March 22, 2023
Scheme title: Expectations for personalization climb
Data source: salesforce.com — State of the Connected Customer, 2022
of shoppers get frustrated if companies don’t deliver personalized interactions
McKinsey
of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations
Salesforce
projected recommendation engine market size by 2025
Industry Arc
Here is a rundown of the most effective methods and technologies to use for delivering personalized experiences across the customer journey.
Companies can make certain content and layout elements in the store dynamic, like calls-to-actions, shopping cart, pop-ups, information bars, and product recommendations, and tailor them to users’ preferences, behavioral patterns, purchase history, and geolocation.
B2C
B2B
The customer base can be segmented into personas that clearly reflect the needs and interests of the particular customer cohort, making it easier to create a relevant personalized offering or a marketing campaign.
Customer bases are typically smaller but customer personas are more complex since they represent the entire company or its departments. Providers need to factor in target companies’ global objectives and combine them with particular departments’ needs when marketing their products.
B2C
B2B
Product catalogs, though extensive, follow simpler structures and contain a relatively small range of typical characteristics.
Product catalogs tend to be more detailed, containing in-depth product explanations aimed at different verticals, departments, and decision-makers.
B2C
B2B
A person interacting with the ecommerce platform is the end-customer, so personalization focuses on their wants and needs.
A person interacting with the platform is rarely the end customer but rather a business representative. Thus, we should primarily consider the business objectives of a targeted company.
B2C
B2B
Mostly fixed, though it can be slightly optimized depending on the market trends, the buyer’s location, season, etc.
Usually customizable depending on the size of the purchase, the customer’s long-term goals, and other negotiable parameters.
One of the most illustrative personalization examples is Amazon’s “Frequently bought together” section. The intelligent system analyzes items in the cart and suggests additional products at the checkout when they can be bought immediately, making the customer journey more satisfactory and increasing the per-order value. Other options include offering products in a bundle at a lower price and recommending similar items based on users’ shopping history to help make the best purchase. This personalization strategy allows Amazon to generate significant revenue from the recommendation system.
Image title: Similar product recommendations on Amazon
Data source: Amazon
Retailers should know their website audience well to kick off personalization. For this, collect data at each step of the customer journey using web analytics, email marketing tools, and pop-ups to segment users into cohorts and create a personalization strategy for each of them. Using this comprehensive data, companies can determine high-value customers and personalize their experiences further.
Raw customer data accumulated from an ecommerce website and other channels should not remain siloed, or you cannot use it for personalization. Therefore, retailers should adopt appropriate technologies to integrate, structure, and make data available for the personalization algorithms.
Shopping experience can be personalized at various touchpoints along the buyer’s journey, but they still should complement one another and serve the same purpose. Therefore, online retailers should create customer journey maps to identify areas where personalization can be incorporated most effectively and which tactics should be used for each customer group.
While ecommerce companies tend to provide personalized experiences predominantly through their website, they usually have several communication channels, such as social media, live chats, emails, and in-store. The best way is to ensure the same level of personalization for every customer interaction across all of the brand’s channels to create holistic experiences and strengthen customer relationships.
Today, retailers can choose from numerous ecommerce tools to meet their personalization needs. Here is an overview of popular platforms used to foster customer-tailored online shopping.
Salesforce is an all-in-one cloud-based ecommerce platform for building intelligent shopping experiences and orchestrating sales channels. Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers a plethora of out-of-the-box features for delivering highly-personalized customer service.
Offering customers the experiences, products, and communication they want and like, digital businesses can build better customer trust and loyalty.
Personalization helps customers find exactly what they are looking for, leading them to purchase more products.
By showing personalized recommendations based on browsing habits, retailers can stand out from the crowd and turn more visitors into loyal customers.
Marketplace personalization helps win customers and encourage them to return to your store more often.
Personalization helps customers spend less time and effort on product browsing, increasing the chance of purchasing.
Companies can collect more granular customer data about shopping habits and preferences to create effective personalized campaigns.
A personalized shopping experience can become a decisive factor for many customers, driving them to buy from your online store instead of a competitor’s.
Offering continuous shopping recommendations to customers motivates them to interact with your brand more.
As an emerging must-have industry standard, shopping experience personalization significantly affects customer relationships and conversion rates. By adopting appropriate personalization tactics, B2B and B2C retailers can first understand their customers better and then provide them with the most relevant offers and experiences. Since implementing an effective ecommerce personalization strategy can seem a complicated task, involving many technological intricacies, you can turn to Itransition for assistance. Our experts can implement or develop from scratch a robust ecommerce personalization solution to optimize your marketing efforts, increase conversion rates, improve customer service, and reduce churn.
Customers have high expectations for their favorite brands, and online marketplaces have never been more important. Brands that are able to predict the desires of their online customers, and push relevant and inspirational content to them based on those desires, will see huge success in the coming years. Those who don’t will fall behind.
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