Personalization is big news regarding ecommerce, setting yourself apart from your competitors and making your customer feel valued. Let’s dig a little deeper into how you can make ecommerce personalization work for your business.

What is ecommerce personalization?

With ecommerce personalization, the clue is in the name. It’s a way to use data to create personalized interactions and experiences for your customers, which helps to grab and keep their attention. 

According to research from Forrester, 77% of consumers have either recommended, paid more for, or chosen a brand that offers a personalized service or experience. Similarly, Salesforce’s research shows that personalized offerings are attractive to 74% of Gen Zers, 67% of Millennials, 61% of Gen Xers, and 57% of Baby Boomers. This indicates that personalization is increasingly becoming an expectation of customers across different age groups.

To personalize the customer experience, businesses can use various data points such as past purchases, browsing behavior, location, language, and demographic information. Accenture’s research reveals that 83% of consumers are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience. Therefore, businesses must collect and use customer data responsibly to provide tailored experiences that meet customers’ needs and expectations. By doing so, businesses can improve customer satisfaction, build brand loyalty, and drive revenue growth.

Different types of ecommerce personalization

There are many different types of ecommerce personalization, which means that finding the right one for your customer might take some trial and error. However, getting it right can mean more sales and a better customer experience. Here are some of the most common types of ecommerce personalization your brand can try out:

Navigational personalization

This type of personalization uses customer data to suggest products or content that they are likely to be interested in. This could be by suggesting products that are similar to ones that a customer has previously viewed or purchased.

Predictive personalization

This type of personalization uses machine learning to predict what a customer is likely to buy in the future. For example, a retailer might send a customer an email with a list of products that they are likely to be interested in based on their past purchase history. Wholefoods do a great job of this with their app, which sends out offers and recommendations based on past purchase history. The app’s algorithm tracks which groceries you buy most often and saves the data to suggest it and other items the next time you’re out.

Third-party personalization

This type of personalization uses data from third-party sources, such as social media or search engines, to personalize the customer experience. You might use social media data to show a customer’s products that a customer’s friends have liked or purchased.

Database personalization

This type of personalization uses data that a retailer has collected about a customer, such as their name, email address, and purchase history, to personalize the customer experience. For example, a retailer might send a customer a birthday email with a special offer.

Subject line personalization

This type of personalization uses data about a customer, such as their past purchase history or location, to personalize the subject line of an email. It’s probably one of the most common examples of personalization and can be easy to set up, provided you’ve segmented your database, all fields are filled in, and you’re using a decent email marketing service. A retailer might send a customer an email with a subject line that mentions the products that they have previously viewed or their name.

Offers personalization 

This type of personalization uses data about a customer, such as their past purchase history or their location, to personalize the offers that they receive. For example, a retailer might offer a customer a discount on a product they have previously viewed.

Messaging personalization 

This type of personalization uses data about a customer, such as their past purchase history or their location, to personalize the messages that they receive. For example, a retailer might send customers a message with a link to a product they have previously viewed.

Content personalization

This type of personalization uses data about a customer, such as their past purchase history or their location, to personalize the content that they see. For example, a retailer might show customers different product recommendations based on location.

Remarketing

This type of personalization involves showing ads to customers who have previously visited your website or used your app. For example, a retailer might show an ad for a product that a customer has previously viewed on their website, as seen in this example of a remarketing ad from J. Crew Factory, where they’ve combined copy and imagery to convey a sense of urgency along with their remarketing tactics.

Each type of personalization can be used to improve the customer experience and increase sales. By understanding your customers and their needs, you can use personalization to create a more relevant and engaging shop

Why personalization is important to your business

We’ve already touched on some of the benefits of ecommerce personalization, but let’s go a little deeper into the benefits of ecommerce personalization.

• Increased customer satisfaction: Customers appreciate being treated like individuals, and personalization can help you create a more personalized and engaging shopping experience. 77% of customers demand a more personalized experience, according to Netcore.
• Increased sales: Personalization can help you increase sales by showing customers products they are more likely to be interested in.
• Improved customer retention: By providing personalized experiences, you can enhance customer retention by promoting engagement and encouraging repeat purchases.
• Reduced marketing costs: Personalization can help you reduce marketing costs by ensuring your marketing messages are more relevant to your target audience.

