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Monday, December 05, 2011

5 Steps to Capturing Fickle Consumers

How to catch comparison shoppers..and keep them.
With expendable income being scarce in today’s economy, consumers have become highly skilled at comparison shopping. While shopping for the best deal once required serious effort — driving from store to store and/or comparing catalogs — it’s an easy process now. With just a few clicks, consumers can typically (and quickly) find the best price or sale available. It’s not as though consumers even need to be at home in front of a computer. Smartphones, now almost ubiquitous, allow consumers to have access to this information in their pocket. As a result, consumers are more fickle than ever and cultivating loyalty is a real challenge for retailers.
To meet this challenge, retailers need to deliver value and personalization as consumers go through each stage of the buying cycle — e.g., price comparison, coupon search, checkout, etc. But there’s never a one-size-fits-all approach for consumers. They come with different budgets, purchasing habits, locations and shopping lists. Where do retailers begin?
To read the 5 steps for reigning in those promiscuous customers, head over to retailonlineintegration.com, where you can read the full article here. 

Monday, November 28, 2011

Personalization – Web Marketing’s Holy Grail

This article first appeared in Website Magazine on November 25, 2011.



What does “personalization” really mean? You’ll be forgiven if you have absolutely no idea. As trendy catchwords go, “personalization” has become a go-to term for websites and online marketers, laden with all the possibilities of connecting with individual consumers and a departure from the limitations of one-size-fits-all.

Nearly every online marketing vendor touts some form of personalization as their secret sauce for helping you target customers.

It makes sense. The potential of personalized online marketing, when done well, is enormous – and for that reason, it’s a compelling sell. The problem is … it hasn’t been done very well thus far. And, thanks to vendor hype and over-promise, just mention the word “personalization”, and most have learned to greet it with a healthy dose of skepticism.

But personalization isn’t just marketing hype. It’s a complex concept that really can live up to its billing. But first, retailers, in tandem with their marketing vendors, must identify what personalization really means – and what it means to their business and target customers.

Furthermore, when it comes to their websites, mobile sites, apps and CRM platforms, major ecommerce players need to realize that only through a customized combination of multivariate testing, optimization and personalization best practices, can they truly begin to reach consumers with personalization that is effective and impactful. There are no easy answers or instant solutions for creating personalization that works – it’s about evolution rather than revolution.

Defining Personalization
A truly personalized customer experience – what amounts to a custom website for every consumer – has been the Holy Grail of marketing for over a decade. Yet the very concept is conflicted, fragmented and confusing. Ask 10 marketers to define personalization and you’ll get 10 answers. You’ll also find that despite all the hype, the bar has been set low; most of these same marketers are hoping for nothing more than a few product recommendations or more effective targeting.
Even the experts don’t give us a whole lot of direction on personalization. According to Forrester, Web personalization is “creating experiences on websites or through interactive media that are unique to individuals or segments of consumers.” Just about as vague as every other definition.

In reality, every specific piece of information you can gain about your customer – from search information to online behavior and purchases – can be used to create a personalized experience. Which means that your approach to personalization can be as simple (using one or two collected insights) or complex (a detailed formula based on multiple insights) as you want it to be.

With the right combination of technology, research and testing, ecommerce businesses can now deliver a personalized online experience that far exceeds anything that can be delivered in store – short of hiring a dedicated personal shopper. With the right personalization strategy and tools, companies can create an online equivalent of a brick-and-mortar store where anything a consumer might want is located in a single aisle.

Technology is So Personal
It goes without saying that your marketing team is comprised of geniuses, but a lack of imagination – and technology – may be limiting their vision when it comes to personalization.

Yes, they’ve thought about segmentation, recommendations and retargeting, but these techniques are only a fraction of what technology now allows. New sophisticated real-time automated SaaS solutions empower marketers to create personalized experiences that far exceed what was previously possible. With SaaS solutions working in tandem with strategy and implementation, companies can begin to move towards complex forms of personalization – and achieve online what is already being done offline with propensity modeling and other business analytics.

Really, knowing about low-cost SaaS solutions – and how to use them to take advantage of opportunity – might just be the most significant indicator of marketing genius.

Getting Started with Personalization
Once the right technology is in place, one of the best ways to get started with personalization is with a set of “rules” that define parameters. These rules establish conditions for a specific visitor experience; for every insight gleaned, you create a more and more personalized experience.

