A personalized customer experience is one of the biggest components of customer satisfaction, which means it plays a significant role in driving your business forward.
Nearly all — 97 percent of consumers — say that an online experience influenced whether they purchased a product or a service from a brand, and 65 percent say that an online experience has changed their opinion of that brand or its services.
Customer experience matters and it should be a key consideration as businesses build and improve their brands. When you add in personalization, you have a combination that is vital from both the customer and business perspective. A personalized customer experience is something that customers now expect — and businesses can reap benefits from delivering it, from increased customer loyalty to revenue growth.
Let’s take a closer look at the role a personalized customer experience can play, how it can enhance your marketing strategy, and specific applications and results.
Defining a Personalized Customer Experience
A personalized customer experience is about delivering a unique experience to each and every customer, one that recognizes the user, not only by name, but by prioritizing and choosing content that’s most relevant to the individual. Leveraging thousands of data points, customers will see things like product recommendations and special offers that are not only relevant to the individual but guide them to conversion actions.
How is a personalized customer experience accomplished? To do it well — and at a level of 1-to-1 personalization — brands should leverage a machine learning algorithm that uses both behavioral targeting and predictive analytics.
The Role a Personalized Customer Experience Plays
When users interact with a brand, they can be enticed to purchase or they can be turned away due to a poor experience. A personalized customer experience plays an important role in determining which kind of relationship a brand has with its users. And, more than that, it has become an expectation for users.
Sometimes, customer experiences are not always up to par. In fact, 89 percentof consumers say that they stopped doing business with a certain company after a negative experience. That’s why creating a personalized customer experience is so crucial to the success of a business, as it is often times the most memorable part of the overall process.
When an experience is tailor-made to an individual customer, they are going to feel as though the brand has taken the extra steps needed to form a solid and loyal connection. From the business side, this means analyzing relevant data points to build a stronger relationship with customers. Delivering the right content at the right time improves the overall user experience and will then drive conversions as a result.
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Improving Key Business Metrics with a Personalized Customer Experience
Once you have a better understanding of how you would like to go about implementing a personalized customer experience, you can then begin to utilize it to drive business results. This type of personalization will help you build a strong customer connection, but how can it contribute to your bottom line?
- Conversion Rates: To drive conversions, brands can tailor discounts and deals to certain customers. For example, a conversion could be a result of something as simple as geo-targeting the right people at the right time, or a well-timed push notification. If a brand uses data on customers’ interests, location, and past interactions to improve the user experience, they are likely to see their conversion rates improve.
- Average Order Value (AOV): Depending on how an experience has been customized, the average order value could increase, as well. Offering product recommendations for users as they navigate your site is one way to do this. Whether you are suggesting products based on previous searches or products that other customers have previously purchased with a particular item, this is an easy way to bring up the AOV.
- Revenue: Between higher conversion rates and average order value, personalized customer experiences drive revenue for your business. Implementing a data-driven personalized customer experience strategy provides users with consistent interactions, regardless of channel, and reinforces the idea that they are a valued customer. And, as a result, spend more, and more often, with your business.
Personalized Customer Experience Examples
To better understand how personalized customer experiences have a positive impact, let’s take a look at a few examples:
Destination XL Used Personalization to Improve Customer Satisfaction
Destination XL specializes in big and tall apparel for men, so getting the customer’s size right is of the utmost importance to them. The brand already had a size-profile tool, but the problem was that it was not being used enough.
With the help of Monetate’s solutions, Destination XL launched a lightbox campaign for customers who had yet to create a profile. Once users created a profile, their size requirements could be saved and applied to every visit thereafter, enabling a personalized customer experience for those shoppers. With the lightbox campaign, Destination XL saw a significant increase in key performance indicators for customers with profiles.
Office Depot Saw a Major Increase in Revenue Through Personalization
Office supply retailer Office Depot found that they were not presenting their product descriptions and other important information to users in an effective manner. The retailer found that their cluttered site made it difficult for customers to read and didn’t hold their attention, which led to less time spent onsite, fewer conversions, and a decrease in revenue. They knew these resources served an important purpose in the buying process, and they wanted to make sure customers had easy access. With Monetate, Office Depot was able to deliver more a more personalized customer experience.
Leveraging our AI technology, Office Depot delivered personalized product pages that organized and prioritized the most relevant content for each individual. Within four months, Office Depot saw a revenue increase of nearly $6.9 million.
Cunard and P&O Cruises Focused on Their Digital Experience to Drive Conversions
Luxury cruise line Cunard Cruises sought out to deliver a better experience for their customers. To do so, Cunard and P&O first decided to improve their digital presence by using Monetate’s Test & Segment solution.
Cunard rolled out a high-impact, multi-channel marketing campaign by doing a full page and social takeover for Hello Magazine. Monetate led the cruise line to create a bespoke, user and mobile friendly experience for targeted customers. Those who visited Cunard’s website from the campaign were given a personalized experience, through page formatting modifications and reduced content. All in all, these changes created 20,000 new prospects and generated over 57 percent of visitors.
Taking Next Steps
Nowadays, personalization and customer experience go hand in hand. Providing a personalized customer experience not only improves key business metrics, it is a critical component of today’s consumer satisfaction.
When you focus on the experience, you are focusing on building a relationship with your customers that will last. And for your business, that should be the number one priority.
To learn more about how to get started with Monetate, contact us today.