How Personalisation Could Transform the way Manufacturers Engage with Customers

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It's more important than ever for manufacturers to be offering personalised user experiences if they want to benefit from higher conversion rates and increased customer retention

But how could personalisation transform the way you engage with your customers?

Personalisation has come along way over the years, from a 'Hi First Name' tag on your email marketing campaigns to changing whole areas of your site to reflect the needs of an individual. Personalisation has allowed brands to become more targeted with their content, to make their messaging more persuasive and to make the path to conversion more seamless.

Econsultancy’s research tells us that post-purchase loyalty programmes enriched with personalised offers are one of the critical components in encouraging repeat purchases. This comes as no surprise as personalisation itself is all about building relationships and familiarity with consumers as well as encouraging brand advocacy and retention.

“Manufacturers often face the challenge of how to communicate with multiple audiences about their products, whether this is a specifier, installer architect or consumer. Personalisation allows them to segment audiences types and serve content that is not only relevant but contextual to the user’s journey, delivering a smoother path to purchase and increase conversion.” Sarah Dennis, Head of Marketing and Communications at Sagittarius.

It's a pretty well-known concept amongst brands that the right content engages the right people, so it's interesting that while 74% of brands are aware that personalisation increases customer engagement, only 19% are implementing it! And, with 62% of online shoppers expecting personalised experiences and offers, it's perplexing that brands are continuing to fall behind the curve.

Personalisation for the sake of personalisation isn't going to get brands anywhere, but simple changes to your content based on who's looking at it is an excellent place to start. For manufacturers, this might be surfacing different CTAs based on whether your visitors are trade or residential, a homeowner might be more interested in speaking to an agent about their requirements, while a trader will want to hear more about shipping times, bundle deals and bespoke quotations. Other simple forms of personalisation might include:

Product recommendations

Content recommendations

Email marketing personalisation (stories, discounts and products targetted to that audience type)

Changing the homepage for return visitors (same as above)

Surfacing different CTAs or images

“It is so important that brands continue investing in personalised experiences for their customers. As consumer expectations become more refined, they expect organisations to deliver a harmonised experience across touchpoints and to deliver content and products that match their intent.

“By delivering contextually relevant experiences Home and Garden brands can expect to see an uplift in conversion by delivering a personalised experience against simple criteria such as campaign, device, location and behavioural factors such stage of journey and persona. Personalisations should have a purpose, and as such, we work with brands to define the strategy, deliver implementations and report on successes and opportunities.”
Natalie Waite, Head of Sitecore Optimisation Consultancy at Sagittarius.

Now that we know what we could personalise, it's all about how we segment our audience to ensure we're not just personalising content for the sake of it.

It's important to note that segmentation is down to the marketer; allowing them to determine how their audience can be categorised. Personalisation is relative to an individual as it is worked out and actioned by machine learning capabilities.

To tackle this, brands need to start by determining their existing audience types, i.e. traders and installers and who they want to target, i.e. residential consumers. Once brands have a clear picture of who their target audience is, they then need to take a delve into their website content and highlight which content speaks to which audience.

With this determined and your content tagged/identified appropriately, the next step is to use this to feed your personalisation choices. As a brand, your aim should be to ensure that every change you make it going to have a positive impact, not a negative one so be sure to set timeframes, review the data and make changes where necessary to ensure the most optimised of experiences.

"It's easy to get caught in a wave of creating the experience you think users want, based around segmentation that you think makes sense, using the content you believe will produce positive results. Personalising experiences isn’t an exact science, and the best way to reduce risk and deliver solid impact is to test your ideas and your audience groupings, ensure metrics are in place to measure uplift and constantly look to iterate and improve your strategy. Even if it works well, keep chasing better.” Kier Humphreys, Head of Customer Experience at Sagittarius.

If you'd like to learn more about how Sagittarius could support your ongoing digital requirements including personalisation then get in touch on 0208 070 7820 or via hello@sagittarius.agency

This blog was originally posted by Sagittarius on 27th August 2019.