Of course, rules don’t exist in a vacuum. When defining them, you must take into account known consumer behaviors, including the various stages that shoppers go through when making any kind of purchase and the fact that they may visit your site several times before actually pulling the “buy now” trigger. While this knowledge might seem to complicate your rules in the immediate, it can be used to your advantage.

Sure, go ahead and create rules for first-time visitors, but you can and should also create more complicated formulas that incorporate insights and data from previous visits and apply them to future visits. So, for example, retarget a repeat visitor based on the last product they searched for during their last visit. This rule path can then be enhanced with complementary content or offerings, whether for discount on the searched product or an up-sell on similar items. It’s personalization that gives customers what they want and shows them that you value them – a must for creating relationships and loyalty online.

Keep in mind, however, that while targeting with rules is effective and often a great place to start, it does have its limitations.

Marketers will find it nearly impossible to manually define rules for expansive websites that have vast and diverse daily traffic. In this case, technology needs to be partnered with sophisticated behavioral targeting through mathematical models that allow you to predict the most compelling content and offers based on known insights and data points about each visitor. This type of model learns and adjusts dynamically over time to optimize visitor experiences with content that yields the highest conversion rate. This approach is also better for the broader range of content (product types, specific brands or destinations) that each individual can get based on unique predictive attributes.

Using Product Recommendations the Right Way
Want to see great personalization in action?  Amazon continues to set the gold standard for best practices in personalization. The site has an unparalleled ability to recognize and deftly exploit consumers’ online browsing and buying habits. (Of course, it also has the advantage of customer interactions living entirely online, while most retailers have offline presences that dilute their ability to gather insights.)

Because of Amazon’s clear success, almost every major ecommerce site has taken steps to mimic Amazon’s highly successful interactions with returning customers. (“You were interested in XYZ, so you may enjoy ABC,” etc.)

But that doesn’t mean they’re getting it right.  Everything from competing recommendations (you want shoppers to buy more, not different) or recommendations for products that are out of stock to a lack of testing and product reviews mean that many recommendation programs are falling flat or, even worse, counterproductive.

To offer successful personalization through recommendation, focus on the essential elements.  Product recommendations should be placed on category pages, product pages and the shopping cart or basket page, with each page type getting its own recommendation formula and approach. This allows for more targeted recommendations and for segmented testing and optimization of recommendations. Recommendation content, placement on the page and the design of a promotion all play a role in the success of recommendations. Segmenting and measuring the conversion impact of every detail (e.g., images, fonts, colors, the number of recommended products, the placement on pages, and the recommendation model used) will help you identify the approach that yields the highest conversion rates for your visitors.

With a program for monitoring and improving recommendations, you improve the shopping experience for each customer – and increase revenue and cart sizes.

Maximizing Opportunity 
Companies that have already successfully leveraged new SaaS solutions along with optimization and personalization strategies have achieved, on average, a double-digit increase in conversions. And with these programs becoming more common, consumers are coming to expect a sophisticated level of personalization.

The good news is that with the SaaS-based model, companies can have personalization programs up and running immediately. Add in multi-channel data from call centers and stores or branches, and they can create an organization-wide, cross-channel approach to personalization within a quarter.

There is no doubt that, after years of hype and hyperbole, we’ve finally found the holy grail of online marketing: Personalization

Thursday, November 17, 2011

10 Retail Tips for Improving 2011 Online Holiday Sales

This blog first appeared on imediaconnection on November 16, 2011.

