Personalized Marketing: How to Create a Loyal Relationship With Your Website Visitors

Imagine for a second that you’re planning a dinner party. You want to expand your social circle, so you send your invitations far and wide - friends of friends, past colleagues, former neighbors, etc.

The RSVPs are just the brink of your event planning process. Since you want to create a foundation for future friendships, you have to show everyone a good time once they walk through your door. 

You plan a diverse menu, take into account dietary restrictions your guests might have, clean your home, and prepare an elaborate table-scape. In other words, you understand that parties work better when you provide a pleasant atmosphere.

Now imagine that you’re creating a website for the first time. You don’t just want to attract traffic — you want to convert that traffic into customers.

Much like how you would plan a dinner party to turn guests into friends, you want to turn visitors into buyers. Which is why you should optimize your website — your “home” on the web — for the people you invite to click and convert.

But what does personalized marketing look like in action? Let’s go over it in three simple steps.

1. Get to Know Your Audience

You’ve heard this one before, right? Well, it bears repeating.

Back to the dinner party scenario, you would serve a delicious appetizer — and perhaps a signature cocktail — to warm up your guests and make them feel welcome. But if you invited a group of vegetarians over for dinner and serve pigs-in-blankets as your appetizer, you won’t get many takers.

Which is why it's important to offer something that appeals to your target audience once they land on your website. If you try to convert your traffic on an offer that your target audience doesn’t care about, you’ll lose sales.

We recommend A/B testing different offers to figure out what works best for your specific audience. Using Hello Bar, you can test two or more offers and track the results.

Even a minor wording change can have a huge impact on conversions. Using personalized marketing, for instance, you can find out whether your users prefer a dollar-amount-off offer or a percentage-off offer as shown below. 

Don’t forget to dust off those buyer personas. What you already know about your target audience can immediately help your personalized marketing campaign.

Are you marketing to single women in their twenties? Your offer will look very different from one directed at married men with two or more high-school-age children.

2. Serve the Right Message at the Right Time

Have you ever been annoyed by an eCommerce website that serves a giant popup the second you arrive? That’s like shoving dinner plates into your guests’ hands the second they get to your party.

Consumers are fairly predictable. They follow similar patterns, especially when you’re targeting a specific demographic. Don’t overwhelm or irritate your potential customers. Instead, give them a chance to settle in and get to know your site.

On the other hand, you might have been pleasantly surprised when, after ogling a product you really wanted, decided you didn’t want to spend the cash. You start to click away, but a popup offers you 20% off. Suddenly, that purchase looks far more enticing.

We know from recent studies that only 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates, 70% are using CRO tools like Hello Bar, and 56% use A/B testing. From this data, we can deduce that business owners want more conversions, and that using tools and A/B testing can help improve those numbers.

3. Laser-Focus Your Offers

Every offer won’t appeal to every customer, and every page on your website doesn’t need an offer. You want to laser-focus your offers based on the page content and the visitor.

For instance, we recommend testing no more than two (and preferably just one) offers per page. Don’t confuse your audience or split their focus.

Instead, nurture your leads through the sales funnel with applicable offers. New visitors might want something completely different from frequent fliers.

Gently bring your audience into the fold. Get them used to your company culture, pricing, brand, and authority before you bombard them with special discounts and offers.

Your offer should also directly relate to the page. For instance, you could serve up a bundle discount on a product page for something that pairs well with something else you sell. If someone is interested in running shoes, he or she might need a pair of absorbent socks, too. Take the opportunity to upsell and to remind your guests of things they might need.

The Right Way to Leverage Personalized Marketing

Personalized marketing is more than using your customers’ names when you email them. It involves getting to know your buyer personas intimately and trusting the data you collect. And the relationship shouldn't end at the point of purchase - use personalized marketing initiatives throughout the customer journey as you engage with brand ambassadors who want to share your product and services. For example, if you segment your referral program by your buyer personas, you can continue to personalize campaigns, messaging, and incentives to the specific interests and motivations of each type of ambassador.

Take a free month of Hello Bar to start testing offers and collecting data. You’ll be amazed by the information you glean from just 30 days of use. Continue collecting data as your brand evolves so you can continue to serve up relevant offers to the right people at the right time.

Click Here To Get Your Free Hello Bar Account!