You know you should personalise content and the digital experience for users and customers. Many content management systems carry personalisation features that allow you to target content to visitors by channel, device, location, date, demographics, past behaviour and preference. And there is a wealth of data about visitors and customers.

Personalisation is about providing visitors with relevant content, hitting the right people in the right place at the right time, and ideally converting them or winning their business. If you’re struggling to personalise, start with these simple steps.

1. Focus on identifiable personas and scale your personalised content.

A good way to start is to create personas, i.e. fictional visitors who represent the audiences you want to target. Think about your typical customers and some obvious differentiators. Geolocation is a good one. Experiment with a few personas, then enlarge the segment if they respond well to personalised content.

When you know your audience well enough, model content to fit them. Create content in small, reusable pieces (rather than large chunks) that you play around with to meet personalised needs. Tag this content to make it easy to find and reuse. You don’t have to produce more content, but you have to use it better to gain more traction.

2. Create a context-rich content strategy. Don’t ignore customer-focused, top-quality content.

Never underestimate the importance of creating and delivering content that is clear, simple, straightforward and useful. Look at your customer journey. Start by making the process easy, from picking the product right through to payment. Map out other customer journeys that are often less linear. Touchpoints are context-rich and consumers use multiple devices to access sites. Understand their context and cross-channel behaviour so that you can catch them at key points.

3. Set your targets and review them regularly. Don’t forget your business goals.

Consider your goals and objectives. Maybe you have just one product that is ultra-basic or niche. Is your product low-budget or high-end? Almost any business or organisation from large to small can benefit from simple personalisation, and any communication can get better by being more personal. Set your targets and re-visit them regularly.

4. Choose the right tools based on customer needs, but don’t let technology and content be the drivers.

You probably have existing systems for CRM, marketing automation, CMS, accounting, but these shouldn’t define the way you reach your customers. If you’re saying: I have this content, how do I get it out? -- That’s the tail wagging the dog. Put people first. Use the technology to help you to listen to and get to know your customers first. Then use it to help deliver the content and services that they want.

5. Combine analysis from various sources and choose relevant metrics. Don’t view channels and data sources as separate.

Some traits commonly used for personalisation are: age, gender, interests, date of visit, location of visit, language set in browser, new vs. returning visitor. You have lots of customer data from mobile channels, websites, e-mail and snail-mail marketing, as well as what you know about them from your CRM system and analytics. These are different sources, but they should all connect to give you a holistic picture of your customers. You can connect CMS personalisation tools to other systems including CRM and analytics to optimise the process.

6. Plan on staying: measure, learn, improve and repeat.

It’s important to measure and track progress through testing and analytics. Fine-tune your business strategy and technological infrastructure over time. Never stop testing, because audiences change over time.

So, personalise content, but don’t get too personal. If customers think you’re tracking them too intrusively and not giving them real value, they’ll switch off. Don’t simply repeat and replicate, but amplify their experiences. Ask yourself what they would like and dish it up with style. Keep it simple, relevant and thoughtful.

 

By Boris Kraft, chief visionary officer at Magnolia

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