Using Automated Personalization to increase Ecommerce Sales

Competition in the ecommerce industry is becoming fiercer as each day passes. A lot of ecommerce store owners are unsure what the future holds for them especially as it touches the all-most important subject – Sales.

Well in this article, we will be discussing how Automated Personalization can help you bump your ecommerce sales. You will learn:

• What is Automated Personalization?
• 3 Main data types for Effective Automated Personalization
• 4 Automation Personalization Tactics to Increase E-commerce Sales

What is Automated Personalization?

When you improve your users’ experience on your ecommerce store by offering them automated but targeted content and message based on their activities and behavior, it is called Automated Personalized Marketing (you may also want to learn more about ecommerce Marketing).

Beyond improving your users’ experience, personalized marketing helps you build personal relationships with them and nurture your leads till they become buyers, and make buyers repeat-buyers.

As you may already know, the most successful ecommerce stores are constantly improving their product offers to new and existing customers. But they don’t stop there, they’re also always innovating ways to make their customers’ buying experience as seamless as possible, as this is the most important aspect of ecommerce sales and marketing. Research shows that personalization can lead to 10 – 15% increase in conversion rate and up to 20% increase in customer satisfaction rate.

E-commerce personalization or any form of personalized marketing is dependent on data. The more data you have about your leads and/or customers the more they will enjoy the personalized experience you give them and that will result in increased ecommerce sales for you. It is however important to mention at this point that not just any data about your customers will suit this purpose, hence the need to be intentional and strategic.

Some questions that could help you decide your data collection points include but not limited to: who do you want to track, when do you want to track them and what tools do you want to use?  With these taken care of, you can formulate a personalization strategy to increase your ecommerce sales.

3 Main data types for Effective Automated Personalization

There are 3 main data types you should capturing if you want an effective personalization strategy for increased ecommerce sales:

1. Demographic Data
2. Behavioral Data
3. Contextual Data

1. Demographic Data:

You should have the demographic information of your site visitors and customers like age, country, gender, marital status etc. so you can use them for segmented campaigns. Think about how differently you would speak to an old woman versus a young boy.

However, the problem with demographic data is it only gives you a part of the picture not the full picture because the two people might share the same demographic yet shop completely differently.

For instance, some ecommerce store users are gift shoppers or shopping for their loved ones who might be in a different demographic.

So, you would be missing out on a lot of promotional opportunities if your automated personalization is based on demographics alone. Hence the need for other data types.

2. Behavioral Data:

Behavioral data gives a more accurate picture of the visitors’ interest and preferences. With behavioral data, you can tell the web pages they visited, products they added to cart, keywords they searched for, purchase history and so on.

Based on this information, you can give them automated offers in real-time or in future. Like offer them a complimentary product to what they’ve bought before or show them a new product offering with keywords they’ve previously searched for. Accenture 2016 report shows that more 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from retailers that recognize their purchase history; and that will be invaluable to any ecommerce store.

3. Contextual Data:

Contextual data complements behavioral data as it helps us understand to a large extent the “why” behind the observed behaviors thus giving us an insight into the customers’ decision-making process. This type of data includes the weather, season of the year, news, economic or political changes, etc.

An example many will find relatable is the COVID-19 pandemic. It sure triggered some buying behaviors in shoppers; behaviors that might have been difficult to explain without the given context.

By connecting your ecommerce data to the real word context your buyers live in, you will be able to make proactive decisions that will help you better meet your customer needs, increase your sales and ultimately give them a better shopping experience.

4 Automation Personalization Tactics to Increase E-commerce Sales

1. Dynamic upselling and cross-selling on Product-detail page
2. Browsing history for returning customers
3. In-session retargeting based on customer behavior
4. Personalized Emails and Messages

1. Dynamic upselling and cross-selling on Product-detail page

When buyers scroll through your ecommerce store and see a product they’re interested in, usually they would click on it to know about it – and that leads them to the product-detail page. You can take advantage of this to recommend similar products with higher profit margin or complementary products to increase the quantity of items they buy you. Either way, this will come across as personalization to the customer and increase your average sales per customer at the same time.

Complementary product recommendation on the product-detail page has however, been found to yield the greatest returns. For example, when a buyer is viewing a dinner gown, they’re also shown recommendations of matching hand-bags and purses.

2. Browsing history for returning customers

Sometimes when customers browse through your ecommerce store, they are unable to make up their mind or they get distracted – basically, they simply do not have a strong urge to buy at the time. An effective means to convert them is a personalized homepage on their next visit to your store showing them products they checked so they can easily pick up where they left off.

This gives them a sense of an uninterrupted shopping experience and increases the likelihood they’ll eventually purchase those products.

3. In-session retargeting based on customer behavior

 Retargeting your site visitors on-sites based on their in-session behaviors is just as effective (if not more) and less expensive compared to off-site retargeting.

For example, you can set pop-ups to be triggered based on customers’ cart value, number of sessions, real-time and historical browsing behavior. However, be careful not to overuse this so the pop-ups do not come off as intrusive instead of being intuitive.

You can also offer tiered discounts to buyers as they add products to their carts. This will encourage impulsive buying and as a result, increase your ecommerce sales.

4. Personalized Emails and Messages

The importance of personalized emails and messages cannot be overemphasized. Especially when it comes to optimizing your customers’ checkout experience.

An abandoned cart message can be used to nudge a buyer who got distracted and left your ecommerce site. Emails can also be used to announce new product offering to buyers and show them images of items they checked out in the past.

Final thoughts

If you’re still thinking whether or not your ecommerce store is ready for automated personalization, well check this statistic: over 44% of online shoppers say they will become repeat customers after a personalized buying experience.

Automated Personalization will set your ecommerce store apart from others and build relationships between your business and your customers.