Events can be recorded as data. Data when placed in context becomes information. Information improves the UX (user experience).
Big data therefore holds the promise of experiences personalized to the customer’s individual preferences; but how many times have you tried to clean-up your CRM to even start improving targeting?
PR and social activity should be driving auditable traffic to your website (at OOKII Company we’re a bit obsessed about our clients’ Google Analytics referral reports) to demonstrate PR ROI. So once you’ve created interest, how can you improve yield?
Historically, there has been plenty of big data sizzle but not much sausage. Huge investments in data warehouses and hierarchical storage management systems still don’t really connect this data to the customer experience. The ability for organizations to leverage their information assets and deliver personalized experiences remains, for many, a missed opportunity. But the opportunity exists and there are now a growing number of systems from companies such as Hellosoda, MongoDB and Monetate who are enabling this crucial step to personalisation..
Organizations who have successfully tapped into their customer data using these new systems are claiming some outstanding improvements to their key business metrics.
>10% uplift in response rates & click-through rates
>75% of customers more likely to make a purchase
>60% of clients see increased marketing ROI
As many of our customers tell us, “We have all this data – we just haven’t been able to get around to using it properly”. Businesses that can effectively pull this data together, in a place that’s accessible for optimizing experiences, have the potential to unlock untapped revenue and deliver truly profitable experiences.
Typical information gathered on customers and used by personalisation systems includes:
- Personality traits (male/female, millennial, CEO……)
- Key life events such as charity fun run, or a global event like the World Cup
- Date of salary payment
- Best time to contact (work hours, evenings….)
- Spending habits garnered from previous shopping cart behavior
- Socio-demographic information
- Geo-location for time-of-day accuracy or better localization
Whatever you try, your website can be a great place to start. Think about the goals of your site and the way your visitors use it. Then identify a targeted place where personalisation could help ease friction. Website personalisation shouldn’t be a cheap ‘Welcome back Dave’ trick. It’s important to understand the points of friction in the marketing funnel, and use a technically enabled personalisation strategy to improve the user experience, and facilitate the journey towards the desired outcome – be that a purchase or a membership enrollment – however you define that end goal.
First published by Adrian G Stewart at OOKII.Company
Adrian G Stewart
