As customer expectations rise, the ability to deliver both tailored offers and content that reflects customer interests and behaviour consistently across every channel is becoming imperative. In the final part of this three part series, Oren Cohen, Head of Personalisation, EMEA at Optimizely, explains why companies can personalise their websites using data from any channel.
Organisations that will take the first easier steps of providing consistent cross-channel messaging and leveraging onsite behaviour will gain confidence in personalisation techniques and develop an appetite for more.
Incremental Personalisation
In the drive to acquire and retain customers, personalisation is the number one priority for most Chief Marketing Officers (CMO). And for good reason. According to recent research undertaken by Opinionography on behalf of Optimizely, over half (51%) of customers say that if online retailers offered more personalised shopping experiences it would encourage them to shop there more often.
For most, (64%) personalisation means offers and discounts based on previous purchases, location and/or interests; while 52% cite product recommendations based on previous purchase history, location and/or interests.
There are a number of steps that can be taken by organisations while they work towards seamless, cross-channel personalisation. The end goal of cross-channel personalisation is taking data from any channel, and actioning it at every channel as well. There are a lot of complexities in synchronising multi-channel campaigns but one way to achieve high impact fast is to leverage data from any channel to personalise the user experience on the website.
Loyalty programmes, discount newsletters and member-only sites have always been important tools for helping organisations identify their customers and collecting more and more information about them. And although businesses have spent millions consolidating all the data they have access to into single-customer-views, despite having all this data, website experiences are still largely generic, proving that companies are failing to leverage their customer data on this critical marketing channel.
So where do you start? The best companies should start by focusing on retaining business and personalising the website experience to the customers who have bought at least once from them before, presenting huge opportunities.
For example, in the online grocery world, a customer that has already bought nappies and wet wipes could be classified in your single customer view as a “baby shopper”. Rather than settling just for emails containing relevant offers, the customer could be presented with a full range of baby products on the homepage next time they visit the website.
In banking, a customer could be shown student loans based on age information known by the bank, or shown mortgage offers if they set up a joint bank account. The age information and the joint bank account might have been collected or executed when the customer was physically present at the bank, but they can be leveraged on the website to increase relevance, engagement and deepen the relationship with customers.
Conclusion
The road to end to end personalisation is an evolution that organisations will take time to achieve. However, as customer expectations continue to rise, waiting for the perfect personalisation infrastructure is not an option. Organisations need to make sure they take every step possible on the way to enhance the customer experience.
From symmetric messaging to leveraging single channel data, improving the speed and relevance of the customer journey will drive additional value, improve retention and increase average order value. And having already gained confidence in personalisation techniques along the way, when the complete cross-channel personalisation capabilities fall into place, organisations will be well placed to deliver a truly sophisticated, tailored experience to every customer.
By Oren Cohen
Head of Personalisation, EMEA
Optimizely