Well, it’s arrived: the holiday shopping season. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, December sales, January promotions…you get it. This year, the Associated Press says, retailers are focused on price in hopes to counter the (still) worn down economy, while the National Retail Federation claims that shopper’s shouldn’t expect lower prices than any other year, but rather free shipping, deals and giveaways.
Any way you look at, the competition, both online and offline, will likely be cut-throat, yet again. As consumers becoming more shopping savvy and consult your website for their gift-buying tasks, it’s important you make sure you’re ready to serve them the best performing content, offers and online experience that turns them from browsers and bargain-hunters into paying customers.
1. Get in the holiday spirit. #Obvious
Hopefully you’re already on this one, but customizing your website with a festive look and feel lets people know your holiday sales have started. Clearly display the items most likely to sell during the holiday season on the most popular pages.
2. Don’t Overdo Dynamic Elements
Resist the urge to have snow falling, lights flashing and stars sparkling all over home page. Video, banner ads and flash can be great elements to enhance the online customer experience, but only in small doses. Numerous tests with our clients have shown that visitors need at least 1-2 static page elements in order to maintain their focus, and thus their ability to convert into a paying customer.
3. Test your campaigns, now and later
Yes, retail sites undoubtedly stay busy year-round, with peak selling times during the obvious seasons. But if you’ve waited to test and optimize your promotions or discount offers on the day before Christmas, you’re too late.
Holiday shopping is going to bring you wealth of new and returning visitors. It’s a great time to (well any time is) to enlist the help of live multivariate testing and iterative tweaking to drive higher conversion rates. Even subtle changes such as font size, color and language can have a huge impact on revenues. Continually test different variations to see what yields the best results, and monitor results for both in-season and off-season traffic.
4. Segment & Personalize for the Season
As I said, you know you’ll have an influx in traffic and purchases, and you’ve put in a lot of work into your sales, promotions and branding. Personalization and targeting are excellent for increasing conversion, but remember, people are buying gifts, not shopping for themselves. So don’t spend too much time targeting based on their past purchases in the off-season—it may not have much of an impact since they are shopping for a loved one, friend, co-worker, etc.
5. Highlight the Timely Items: Shipping and Stock Status
For the inner-procrastinator in all of us! Those visitors who fall into mad-dash-last-minute shopping segment are need to focus on two important elements: shipping dates and stock status. The comfort this consumer receives in knowing that you have it in stock and they’ll receive it on time, no matter if there is a slight price difference, can help to ensure you win the business instantly. This is a huge factor in behavioral targeting and personalization, since consumer mindset inevitably changes, and purchase behavior, as well as browsing activity, will be impacted.
6. Analyze your Shopping Cart
Speaking of customer behavior, there is no better place to plan for and understand your actual consumers than at the check-out process. Analyzing buyer behavior from all your channels (not just the website!) is the most indicative and predictive data set for setting up successful segmentation and recommendations: discover what people actually buy, uncover buying patterns and help influence inventory decisions.
Marrying offline and online data from CRM, web analytics, POS output, call centers and mobile commerce will ensure you have a 360-degree buyer view to begin targeting and tailoring for your consumers. After the all the data nuptials are complete, analyzing behaviors such as “Bought this, Bought That” and “Best Sellers” will have you homing in on the best cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, for all your point-of-sale outlets.
7. Play Around with Pricing Presentation
You’ve probably got a few sales, discounts and promotions planned this season, but have you thought about how they actually look, rather than what they say? Time and time again, marketers are surprised at the impact that font, location, showing/not showing, and color of product pricing has on website conversion rates, While no single pricing strategy is correct for all brands, don’t be afraid to test it. We have found that some sites perform better without revealing the price before the product gets to the cart, while others convert visitors better by being up front about it. See what your visitors think—the results may surprise you.

8.  Don’t Be Afraid to Let Go of Brand Guidelines
It’s not likely that your brand guidelines always fit directly with the website elements—especially during the holiday season—that are the best converting content. That’s why multivariate testing and A/B testing is an investigation not only into your website elements, but also your brand. If your consumers perceive you differently than you believe them to, your website approach could be hurting conversions. Sticking strictly to the brand guidelines—whether in what you choose to test or change—might never lead you to discover that some brand-approved copy, tone, colors, page template, or call-to-actions, are holding you back from higher conversion rates.
9.  Share the Love, Corporately Speaking
It’s no secret that it takes many forms (and people) of marketing in order to meet your brands revenue goals. And today’s internet-savvy consumer population is sure to land on your website at some point, so it’s best keep the lines of optimization communication open. Ensure all marketing departments and relevant employees are in the loop about your goals, website changes and promotions for this holiday season —so that SEO, direct mail, email, PPC, call centers, etc. are primed to collect and use the right optimization data when you’re ready to move to a true multi-channel marketing approach.
10. Get ready for the January sales
Many consumers are now spending just as much money in the New Year as they are in true holiday buying season. Make sure you are able to hit the ground running in January with fresh mobile content and product offers in order to stand out from the crowd. Remember to use live testing to help determine which offers have the most positive impact on your sales.
To learn more about conversion rate optimization in the online retail industry, check out the new retail white paper, "Capturing the Promiscuous Customer: How Online Retailers Can Use Testing & Targeting to Curb Disloyalty & Increase Conversion Rates" just released by Maxymiser—a company specializing in increasing the online revenue potential of online retailers. Find out more on to make your business faster, smarter and better with testing and optimization.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Turn Browsers Into Buyers: A New eBook

Any smart marketer knows that providing excellent customer experiences is a great ticket to revenue and loyalty. This is probably even more true in today’s digital world. 


