Prefer to read what's in the video? See below for the transcript:

---

Make it Personal: Applying Your Dynamic Content Personalization Strategy

What This Webinar Involves:

• Opportunities and Challenges
• Real-World Examples
• Defining a Personalization Strategy
• Quick Wins

Introduction:

Thanks for joining me! This is a topic that I spend a lot of time with - helping companies define their digital marketing strategy and roadmap. In addition, dynamic personalization is typically a major part of those plans. I am going to first explain what precisely dynamic content personalization is, touch on some of the pitfalls, and provide an approach to get avoid them.

One Size Content Does Not Fit All Customers:

Let’s start with the basics. What is “Dynamic Personalization”? It’s when we use a platform that can acquire data about a user and build intelligence into your website – no more static pages with the same thing for everyone but conditional logic that displays various permutations of content to produce a more relevant UX.

As we will cover, there are several levels of personalization

• Simple rule-based "digital fingerprint" data
• Behavior-based data
• User segmentation
• Cross-channel
• Social aggregate data

What is "Dynamic Website Personalization"?:

To put it simply… dynamic personalization is taking Conditional logic and Variations of content to create Relevant UX. Because, a relevant UX combined with clearly identifiable actions within the website can result in higher measurable conversions.

Now, let’s talk about those different levels of personalization, which increase in complexity. The first, and simplest, is rule-based "digital fingerprint" data.

Rule-Based Conditional Logic:

• If geographic location is X, show A
• If search phrase is X, show B
• If email campaign is X, show C
• If referring website is X, show D

Next is behavior-based condition, which centers on the actions the user has taken. Some behavior-based conditions take a little more sophistication in that you determine what attributes you want to know about a user (product types, interests, purchase intent) and determine which actions score them as belonging to a profile.

Behavior-Based Conditional Logic:

• If viewed product X, show E
• If first visit, show F
• If goal X triggered, show G
• If profile X, show H

Segmentation rules put users in groups or a particular state in a larger flow. The group could be users who have interacted with a particular campaign, clicked through a particular email, or have made a previous purchase. Also, users that have NOT completed a purchase; such as having abandoned a cart with items in it.

Segmentation Conditional Logic:

• If customer segment X, show I
• If state is [cart abandoned], show J

Lastly, the pinnacle is the ability to introduce conditions based on other systems – what your CRM, E-Com, social platforms, or e-mail marketing systems know about the user. In some cases, enterprise CXM platforms like Sitecore are already integrating these so it is less of a challenge. Typically, there is still a back-office system, ERP or CRM, which contains some valuable customer data that could factor into making the user’s website experience more relevant. This requires some development integration for the two systems to talk with each other.

Aggregated Conditional Logic:

• CRM data records
• E-Commerce data records
• Social media profile access

Finding That Fine Balance:

Now a word of caution when it comes to personalization: On one hand, consumers are expecting a tailored/relevant experience but on the other-hand, they are sensitive about security and personal data exposure. Therefore, we have a balancing act constantly with Personalization of TMI vs. Value. On the other end of the seesaw, you want to avoid making meaningless personalization changes too. Effective personalization requires time, analysis, and strategy or it can have negative or simply no significant results. However, staying out of the game is not an attractive option either. The best way to protect from these situations is Analytics.

This topic of dynamic personalization itself is not new – rooted in Amazon.com since the late 90s. I wrote about dynamic personalization in 2011 when CXM platforms like Sitecore just released this capability. But what is new is that 2014 brought back a renewed interest in analytics, which was sorely needed because we ultimately need to remember WHY are we personalizing this piece of content or that. Moreover, prove it is moving the needle. Systems such as Sitecore introduced their xDB, using MongoDB for big data storage to account for this much larger collection of data and reporting. We have the ability to preview our many personalization scenarios and see how often their being triggered… and if conversion and engagement value are increasing or not.

Putting Personalization to Work:

I wanted to show at least one real-world use case of personalization to help you get some ideas going of how this could be applied to your business. Now, this was not intended to be a shameless plug but the one site I have free-reign over is our own – Roundedcube.com. So, I will show you a little bit of how we apply personalization using Sitecore. Then we will talk about the approach and methodology that leads up to executing something like this.

So, on the homepage of Roundedcube.com, we have what we call the "Hero" component. Notice that it is not a carousel that you swipe through – it is a single featured piece of content. That was intentional because we are using personalization to serve up what seems to be the most relevant content to the individual user. To the left we have our “default” feature… it gives a thousand foot view of what Roundedcube is about “building digital customer experiences”. Then we have about a dozen other potential hero messages that could appear based on Conditions we have defined.

Now keep in mind that all of these variations need to be goal-oriented. As I mentioned at the beginning, Personalization is in simple terms "Conditional Logic + Content Variations to produce a More Relevant UX". And the important question - Why? Because an improved UX + Clear CTA leads to increased Conversions. So, to see if personalization is working, we need clearly defined metrics. In this use-case, our "why" is we want to drive users to high-value pages that imply Consideration to our S&M team; and then ultimately to a contact form that when submitted equals Conversion. In addition, we can measure and compare the Value and Conversions of visits that have seen the various personalized messages.

Getting Started:

So, what is the process to ensure you are using personalization effectively? I will give you a run-through of the concepts to consider and our methodology for implementing dynamic personalization. While some of the terminologies I use (such as Goals, Engagement Value, Campaigns) pertain to Sitecore specifically, other systems share the same overall concepts.

Strategy

We can typically address this in two primary workshop sessions. In the first workshop, we focus on taking the business’s known audiences and drilling that down into more detailed variations or Segments based on the audience’s potential Conditions (where they are, what they searched, what they’ve purchased, etc.).

During this workshop, be sure to keep your focus here on HIGH-VALUE segments and involve Sales and Customer Service Reps that know the customers best. This workshop defines the Strategy/Purpose behind personalization and will result in our most important segments being defined.

Tactics

The next workshop gets into the details of spec’ing out what on your website you will personalize and how you will measure it. As a group, we review the website looking for opportunities in the user flow to personalize Components with more relevant content resulting in a Personalization Specification Document that the Content Authors can use to produce alternate content and assign personalization rules that trigger their appearance. With each suggested personalization, always ask the question of which measurable goal do you anticipate this personalized content impacting.

Implementing Quick Wins:

Lastly, I encourage you to focus on quick wins and avoid these common roadblocks.

Analysis Paralysis – we are not launching anything until we figure out how to use ALL of it.

Governance Grievances – IT and Marketing have to understand the shared ownership involved and work together. Neither can work in a silo and pull this off.

Org Chart Abyss – this does indeed introduce more work to actively measure the website experience, create additional content, and report on the results. Make sure you have the bandwidth and the talent.

In addition, if you are on the Sitecore platform, I have a blog series out there that gives you a quick five steps to get these concepts up and running.