As SiteTuners’ Tim Ash pointed out last week, online marketers that don’t tear down their old merchandising models to present shoppers with more personalized content will become relics.

While targeted product recommendations probably springs to mind as a key way to make the shopping experience more relevant for your visitors, did you know that you could target your product badging efforts too?

Website Testing Wins previously shared an example of a retailer that successfully used such an approach, leveraging purchase history across sub-categories to help its customers jump from home and category pages to more relevant sub-category pages in a single click.

Upping the ante further, another retailer recently used targeted badging campaigns to gauge the strength of brand affinity in the shopping process. It tested the impact of pointing out to visitors new items from the brands they had viewed on prior website trips, theorizing that these recent additions would capture their attention—as well as sales.

Its hunch proved correct, helping visitors interact on a deeper level with the brands they like. The new-item badging for one brand drove a 15.75% lift in conversion and a 5.79% lift in the add-to-cart rate, while another brand saw an 11.79% increase in average order value.