Last year we surveyed hundreds of US marketers, and over 40% claimed converting site visitors into paying customers" was their primary website concern. So that’s why I decided to write “Turning Browsers Into Buyers: The Marketer’s Guide to Creating the Ultimate Online Experience”.    

Now, if you're interested at all in website conversion, I should know that you don't wake up at night thinking, "How do I create the ultimate online experience?"

You certainly don't spend your day in a cold sweat, wondering how to "turn browsers into buyers”.

So, why did I write this eBook?

Because marketing and optimization should not be based on instinct.

Because you are a real business, with real conversion concerns.

So, if you want to know what color your Add to Cart button should be, you're going to hate this eBook.

If you want to know how to get your team abide to an Internal Culture of Testing and Optimization, start reading.

If you're looking for ten steps toward better landing pages, you're going to be disappointed.
If you're frustrated that your website isn't doing better, and you're not afraid of change, you should be reading this eBook.

And this eBook just doesn’t claim we know what we're talking about, we present you with real case studies from real brands all over the globe who have struggled with conversions and managed to find their way into their customer’s hearts.

Yes, the customer is always right. Are you ready to listen to them?

Download the ebook today. I promise you will learn something valuable.

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

A New Award For Maxymiser: Online Technology Vendor of the Year

I'm proud to announce that Maxymiser's hard work, dedicated employees and field experts, along with a great enterprise-level customer experience optimization platform, have once again paid off for the company.

Two weeks ago we were awarded with Retail Systems 'Online Technology Vendor of the Year' Award.

By implementing our conversion management solution, Maxymiser's clients--many of whom are retailers--have benefited from conversion and revenue increases. Even with an economic downturn, our solutions are proof that when marketing, e-commerce and conversion technology band together to provide a relevant, targeted experience for customers, they will become more loyal to the brand. 

With today's savvy consumer, retailers who put the customer at the center of all website content decisions will be the biggest winners of all. 

You can read more about the award and case studies here.

Cheers,
Mark Simpson
Founder & President of Maxymiser

Friday, October 14, 2011

The Elements You Should be Testing and Targeting on Your Website (But Probably aren't)

It's webinar time on October 26, 2011 at 2:00PM EST.

Maxymiser and The Conversion Scientist, Brian Massey are teaming up to bringing digital marketers a free webinar on "Accelerating Your Online Business by Optimizing for Buyer Personas, The Elements You Should be Testing and Targeting on Your Website (But Probably aren't)" 
Sign up here: http://go.maxymiser.com/ConversionScienceWebinar_registration.html

In this webinar, we'll discuss how to choose test and targeting strategies based on your unique visitors personas, not website pages. 

You'll Learn:
1. An easy way to model your best visitors into four "Modes of Research"
2. The limits of demographics and how to overcome them
3. How to use analytics to uncover persona behavior
4. The Conversion Quiz: Test your ability to apply personas to on-page tests

5. Why and how testing and personalization should impact your entire business, not just your marketing plans



Brian Massey calls himself a Conversion Scientist and he has the lab coat to prove it. “Conversion” is the process of converting Web traffic to leads and sales, and his practice, Conversion Sciences, brings these disciplines to businesses of all sizes. A veteran of more than 15 years, Brian began by developing open source marketing automation systems for companies seeking to build their online channels. Brian speaks to corporations and universities, and at national conferences including PubCon, OMMA, Innotech, Destination Design Management, and PIA's Converge Conference. He has developed training curriculum for professional organizations such as the Direct Marketing Association and Webmaster World. Brian is the author of the The Conversion Scientist, and is a columnist for ClickZ.com, Search Engine Land and the Content Marketing Institute. He lives and works in Austin, Texas where life and the Internet are hopelessly entwined.



