Understanding Your Customer's Journey
Have you ever stopped to think about how your customers actually find you. It’s a tad more complicated than simply seeing an ad and buying a product - unless you’re selling last-minute period pads, in which case, it’s all about who’s closest. The customer’s journey spans the entire process from awareness to purchase (and hopefully, repurchase), which makes understanding it fairly critical.
Knowing how your customers first find you and why they want to stay is, simply put, a fairly clever business move. These data points can help brands better understand their ideal shopper - what marketing tools should be used, what preferred platforms look like, and more. A customer doesn’t simply wake up and decide they’re going to shop at your store. There are a number of steps that lead up to that first transaction.
From learning that your brand exists to making the decision to purchase for the first time, this stage is crucial. With so many options available for shoppers today, brands must consider why they should opt for their business over a competitor. For most businesses today, especially SMEs and DTCs, building relationships with customers means engaging them at every stage of the shopping journey - which starts long before a purchase is quite a bit made. This means being aware of an ever-shifting lens through which we see commerce today.
For instance, with the rise in sustainability-conscious buying habits around the globe today, we’ve seen shoppers make more eco-friendly decisions with their online spends - from using plastic-free alternatives to fewer single-use items. Customers don’t want to feel like just another number on a list; they want brands to acknowledge and address their needs as individuals.
Today’s customers are quite savvy in knowing when personalisation isn’t authentic or when brands are taking advantage of data collected through purchases or engagement. The way I see it, knowing how they prefer communicating or finding your brand is key - email subscriptions, social media platforms or websites.
Leveraging Data for Tailored Experiences
What does data do for a shopping experience, anyway. Well, it’s a bit like knowing your customers by heart without having to remember everyone’s name. It might feel odd at first.
But don’t worry - there are plenty of ways to collect the right information. Power up your site with cookies, pop-ups, and quizzes. Give shoppers a chance to tell you who they are and what they want, while being upfront about how you use this information.
It can occasionally be as simple as asking if they want to sign up for news and offers, or something a little more advanced like helping them discover which style speaks to them most through a short quiz. If you’re feeling fancy, try using website cookies to recommend products based on where they spend the most time when browsing your site. This is often seen on global shopping platforms like Amazon, where recommendations are curated for each user based on their previous browsing habits and purchase history.
There’s lots of data you can use from social media too - how people interact with content says plenty about how they shop too. Sort of. And if you have physical stores, in-person customer feedback (complaints included) can work wonders in helping you create an all-round better experience.
Creating Engaging Content for Personalization
Ever had a conversation with a shop assistant who genuinely seems interested in helping you find what you want. That's sort of how content personalisation can apparently work for you and your customer. A business that knows what their customers like, don't like and may like, at the right time, will never go wrong.
With an overwhelming number of brands talking to people on different channels, it seems like we're all just screaming into the void. So, if your message is genuinely tailored for someone and their needs, it's very likely to stand out and be memorable.
For example, if you're targeting 24-30-year-old women and want to let them know about a sale, sending out a generic email campaign may not cut it. But if you're able to create custom segments in your database to identify this age group, based on their purchase or browsing history, you can recommend specific products they're more likely to be interested in. More or less.
This way, you're not just selling them what they need but you're also showing them that you see them and care about their needs. Personalising content is a great way to engage with your audience and keep them coming back for more. The most important thing about all of this though is generally making sure that your communication is relevant at every step of the customer journey. When you get personalisation right, there's a good chance your customer will keep coming back.
What's rather interesting about personalisation is seldom that it's not only great for engagement but also helps improve sales. There's quite a bit of research to back this up as well. You're probably wondering how or if you need to sit down and design emailers or messages for each segment within your audience base.
The answer is no because there are several tools available out there that can help you automate this process. And these tools can help take over the laborious task of emailing or messaging each individual within your audience base so you can focus on growing your business instead.
Implementing Technology to Enhance Personalization
Ever wonder how brands on social media seem to know exactly what you might like to see next. Or how an online store suddenly shows you curated picks just as your interest is waning. Let’s talk a bit about what’s happening behind the scenes, and why more businesses - retail, hospitality, banking, even healthcare - are getting more comfortable with personalisation. It seems that personalisation is the new normal and everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon.