If you’re looking for ways to improve your ecommerce business, personalization is a great place to start. By understanding your customers and their needs, you can use personalization to create a more relevant and engaging shopping experience that will help you increase sales, improve customer satisfaction, and retain customers for the long term.

How to personalize your ecommerce store

Wondering how to get started with personalizing your ecommerce store? We’ve got you. Here’s how to make a move into ecommerce personalization.

Collect data about your customers. 

Gather information about your customers, such as their names, email addresses, purchase history, and browsing behavior. Use this data to create customer profiles and to segment your audience as much as you can – without this data, personalization will be pretty impossible. These profiles will help you understand your customers’ needs and interests, as well as allow you actually to create personalization points.

Personalize your website and marketing materials. 

This could include product recommendations, targeted ads, and personalized emails. You’ll usually need to use third-party services or systems (for example MailChimp, Klaviyo, or Constant Contact for email marketing campaigns) to do the personalization. The good news is that most of these systems are super easy to use, and you can pretty much drag and drop to create personalized campaigns. You need to get your segmentation and data right for these campaigns to work properly.

Use social media to connect with your customers. 

This is a great way to learn more about your customers and their interests, plus you can start to utilize personalization by using retargeting ads or creating individualized offers that reach them through social. Social channels benefit from collecting a ton of data that make automatic personalization easier for ecommerce stores.

Offer loyalty programs and rewards. 

Expressing appreciation to your customers and motivating them to keep patronizing your business can be achieved through loyalty programs and rewards. While you may need to collaborate with third-party tools, it’s worth doing it this way worthwhile to streamline the process for both you as a retailer and your customers.

Personalize your checkout process. 

This could include offering different payment options, shipping options, and return policies based on the customer’s location or past purchase history. Your store can usually detect location, and you can easily create automated sales and process emails that include customer names. This is an easy hack to create the feel of personalization with little additional effort.

Personalize your customer support. 

This could include offering live chat or phone support or providing personalized answers to frequently asked questions. Even just saving the history of previous inquiries or linking it to your sales process can make it an easier process for your customer. While it may require more effort than other forms of personalization, this approach can help you distinguish yourself from competitors.

Personalize your shipping and delivery experience. 

Customize your shipping and delivery process by incorporating features such as free shipping, delivery tracking, and notification updates. You can add a personalized touch by including customer names in automated emails or utilizing local knowledge to provide relevant information to your customers.

By following these tips, you can create a more personalized ecommerce experience for your customers. This will help you improve customer satisfaction, increase sales, and build brand loyalty.

How to measure the impact of personalization marketing

If you’re incorporating personalized marketing into your ecommerce store, you want to know that you’re getting results. A/B testing is always a great idea when starting out a campaign, as is understanding the starting point. 

Make sure you measure where you’re at before you start your personalization, and familiarize yourself with your analytics platform so that you have a benchmark. Here are the metrics to measure the impact of personalization:

• Conversion rate: This is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action in your store, such as purchasing or signing up for a newsletter.
• Average order value: This is the average amount of money that each customer spends when they make a purchase.
• Customer lifetime value: This is the total amount of money a customer is expected to spend with your business over their lifetime. This measurement is an ongoing one, so you’ll need to track this throughout the customer lifecycle.
• Return on investment (ROI): This is the money you make from your marketing campaigns minus the cost of running those campaigns.

By tracking these metrics, you can see how personalized marketing is impacting your business. If your conversion rate, average order value, or customer lifetime value is increasing, then you know that your personalized marketing campaigns are working.

In addition to these metrics, you can also use surveys and interviews to get customer feedback about their experience with personalized marketing. This feedback can help you identify areas where you can improve your personalization efforts.

Personalized marketing can be a totally powerful tool for businesses of all sizes. By tracking the right metrics and getting customer feedback, you can ensure that your personalized marketing campaigns are effective and profitable.