Today's customer relationship management (CRM) tools will allow you to bring a level of personalisation to your website that was not possible before. You'll be able to gather information about your customer's likes and dislikes and use that to craft an experience for them that they are most likely to enjoy. This will aid in conversion, help build your brand reputation, and keep customers coming back. Let's take a look at 4 easy ways that you can put personalisation to work on your site.
1. Use your customer's name
Addressing the customer by name is something that nearly every company now does. It is a courtesy that will immediately signal to the customer that they have a relationship with you. Whether it is in an email or on the header of your webpage, that little touch of personalisation lets the customer know that they are more than just a number to you. It gives them the feeling that you are communicating with them, rather than at them. This makes a world of difference in how that customer is going to perceive the interaction that follows.
When you address the customer by name, they'll let their guard down a little bit and be more open to the experience. This could mean that they pay better attention to the email, or spend just a little bit longer on your website. Either way, forging that connection is a simple thing to do and will help increase your conversion rate.
2. Curate the content to their interests
If you visit any of the larger eCommerce sites, you'll notice how they are constantly making recommendations that are specific to your interests. Whether it is Netflix recommending programs for you to watch, Amazon recommending products that it thinks you may like, or Spotify recommending music and podcasts based on what you have played previously, the world's largest eCommerce players rely very heavily on customised content to attract, retain, and convert customers.
Curating content to the customer's interest is a highly effective way of marketing to them because you can be reasonably sure that they are interested in what you are trying to sell them. Even if they are not interested in that exact product at that exact time, the content will match their needs well enough that they are likely to stick around and find something they are interested in. Even if a sales is not made, customised content makes your website more interesting to a customer and will help to ensure that they find enough value in the site to continue coming back.
3. Track your customer interactions
Before you can create content that is customised to your customer's needs and desires, you must find out what those needs and desires are. Most companies use cookies and blank pixels to track a customer's journey through their website. This method will allow you to identify the types of products that your customers like to view. You can also use their purchase or consumption history to identify the types of things that they will likely enjoy. A good CRM will make this easier by automatically drawing on a large pool of data from all of your customers to detect patterns that will help you make recommendations based on past behaviour.
It is worth noting that a side benefit of tracking your customer's journey is that you will be able to identify areas where you lose them. If customers are constantly leaving a given page or category of pages, there could be something wrong with your navigation or marketing strategy on that page. Resolving that issue will help you lose fewer customers and convert more sales.
4. Develop an ongoing relationship
The only way to successfully build a brand is to stay fresh in the minds of your customers. There are a few ways you can do that. You can rely on expensive ad buys that constantly put your brand in front of the customer, you can make your site as appealing and fun as possible in the hopes that they come back frequently, or you can initiate frequent contact with them. The first of those options is expensive and undesirable in the long term. We've already seen how personalisation can keep a customer coming back to your site. That leaves us with frequent communication.
Without personalisation, constantly initiating contact with your customers feels pushy and very spam-like. They are unlikely to respond positively to it. But with personalisation, you actually have a reason to reach out to them. Let them know that a product they buy frequently or one they may enjoy is on sale. Let them know about other news that is relevant to the information that you've gathered about them. Just like using their name, this level of personalisation allows the communication to be better received and increases the chance the customer will engage with its message.
___
As you can see, personalisation not only helps you to forge more secure customer relationships but to convert more sales and improve the monetary value of the customer. CRM software, such as our Act! CRM and marketing automation software will give you the tools that you need to perform this customisation with a minimum of effort. Meaning you'll save labour hours on top of increasing revenue. Act Today has been providing powerful software solutions to Australian and New Zealand businesses like yours for over a quarter of a century. We've helped them increase their revenues through improved customer relationships and we'd like to do the same for you.
We'd love you to try a free 14-day trial of Act! Growth Suite to see what our product can do for you. If you have any questions about the software, or about CRM in general, we invite you to contact us. We have a team of experts who would be glad to help you.