Join us to learn how to point your website optimization and testing programs in the right direction with advanced personalization and testing techniques that bring home the bacon.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Loyalty Programs: Five Steps to a Five-Star Online Travel Experience


  • Loyalty programs are huge for any travel brand these days. That's why Maxymiser feels it's important to integrate them properly into a 360-degree online customer experience initiative. Recently, an article addressing this was published in Hotelexecutive.com. Below is an excerpt. You can read the full article here with a subscription.
    The travel industry is more diversified than ever before. With a myriad of online travel agencies providing one-stop shops for everything from airfare and room and board to transportation and tours, these sites aren’t only waging pricing wars against each other, they’re competing directly with hotels, airlines, rental car and tour companies.
    Now, more and more consumers are taking advantage of this industry battle to please their own wallets. Always-on-the-prowl bargain hunters can make marketing in the travel industry difficult - especially for companies that can’t compete price-wise. But how do you create and maintain brand loyalty when consumers have hundreds, if not thousands, of choices? By ensuring that visitors have a successful browsing and booking experience.
    Hotel CRM, loyalty programs, reward points and status levels—when executed correctly—can significantly boost customer retention and long-term brand loyalty. Even better, these programs give hotel marketers and on-the-ground team members - such as concierges, management and front desk agents - deep levels of personalized data on guests that can be used to significantly improve their experience from the time of booking to the time of checkout. But most hotel marketers have yet to use these rich data portals to provide a seamless 360-degree brand experience ...

    To read on, please visit HotelExecutive.com

Friday, September 02, 2011

How Disloyal Customers are Driving the Banking Business… And How to Fix It


This blog first appeared on iMedia Connection on August 31, 2011.
For consumers, retail banking is a buyer’s market. Offers arrive in the mail almost daily. Rewards and money-saving deals are peppered throughout websites. Banks are now competing for consumers in more ways than ever before—mobile, real-time recommendations, email, and so on.  With so many options, and such little product differentiation, there's really very little incentive for consumer loyalty.

The fact remains that people simply don’t spend much time reading web pages—often ignoring parts of the page that are attempting to grab our attention. Instead, they are linking around the Internet from site to site and going to the most enticing pages, or to get answers to their questions. The opportunity to capture a visitor is often just a few seconds, yet the methods to present a compelling offer are often ineffective—targeting on a “one size fits all approach”, while limiting the promotions to only a few products.
But with this fickleness comes opportunity…for both banks and consumers alike.
Many customer-loyalty issues in banking and finance companies can be traced to poor marketing and customer service—which means that those that know how to effectively entice, capture, and maintain deal-hungry customers are looking at a blue ocean of opportunity. Meanwhile, customers can just keep playing hard to get to make banks work harder to meet their needs.
Today, online banking is transforming that way consumers’ research and interact with financial institutions. But, most financial services marketing teams are held back from effective targeting practices by their IT resources—as well as data security requirements—and are simply doing the best they can within the constraints of their existing web infrastructure. Cross-sell and up-sell offers tend to be served on a random or rotating basis, or with a tab-based approach within the main banners on the home page only. It’s simply one big guessing game.
Further, since this approach is presenting the same offers to each visitor, the number of offers is limited—usually to the top five or so. With these offers presented on an automated rotation or in a tab format left for the visitor to select, the chances of presenting the most compelling offer to an individual visitor is, well, very low. Visitors will not stay on the page simply to wait for the right offer to appear, nor do they page through the offers to see if something is right for them.
When it comes to banking and finance, customers simply aren’t that loyal if there’s a good deal to be found elsewhere. But, personalizing offers will give marketers the upper hand on competitors by making your customers feel more catered to and more secure—a crucial element in the ever-sensitive area of personal finance—despite marketplace pricing wars. Personalizing offers means that the most relevant offer is presented to each visitor based upon what you know about the visitor. In doing so, you will increase the range of offers that you can select from and show to each visitor, since all visitors will not see the same offer.
This is the issue addressed in new white paper, Taming the Fickle Financial Services Customer, just released by Maxymiser. Find out more on how to fix this fickleness.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Feng Shui for Mobile Marketers


Best-Practices for Creating a Harmonious Mobile Environment

This article first appeared on Marketing Profs on August 15, 2011.

Here's the basic tenet of feng shui: With the mindful arrangement of objects in relation to one another and in the context of their environment, one can attract positive energy and good fortune, and generally usher in the good. That sounds manageable, right?

