You may have read Zak Hood of Ellis Brigham’s comments about their personalisation journey with Persomi in Retail Week.

Read on to hear the full interview and tips and advice about personalisation and how to ensure that your approach is ‘cool’ rather than ‘creepy’

How do you ensure that consumers are happy to share the relevant data to enable personalisation and is this a big challenge?

Customers don’t need to share data for us to be able to deliver personalised content, they just need to accept that we use cookies on our website to improve the overall browsing experience when they visit us online. When someone signs up for our newsletter, they have the choice to give us a lot of information about their interests, or none at all, so it really depends on the individual and why they’re signing up. I think it’s a far bigger challenge if you try to persuade someone to tell you everything about themselves when they’re only interested in quickly registering for an event or competition, so it’s always best to let them decide.

How do you/brands generally strike the balance between being ‘cool’ – or highly relevant – and ‘creepy’ when it comes to personalisation?

By focussing on delivering relevant content and information to someone browsing our website. E.g. you might be looking at winter climbing equipment on our product pages, and not realise we’ve got indoor ice climbing walls in two of our bigger stores, where you can practice and try out new kit. It makes sense to let people know about things like this just in case they’re interested. Following people around the internet once they’ve left your site with re-targeting campaigns is completely different, and something we steer away from.

What personalisation initiatives are you working on? Can you share any results?

We’ve been using Persomi on our website for some time, which allows us to personalise web pages, create overlay ads and send emails depending on user behaviour, and we’re working on a customer loyalty project. Our objectives are to improve the user experience online, and to incentivise our existing customers to shop with us rather than looking elsewhere, by offering personalised rewards and delivering relevant content and information to them in real time.

We’re excited that we’ve seen Persomi pay for itself 4 times over in just two months!

What lessons have you learnt in the area of personalisation so far and how will you apply these learnings going forward?

We feel like we’re still taking our first steps, and that the possibilities are endless. We’ve learnt that people won’t engage unless you show them something that genuinely piques their interest, and in our industry understanding what outdoor sport(s) people enjoy is probably the first and most important element of creating successful campaigns. The big challenge for us is to understand more about how our customers’ interests overlap across a range of outdoor activities.

To find out more about how your business could be enjoying ROI like this ; contact us on talktous@persomi.com or pick up the phone on +44 (20) 3846 7050.