the path to personalization

The Path to Personalization

Roundtable

May 21, 2014

Intros

Derek Phillips

Content Strategy Lead

@digistrategist

Amanda Bernard

Director Digital Marketing

@amandabernard

Barbara Holmes

Director User Experience

@volleyballbarb

Agenda

• What is personalization?

• What is the value?

• How do you start?

• Group discussion – Issues, opportunities, challenges

• Your feedback

WHAT IS PERSONALIZATION?

The Path to Personalization

• Definition – (adj) individualized, made for or directed or

adjusted to a particular individual: "personalized luggage"; "personalized advice”; “personalized experience”

What Is Personalization?

For our purposes, as delivered via a content management system (CMS) or another 3rd party tool

Personalization Spectrum Classic

2014

Anonymous Browsing Logged in User

Implicit Personalization Self Identification Positively

Identified Logged in User

Detected without user’s input

User provides info through navigation paths or choices

User identified & remembered

Implicit Explicit

Information tailored to user

Common Methods of Detection

• Geography

• Site browsing behavior

• Referring site or inbound channel

• Simple/full self-identification

• Device type

• IP lookup combined with “firmographics” data to identify prospect’s company

• Campaign funnel

WHAT IS THE VALUE? The Path to Personalization

What Is the Value to a Brand?

• Brand affinity

• Customer insights

• Revenue

• Support

• Service design

What Is the Value to Your Customer?

• Relevant content

• Focused task support

• Increased ratio of “good stuff”

But…

Companies need to show the VALUE of sharing information to create personalized experiences. • 57% are OK with providing personal information on a

website as long as it’s for their benefit and being used in responsible ways.

• 77% would trust businesses more if they explained how they’re using personal information to improve their online experience.

Personalization in Action

Potential for Discovery The opportunities for both listener and musician have been revolutionized by the Internet…. –Billy Bragg Source: http://www.musictank.co.uk/blog/billy-bragg-on-streaming-debate

Personalization in Action

Slingshot shows restraint in how and when they use personalized messaging.

Using Segmentation to Increase Relevancy Slingshot SEO also segmented its email list to only send to those who hadn't already downloaded the calendar on their own. Know who and what you should leave out of your email. Source: http://litmus.com/blog/slingshot-seo-inspires-with-personalization-relevancy

Personalization in Action

Provide Value I got this email reminding me of a product feature I didn't know existed (or just forgot about), but makes my experience using Dropbox infinitely better and more efficient. Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34146/7-Excellent-Examples-of-Email-Personalization-in-Action.aspx

Dropbox recognized a behavior and highlighted a service that supports that user need.

What Happens When It Goes Wrong?

Examples

Relevancy to the User What’s the simple lesson here? If you’re asking your customers to take the time to volunteer information, then use it — and use it appropriately. If creating effective personalization is beyond your budget or expertise, then it’s better to not even try. Source: http://blog.fluencymedia.com/b2c-email-marketing-fail/#sthash.gqCpEcNi.dpuf

Examples

The recipient’s mother, Ann (who is named in the email), died six months previously.

The Dangers of Assuming I guess you can say my wife should have just gone into her ProFlowers address book and removed my mother’s information — and her grandmother’s, too. But anyone who has lost a family member knows how hard it is to delete their names from anything. Source: http://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/proflowers-personalization-fail-20112013/

HOW DO YOU START? The Path to Personalization

The Mindset

• 80% thinking and planning

• 20% pulling the levers and implementing

• Always be testing, optimizing and measuring the return

What Is Required?

• Organizational readiness

• Content strategy

• User experience design

• Measurement & optimization

• Marketing technology

Organization Readiness

• Senior leaders as active stakeholders

• Access to customer data

• Have a “Team Content” (or ready to build a team)

• Technology is in place or ready to be purchased

Content Strategy

• Understanding of content creation process and governance

• Content mapping to personas and/or campaigns

• Content tagging

• Resources! – Personalization requires lots of content

Content Development Implications

Content Audience

Low Broad

High Narrow

User Experience

• Understanding of key audiences (personas and customer research)

• Understanding of most relevant content

• Determine meaningful personalization

• Mapping of customer lifecycle/journey

UX Guidelines

• Be transparent about the personalization to gain trust

• Limit audience segments in order to be manageable

• Be sure to have default content that’s not personalized

• Be consistent

Measurement & Optimization

• Business objectives, digital goals, KPIs, desired outcomes

• Engagement valuation by content type or persona type

• Marketing funnels and inbound channels • Audience segmentation • Engagement, lead generation and

acquisition initiatives • Optimization testing and data analysis • Performance reporting

Marketing Technology

• Tools are important

• Choose the one(s) that meet your strategy and user experience vision

• Design and develop to support rapid testing

• Plan for change

Our Systematic Framework

GROUP DISCUSSION The Path to Personalization

LET’S TALK ABOUT… The Path to Personalization

What is the potential value of personalization to your

customers?

What problem(s) could personalization help solve in

your organization?

What are the challenges you are currently facing or will face?

Remember…

• Crawl, walk, run. • Be strategic! Don’t just buy a tool and

press play. • Test first, then implement. • Measure ROI and evaluate personalization

based on company success metrics. • Use a roadmap to tie together all

personalization opportunities and effectively sequence the roll out.

Upcoming Webinar

• In June, we’re doing a webinar briefing on this topic. We hope you and your colleagues will join us! – June 10th, 2014 at 11am PDT

• If you’d like to attend, please sign up online at http://cx.isitedesign.com/briefing/personalization

THANK YOU! The Path to Personalization