In theory, yes, but when you start bringing outside forces to bear—a sense of where things are supposed to go, an irrational desire to bring in the new while holding on to the old, the notion that more really is more—things gets a lot more complicated.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the mobile commerce space. For years, marketers have been working to perfect their e-commerce sites, figuring out what clicks and doesn't click with consumers, and creating just the right energy for happy shopping—and buying. Now, they're tackling the new mobile revolution head on—with the exact same strategies and the exact same websites!

Mobile sites are not the same as websites. Full stop.

The screens are smaller, the keyboards are smaller, and the experience people have browsing your site on a smartphone is completely different from how they view it on a computer screen.

Marketers need to take a step back and realize that mobile is a new environment, one that demands a new design and a new approach to keep their customers and win new ones.

Only by prioritizing your mobile strategy and making it a key element of your overall e-commerce planning will you be able to prove its worth—via customer retention, measurable revenue, and a stellar return on investment.
So what does it take to create a harmonious, customer-friendly mobile site?

1. Learn to let go
It's easy to get carried away with offers, content, and information on your website; after all, you have plenty of real estate to work with. But simply replicating that scope in mobile form is like trying to fit your Barcalounger in the breakfast nook: there just isn't space.

As you begin building your mobile marketing strategy, start by removing items from your website that are superfluous.
How do you decide what's essential and what's gratuitous? You're likely already storing a lot of analytics data about how your consumers interact on your site. Use that information to determine what your customers need from you, what can (and should) be translated to your mobile environment—and what you can dispose of. 

But space is not the only factor to consider: load times and screen rendering are just as important. Get out that smartphone of yours, type in your brand's URL, and take note of the load times and overall layout. Are any large graphics or Flash pieces killing the mobile experience? What is hard or easy to find?

Hold on to what works, get rid of what seems clunky or cumbersome in a mobile browser, and if there's must-keep content that will need new presentation, make note of that, too.

When designing your mobile site, less is definitely more.

2. Create a harmonious space
Once you've cleared out the clutter, it's time to focus on making the best of the remaining content.

The first step is to get your hands on the Big 3 mobile devices—iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry—and view your site on each. Next, spend some time visiting mobile sites within your industry or of competitors, and download various types of apps on each device to understand what works—and what doesn't. Do you notice any patterns? What items do you like and dislike? What features and design components seem to be the most user-friendly... or unnecessary?

Though some of your impressions will be subjective, you'll gain a sense of whether your mobile site is set up to perform properly on a small screen. Within that context, you'll be able to focus on improving and optimizing successful elements, rather than wasting time on the irrelevant or unnecessary.

Whether you're simply looking for general inspiration or cross-industry best-practices, look to the successful mobile sites, such as those of Google, Amazon, or eBay.

3. Get a second, third, and fourth opinion
You've renovated and redecorated, but you'll know if you got it right only by testing your new look. A must for e-commerce sites, multivariate and A/B testing are just as important for mobile commerce sites.

With few tried-and-true best-practices for mobile conversion, even the most experienced marketers can't predict what elements of a mobile site will drive desired consumer behaviors. Small elements, such as headline placement, button color, or tone/copy tweaks can have a significant impact on sales—but you won't get it just right until you test.
But don't rest on your laurels: Mobile sites, like their online counterparts, are at the mercy of the ever-shifting demands of consumers and the marketplace. Developing your mobile site isn't a once-and-you're-done project. Mobile requires the same continual care and feeding that traditional websites do.

4. Make your mobile site comfortable (and personal) for everyone
No matter how the small the space, with the right personal touches it can feel like home. Your apartment might be the size of a shoe box, but when it's your shoe box, everything just feels better.

The same can be said for the mobile environment. Yes, there's a lack of real estate to play with, but you can make the mobile experience just as custom and personal as you can on a standard website—and, along the way, draw in and win over your customers. It's up to you to make every visitor feel comfortable and wanted—and eager to visit again and again.
Segmented personalization will allow you to capture behaviors and attributes about your mobile visitors to create content tailored to their location, their time of day, or even their brand of mobile device. Personalization can also be specific to each visitor: Users can be targeted by previous searches, past purchases, the time of their last visits, and even their activities in your physical store, call center, or website.

Personalizing the mobile shopping experience is an essential practice if you want to be on top of the mobile commerce game.

