There is no doubt that personalised shopping experiences have become the holy grail of online marketing, and it’s not difficult to see why, with 88 percent of marketers using personalisation saying it has a high impact on ROI and engagement (eConsultancy). It doesn’t take a great deal of analysis to work out why brands are seeing such big gains from personalisation – the customer receives highly relevant and timely communications that add value to their experience with a brand and this is rewarded with increased brand affinity, as well as the all-important increased conversion rates.

Although the stats show widespread enthusiasm for personalised content, there is some way to go. We may have the data and the technology available, but there are still relatively few companies taking advantage of this opportunity with only 29% of companies utilising browser history data to personalise the customer experience (eConsultancy). For many the issue is about how to go about it. Creating a personal journey can be straightforward but it can very quickly become unmanageable under the weight of data, fragmentation of channels, system specifications and data quality concerns. However brands should not be put off. It’s important to understand that a customer journey programme is a work-in-progress and you don’t have to embark on an enormous catch-all project to start to see the benefits.

So what are the ingredients of a successful customer journey programme?

1. Never take your eye off the customer. It sounds obvious but too many times we see companies bogged down in what their systems can and can’t do to help them make use of the data they have collected. The customer ends up getting lost in the efforts to connect data and technology. The most successful programmes are usually the most simple and those that keep the customer at the heart of every decision they make.

2. Utilise data sources at your disposal. Companies trading online will have vast volumes of data available to them from browsing behaviour to transactional information and it is easy to start to capture this information in a meaningful format. Unlocking the value in this data is straightforward and can a perfect place to start a personal customer journey programme.

3. The right communication at the right time. Getting the timing right is vitally important as purchase cycles for many products have shortened to a frighteningly short window. While you are analysing data and creating a campaign to send out a few days later or even 24 hours later, the customer has reviewed all your competitors online, compared products and prices, made their decision and completed a purchase. The winners in today’s market can not only offer a personal customer journey but also a real time one.

It’s all very well understanding what makes up a successful programme but how do brands get started with this almighty task of talking to each customer? It sounds over simplistic but the best approach is to just get started and develop your programme from there.

Start by identifying the low hanging fruit opportunities where data is available, for example:

1. Brands can easily take steps towards personalisation simply by understanding what prospects are browsing and purchasing and using this information to drive the products, messages and offers that are displayed to the visitor.

2. Segment visitor categories such as new to site, returning browsers who have not yet purchased, single buyers and repeat customers. Once done you can devise messaging and offers that are specific and relevant to their relationship with your brand. Similarly from a discount point of view - why offer discounts to those who are going to buy? Or turn this on its head – a good way to stand out from the crowd is to reward loyal customers. By knowing who they are you can have an informed one-on-one conversation.

3. Abandoned basket or abandoned category is another easy place to start sending a personal customer message and this often has a huge impact on re-capturing ‘lost’ revenues. A simple re-engagement programme involving real time triggered email with personalised imagery, messages and offers driven by their browsing data can be the start of building a one-on-one journey.

4. Once you have started to communicate with the customer on a one-on-one level you can begin to develop and join up your programme using cross channel data to drive communications across multiple channels. For example, brands can use browsing data to drive the order of products displayed in print catalogues or use browsing data to feed through to call centres so that operatives can have informed, intelligent conversations with customers. Also consider cross devices and how you can track the customer journey that will inevitably cross multiple devices.

However you choose to build your personalised customer journey it will always have data and technology as its life blood but keeping the customer at it the heart will provide the winning advantage. Integrating the customer as part of the process rather than seeing them as the target of our communications will be the difference between a good and a great personalisation strategy.

 

By Tony Lawes, Managing Director at Sub2 Technologies. 

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