During this keynote, Megan Gilhooly will introduce the four pillars of effective personalization and how they transform how we think about content strategy to drive amazing digital experiences.
6. The act of adding context and
relevance to information so users
can find it more quickly, relate to
it, and use it immediately to make
more informed decisions.
What is personalization?
7. Why should we care?
A CIDM survey found that the three most common customer demands
with regards to content delivery are:
Content that is more searchable
Customized or personalized content
Videos
8. Why should we care?
78%
of consumers believe that organizations
who provide custom content are interested
in building good relationships with them.
Source: TMG Custom Media
9. Why should we care?
Providing “tailored help” can drive 20%
improvement in completed purchases,
repeat purchases, future purchase intent,
and other commercial benefits.
Source: Gartner
10. Risks to mitigate
• 38% of people will stop doing business with
a company if they find personalization efforts
to be “creepy.”
If company messages are annoying or irrelevant,
• 48% of consumers say they will unsubscribe
• 14% will stop doing business with the
company altogether.
Source: Gartner
31. → Personalize content because customers are asking for it, they feel
better about us when we do it, and it drives revenue.
→ When done poorly, personalized content feels creepy and
annoying, so consider what you do and don’t personalize
→ To personalize content, your system must recognize the user,
remember behavior, add relevance in appropriate places, and
make appropriate contextual, behavioral, and role-based
recommendations
Takeaways
Avoid being creepy and annoying by addressing individuals in a helpful and meaningful way.
Personalized content should be truly helpful and valuable to your audience — whether they end up buying from you or not. I’m good with the Keg texting me my free steak dinner on my birthday because I signed up for it. I once took my daughter to an eye doctor…literally one time…and eight months later on my birthday, this eye clinic sent me a robotext saying happy birthday. Annoying, impersonal, not helpful. Adding personalization to your content delivery is a good thing, just think about what type and level of personalization your audience will find helpful.
People are not their demographic. When Netflix surfaces things that I might like based on my past viewing, that’s helpful. If Netflix surfaced content based on what moms tend to watch, I’m guessing it wouldn’t be very helpful because being a mom doesn’t define my viewing habits. Now, if they understood that, as a mom of 4 with a full time job, there’s a 100% chance I’m going to fall asleep while watching and they could add a “rewind to where I shut my eyes” button…that would be both helpful and creepy. But it would be suitable for moms and narcoleptics.
Segmenting by age—AARP might intentionally segment those that are eligible and those that are not. Social apps aimed at millennials and younger certainly would segment by age. But, if you’re documenting tech products with assumption that older generations won’t understand? 20 years ago maybe, but not today.
Information for parents about kids technology or the health of kids, segment by parents vs nonparent rather than age.
Authenticate
Preferences on profile
Self-select without log in
Recognize status in buyers’ journey
Authenticate
Preferences on profile
Self-select without log in
Long-term memory (Netflix remembers what I watched, how long I watch it, and what I rated it)
Short-term memory is also important
Weighted search by credentials/entitlements, as well as profile preferences, but also impact by previous clicks & searches.
Subtle, helpful, not creepy.
Auto-populate version they have or they searched for
Subtle, helpful, not creepy
Long-term memory (Netflix remembers what I watched, how long I watch it, and what I rated it)
Short-term memory is also important
Relevant content
Context of where they are right now in your portal (based on parent/child relationships in your taxonomy)
Surface the right content based on how knowledgeable they are on your system (based on years using it, past behaviors/searches)
Recommendations by preferences, previous clicks
Subtle, helpful, not creepy
When you know who they are, where they are at in the customer lifecycle, and what their degree of knowledge is, you can present personalized learning paths