AO.com’s John Roberts’ speech at Retail Week’s Tech and Ecommerce Conference echoed the sentiments of the many retailers that we work with, and talk to, each day.

Personalisation is crucial to business success. And, yes, it needs to be undertaken in an intelligent way.

Retailers ‘get’ that personalisation isn’t just about ‘Dear <Name>’.  They’ve moved on from manual segmentation. They know that ‘people who bought this also bought this’ is essentially communicating with a segment that in reality may or may not have the same characteristics.

Many are creating their own methodologies.  For example, using modelling to segment visitors, sending emails to these segments and employing A/B testing to hone their approach.  However this has its limitations and isn’t personalisation in its truest form.  They often report - like John Roberts - that they become tied up and frustrated with the mechanics of personalising customer experiences; losing sight of the individual customers themselves.

Taking personalisation one step further from an approach like this can bring measurable benefits.  One of the retailers we work with recently reported seeing a 4 x increase in conversions from personalised recommendations (vs non-personalised recommendations) via a campaign that took just minutes to set up.

Here are their key tips to move your personalisation approach forward:

  • Move away from static modelling and personalise in real time based on what an individual customer is doing.  So if they are at checkout, offer them an upsell that you know they were browsing and zooming in on earlier on in their visit.
  • Start a person’s personalisation journey before you even haven an ID for them, don’t just personalise journeys for those with a known ID.
  • Don’t let your email marketing sit in a silo, give each customer a joined up experience.  For example, emails, SMS communications, web browsing and in-store experiences could reflect recent web browsing sessions (and should be triggered by them, in real time, when appropriate).  Equally reactions to emails should inform digital content.  
  • Use a solution that is intuitive and allows you to inject personalised content into your web pages without impacting on your content.