers revisit each element varies, but nothing we do—from updating nurture series to account prioritization—is every really done. In reality, website personalization, like marketing, is an iterative process requiring constant optimization towards a success metric.

How often should you optimize web personalization? We encourage customers to think of two main types of personalization programs: always-on and conversion-based.

Always-on personalization programs are the strategic messaging for your website. For example, a marketer might choose to personalize their homepage hero for target industries or company sizes. Because always-on personalization plays might not point directly to a point of conversion, we encourage marketers to measure success based on website engagement metrics like bounce rate, time on site, and click-through rate. After some initial testing and calibration, the customer might choose to revisit these messages only as often as they update personas, campaign themes, or positioning. On average, customers choose to update strategic messaging on an annual basis.

Conversion-based personalization programs support a specific marketing program. For example, a marketer might choose to serve a fly-in promoting a whitepaper to target prospects who have not yet viewed that asset. Much like marketers use channels like paid media, social, email, and direct mail to support a program, conversion-based website personalization should be used to support specific marketing goals like event registrations, resource downloads, contact us requests, or cross-sell inquiries. On average, customers choose to update conversion-based personalization plans every three months, which tends to align with quarterly marketing goals and planning cycles.

Be warned! Most marketers want to do everything at once. Our customers find the most success getting up-and-running quickly with one to two conversion-based programs while they take more time to build out always-on personalization programs. Over time, our most advanced customers are able to successfully run multiple conversion-based programs at a time.

What solution are you optimizing towards? Understanding your audience? Increasing conversions? Expanding accounts? With the goal in mind, execute on steps one through four of the website personalization strategy and then iterate. Below are the steps to maximize and optimize web personalization strategy.

Optimize Web Personalization to Results

  • Review audience insights – Have the target personas changed? What’s the biggest segment of the website audience that is not getting personalization?
  • Review conversion-based program success – Did the stated programs meet their goals in the given time period? How much success was attributable to personalization programs?
  • Review audience health – What percent of each target audience converted? Did engagement metrics improve, hold steady, or decline?
  • Review content feedback – What is the most popular content topic by audience? What content type performed best?
  • Review organizational goals – Did what are the upcoming marketing goals? Do your personalization programs need to chance to support them?

website personalization strategy optimization

Web personalization, like marketing, is a process. It takes a plan, discipline, and dedication to optimize. It takes technology, data, and expertise to be successful. The personalization experts at Bound partner with innovative marketing organizations to guide strategy and optimize web personalization to meet their marketing goals.

If you’re interested in seeing if website personalization is right for you, request a personalization consultation today.

Download the eBook The Fundamentals of a Successful Website Personalization Strategy: The Focus Required to Earn Results to learn more!

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