IRCE Session: Beat the Competition by Personalizing Content and Communication
This IRCE session is Beat the Competition by Personalizing Content and Communication, presented by Amy Larson, Vice President, Digital - The Children's Place and Rama Ramakrishnan, Founder & CEO - CQuotient. Children's Place goal is to provide a great product at a great value with great service.
Depth can beat breadth - Amazon is the 'everything' store. Other eCommerce retailers win by knowing their core customer + product category better.
If someone opened an email last week, should I send them a direct mail piece tomorrow? Use this data!
Lots of people know email open rates - you should know what % of their email list opened at least 1 email in the last week or last month?
Collect data - but more importantly, use that data.
Personalization should cover everything - the entire customer experience:
- Product recommendation & merchandising
- Offers, coupons, deals
- Creative - ads and banners displayed to the user
- Location & timing of marketing messages
Don't personalize for just some customers - every customer. For most customers, we have a very weak signal of what they want, because the average customer shops with each brand just a few times a year, and the majority haven't visited your site recently. So, gather as much data as you can - start with your web logs and traffic data - look at what they search for, look for what categories they focus on, do they dwell on specific price ranges. Then look at your email data - what subject lines do they open on the most, do they click through mainly deals? What device do they first open an email on?
Look at the product data of the products the user views and purchases - look at the title and descriptions that resonate well with each visitor.
Mine product review data - look at the reviews the user has left, and also the review data for the products they've purchased.
Group data between customers - link customers with similar tastes.
Putting product personalization data to work - first, emails. The best items chosen for each individual based on your data should be promoted in each email. Your creative in each email should be personalized as well.
Dynamically insert content into the email based on historical personalization data + the time and date the email is first opened, the device it's first opened on, etc.
Realtime personalization at the time the email is opened.
Personalize product assortments based on this data.
You can put personalization data to work in direct mail as well. Determine who you should send direct mail to and when. Help you reduce the amount of direct mail you need to send.
Depth can win over breadth - but you have to use your advantage.
Data is foundational, but only if you something with it.