Personalization, personalization, personalization.
It's all anyone can talk about in e-commerce marketing lately. You can't just create general marketing content anymore, you have to offer your audience a hyper-personalized message based on their exact interests, experiences, and needs—or else you won't get a minute of their attention. In fact, 74% of customers say they feel frustrated when website content is not personalized.
That level of personalization isn't easy to achieve, however. The only way to get close to the idea of truly personalized B2C marketing is with deep and ever-changing segmentation. You have to understand your customer to a whole new degree, customizing your every message to their recent actions, personal preferences, and more.
But with the right tactics, you can offer your potential buyers the right message at the right time, and on the right channel, and engage e-commerce customers in a meaningful way.
Segmentation in Real-Time
Many B2C marketers think of segmentation as a one-time deal: You take a list and split it up based on factors like age and location; then, you market to that static list and hope that some small segment of it converts.
But your audience isn't sitting still; they're constantly moving, changing preferences, and shifting what they're looking for. How can you keep up and stay relevant if you're not changing with them?
Luckily, technology like B2C CRM enables you to dynamically segment your audience in real-time as they interact with your brand. If a customer clicks on a specific product on your website, you can automatically trigger a targeted message based on that behavior. If someone adds a product to the cart and then abandons it, you can reach out with a targeted coupon or offer instantly. If they decide to buy, you can immediately add them to a loyalty program to drive long-term engagement.
A True Omnichannel Experience
The other misconception about segmentation is that it applies only to traditional email marketing. Today, that is also no longer true. Now, you can segment across multiple channels and devices with ease. Rather than sending out a hyper-personalized message on email and then showing that same buyer a generic ad elsewhere, you can coordinate across all channels. That creates a true omnichannel experience for customers. It's the goal for many marketers today.
For example, you can have a coordinated omnichannel marketing campaign across email, social ads, Google ads, and push notifications. Based on the data you've collected about each individual buyer, you know the right message to send to engage them. If they've bought from you before, you can send them an email offer for a related product, and also coordinate that message across ads and push notifications. Your personalized message will be everywhere that a customer looks—making you look extra impressive.
Start Simple and Grow
By tracking customer behavior in real-time and across multiple channels, you have a better understanding of your buyers and you can personalize messages accordingly. Gathering this information allows you to start marketing to your buyers in a more sophisticated manner, sending out targeting campaigns based on where they are in their customer lifecycle.
With the dynamic segments you've created, you can now create personalized campaigns for each buyer according to how they behave. For example, when a new customer buys for the first time, you can jump-start the new relationship with a few welcome emails over the course of several days. Show recipients exactly what it's like to be a customer of your brand, giving them promotional offers, showcasing your best products, and more.
Next, you can create trigger-based email campaigns based on customer behavior across your website. If that same customer comes back for a second purchase and abandons the cart at the last moment, you can automatically send a cart abandonment campaign to encourage them to buy. If the customer later becomes completely unengaged and is at-risk of being lost, you can try a win-back campaign to re-engage them.
It may seem overwhelming to create a series of customized campaigns across so many channels right off the bat, but it doesn't have to be. There are various simple and personalized campaigns that you can start with to get better results from your marketing. All you have to do is stop treating all of your customers the same, and start using customer behavior to inform your communications with them.
E-commerce customers today expect a coherent, relevant experience with your brand across all channels and devices, in real-time.
This whitepaper identifies the seven key campaigns that every e-commerce marketer needs to implement in 2017, provides tips and tricks for making them more effective, and even offers some winning examples. Don't just keep talking about personalization—start personalizing your e-commerce marketing campaigns today.
Learn more about the seven critical campaigns for e-commerce marketers.
