At various picnics and other gatherings over the long weekend I ran into quite a few people that I hadn’t seen for a while. When I mentioned that I was now working for Monetate several of them asked this question: “So what’s Monetate?”
I found that my answer varied from person to person. This was not because I couldn’t decide what Monetate is, but because there are several ways to describe it. Consider this answer:
“Monetate is a new way to create personalized site experiences for visitors to ecommerce web sites.”
That’s pretty accurate, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate over iced tea and burgers, particularly when the question was asked by someone for whom “lift” means the number of inches you’ve raised the ride height of your pickup truck. So here’s a different answer:
“Suppose you’re on the Internet shopping for new work boots. You visit a couple of sites that sell the boots you’re looking for. As you switch between sites trying to find the best price, one site pops up an offer, an extra $10 off the exact pair of boots you want, if you order today. [At this point the listener is smiling and nodding like this would be a good thing.] Well, Monetate can make that happen.”
I found myself delivering a couple of different versions of this, using alternatives to work boots where appropriate, such as dresses or digital cameras. People seemed to relate, even the one person at the picnic who who doesn’t have either a computer or an Internet connection (turns out she has her neighbor go online to order things for her).
When I’m talking to people who are in the business, I like to say Monetate delivers real personalization, right now. That seems to ring a bell with people who know what personalization means in the context of Internet retailing. But when I was talking to people at the other end of Internet retailing, the shoppers themselves, describing Monetate with an example of what it can do for them seemed to work best.