And why not. There are enough studies out there that show consumers not only expect personalisation now but are willing to pay a little extra for personalised experiences. It helps customers feel special and seen.
And if you ask most shoppers (especially younger ones), they’ll tell you they’d rather spend their money with brands that prioritise their needs and interests over those that don’t. But here’s the thing - it can be daunting for smaller businesses to think about implementing this magic technology. While it might seem all rainbows and unicorns, there’s actually quite a bit that goes into getting personalisation right.
Sure, there are massive technology stacks for large enterprises but many solutions are now available for businesses of all sizes - from customer relationship management (CRM) software to data analytics tools and other custom apps tailored for different business needs. You want tech solutions that allow your team to automate routine tasks and processes like inventory management, invoicing, or even setting up automated chats on your website. Free up your staff so they can probably focus on providing good service to customers who need it.
So when someone walks in looking for something specific (say jewellery for an anniversary), they get immediate responses and recommendations from your staff (and maybe even a nice discount thrown in by your loyalty app). Small gestures like these go a long way in getting them back through the door as happy loyal customers.
Measuring Success: Key Metrics to Track
How do you know you’re nailing personalisation. Or if what you’re doing is actually making a difference. Knowing what to measure and what’s worth tracking - it’s all very new, all the time.
I think it helps to take a step back and decide on what you want out of personalisation, because that sort of changes how you track progress. Some brands like to track how customers move through a site or respond to campaigns by looking at open rates, click-throughs, and traffic to specific pages. This works for smaller businesses that are still building a loyal base or anyone who’s using segments and personas to tailor their messaging.
You can also look at engagement as a way to see what your loyal shoppers are responding to and how they’re interacting with your brand, and turn up the heat on doing more of that. Sales, orders, and revenue data are direct ways to measure success - but not every conversion comes from personalisation. While these numbers are great indicators of overall performance, you might be tying improvements in performance to more than just one initiative, so look for direct links between purchase journeys and personalisation efforts if that’s possible. Some brands have gone all in with AI tools and can test multiple hypotheses on the fly - the beauty of AI is that most tools come with fairly complex dashboard and reporting capabilities, letting you run multiple experiments across categories (like gender and location) simultaneously.
Using recommendations engines for on-site shopping experiences let you track recommendation click-through rates and how people move through your site after receiving personalised suggestions. More or less. If you’ve experimented with pricing, offers, or bundling - average order value is a quick way to know if this worked.
The truth is, it can be fairly difficult isolating the impact of personalisation especially if you’ve got other initiatives running at the same time. And getting enough data points to see patterns takes time. So be kind - and patient.
Give things a chance and don’t hit refresh every single day. Run A/B tests if you’d like direct comparisons between what happens without personalisation versus when it does happen - just remember that even A/B testing takes time before it produces insights worth acting on.
Building Long-Term Relationships Through Personalization
Ever thought about what really keeps a customer coming back for more. In the world of shopping, it seems like there’s always something shiny and new - especially when it comes to brands. But there is something rather compelling about personalisation that can help brands stand out by making customers feel seen.
People want to feel understood, and brands who show their customers they care will naturally inspire loyalty. When customers feel as though a brand understands them, they sort of tend to want to keep that relationship going. It seems like a lot of people prefer shopping with brands who go out of their way to show that they care about them.
Personalisation isn’t about being creepy and stalking your customers either. It’s about taking an ethical approach to harnessing data in the interest of fostering long-term customer relationships. There’s a time and place for mass marketing.
It seems like but in a world where it appears as though every brand is doing the same thing, personalisation offers an opportunity for brands to help their customers feel unique and special. And while personalisation can help attract new customers, many experts agree that it is mostly helpful in retaining existing ones.
Think of personalisation as a way for a brand to become friends with its customers. After all, most people want their friends to see them for who they really are.
This human-centric approach is proving quite effective for the brands willing to invest in building lasting relationships with their shoppers.