* * *
It's a lot to take in, but before you walk away thinking these best-practices seem too daunting to achieve, rest assured that technology resources can help you automate these processes. Just as feng shui experts and interior designers exist, so, too, do personalization experts who can save you time, budget, and internal resources as you achieve your mobile commerce goals.

Whatever path you choose, know that every successful mobile site specifically addresses both the demands of the medium and the needs of customers.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

How to to build and maintain traveler loyalty with Automated Digital Personalization


This article first appeared on Travel Mole on July 29, 2011.

When it comes to targeting consumers, the travel industry’s got it made. Think about it: to secure any type of travel—hotel, car, flight, tour, etc—customers have to release individual preferences and other information about themselves, which can later be used to personalize marketing efforts, and tailor the travel experience. Now, with the online world playing a major (and often, the only) role in the booking and research phases of trip planning, the opportunity to capture even more data about users and make their brand experience personalized across all channels is greater than ever.

Each visitor that comes to your website is equipped with a wealth of data that comprises their unique traveler “profiles”—powerful information such as previous trips booked, travel –related items they’ve researched, frequency and recency of travel, and ads or offers they’ve responded to (with a click or purchase). Needless to say, this information can help you better target content and offers for each individual, making their visit much more relevant, while helping you increase engagement, bookings and repeat customers. But how?'

One method is to define “rules” (or a set of conditions that must be met) that will dictate which visitor segments will get which experiences.  When defining rules, it’s important that you take into account the various stages travelers go through when planning for their trips; they may visit a site several times before actually booking a reservation. Use this to your advantage. This type of personalization technique allows you to adapt and match each forthcoming experience to the data collected during their previous visits. An example of how a rule can be used to define the experience for a repeat visitor is to re-target them based upon the last destination they searched. This may result in an offer for a vacation package that includes tickets to a local attraction, which could result in enticing them to book, or even extend their trip.

While targeting with rules can be effective, it can be nearly impossible to manually define rules for monstrous websites with copious amounts of daily traffic. So for increased sophistication, another method of behavioral targeting uses mathematical models to predict the most compelling content and offers based upon all that is known about a visitor. This type of model learns and adjusts over time to dynamically optimize visitor experiences with content that yields the highest conversion rate. This approach also enables a broader range of content—such as destinations or travel packages—to be presented to the right person based on their unique predictive attributes.

Examples of predictive attributes used to personalize the online experience:
• Planning days in advance of the trip
• Length of stay
• Number of people (adults and children)
• Last departure point (searched or booked)
• Last destination (searched or booked)

European airline carrier bmibaby, for example, uses real-time personalization to target visitors with different “Featured Destinations” on their home page. The destination each visitor sees is based on the visitor’s geographical region, past trips and searches. By personalizing in this way, bmibaby has seen a 34% increase in clicks on the Featured Destination features, and a 4% uplift in bookings.

Independent of which of these methods you choose, digital personalization will empower you to start targeting visitors at the right time, with the right content and offers based on their individual needs, wants and behaviors. Since visitor behavior can change with each visit to your website, targeting rules alone can grow to unmanageable numbers. When this happens, consider moving to automated behavioral targeting, which will help you properly personalize the real-time experience for each traveler, without the nightmare of creating and maintaining complex rules.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Finish Line, Inc. Teams Up with Maxymiser for Multivariate Testing

As a follow up to last week's announcement about a new Maxymiser retail client, Teleflora, we have another client to add to the docket: Finish Line. 


                                    
In addition to their booming online and mobile shopping presence, Finish Line operates over 660 stores in malls across the United States. More than 11,000 Finish Line sneakerologists help Finish Line customers each day connect with their sport, their life and their style. Clearly, Finish Line understands the value of providing exceptional experiences--both offline and online--to their customers.


With our OneTouch™ methodology, we've been able to get Finish Line multivariate testing and optimization campaigns off the ground quickly, without the need for coding and lengthy change control processes through their internal IT department. This means low cost ofownership, incredibly fast time to market and the ability to launch multiple test campaigns at once. Any retailer knows that being able to stay up to speed with seasonality, holidays, and savvy customers is a key to be successful in retail--that's why we've made Maxymiser's Conversion Management platform easy to launch, use and discover consumer insights.  





Welcome aboard Finish Line! You can find the full press release here.