Online personalisation: boost your marketing results!

Date
1 June 2022

In June, the Emerce E-commerce Live! event took place. It proved a day devoted entirely to all things e-commerce. Panel discussions, case presentations and round table sessions played host to discussions regarding the different facets, challenges, and developments in the world of e-commerce. Naturally, iO was there. In fact, our own CRO consultant Sietske Vaessen of campus Amsterdam led one of the round table sessions. This begs the question: what does Sietske do and what was her table’s hot topic?

Online personalisation | iO

As a CRO consultant, Sietske helps companies optimise their online customer journeys. Every day she spends on A/B-testing, data analysis, persuasion, UX and online personalisation with the latter topic – online personalisation – serving as the focus of her round table session. A veritable hot topic in digital marketing that’s all about the right message, at the right time, to the right person. After all, the more pleasant - and thus more relevant - the online user experience, the better your marketing results!

Online personalisation based on personalisation segmentation framework

When companies want to boost conversion on their website or web shop, Sietske always starts off by focusing, in close collaboration with the client, on their 'personalisation segmentation framework’ first and foremost. This framework comes with all the predetermined business and communication objectives (KPIs), as well as the prominent target groups (segments) needed to achieve objectives.

Across the board, each target group is given special attention: what are the challenges they deal with? What are the questions on their minds? How to reach them online? And which – hard and soft – conversions belong to a particular segment? Through clear formulation of each objective and by relying on thorough research into each target group, the segments up for personalisation reveal themselves. The same goes for the problems you get to take care of for each one.

RFM segmentation - Recency, Frequency, Monetary

One of Sietske's round table guests: the e-commerce manager of a large organisation in the business of children's fashion. Her presence soon led to the topic of RFM segmentation. RFM is a popular method for online personalisation in which you take three separate factors into account:

Recency
You observe the amount of time that has passed since your customer's last activity or transaction with the brand. In other words, recency. Examples of activity: a purchase made, a website visit or the use of a mobile app. In fact, the more recent a certain customer has interacted or transacted with a brand, the more likely that customer is to respond to that brand’s communication.

Frequency
Next, we consider frequency. How often did a customer perform transactions or interacted with the brand over a certain period? Frequent customers are more involved and – probably – more loyal compared to customers who rarely engage with a brand.

Monetary
Finally, the monetary factor indicates how much a customer has spent on the brand over a certain period. Big spenders are entitled to a different treatment compared to customers with modest spending.

Relevance is key

During her session, Sietske presented a few striking examples of successful e-commerce cases of iO Campus Amsterdam. She discussed personalisations with considerate conversion increases for her clients. In each case, the customer journey acts as the starting point for optimisation.

Take her work for Businbedrijf.nl, for example. Busbedrijf.nl is a web shop for anyone who wants to furnish and transform their company car. Based on previously viewed products, an algorithm determined the most relevant products for each returning visitor of Businbedrijf.nl - think the brand of the car, as well as model and year of manufacture. The result: a 39% conversion increase.

bus in bedrijf | iO

Another example: our client Verf.nl. In addition to the web shop, Verf.nl maintains a physical store in Amsterdam. This location had just opened, leaving the ambition to attract more customers for a visit. Sietske and her team developed an overlay in which visitors were invited to pay the store a visit. This overlay was visible only to people within a 10 km radius of Amsterdam. Unfortunately, we couldn’t measure the actual number of store visitors but the traffic on the shop’s page with the address, route and opening hours could be. That page’s traffic increased over fivefold shortly after the overlay went live.

verf.nl | iO

In short: where can one be found in the orientation, decision and buying processes? What intention does each visitor have while progressing the various steps and which influencing techniques best fit their intentions? Positive reviews, for example, work well at the start of the funnel while appealing to the senses of urgency and scarcity often prove successful at the end.

Online personalisation as a continuous process

Finally, Sietske made it crystal-clear that personalisation is never a project, always a process. That means continuously optimising results by:

  • Developing and testing new personalisations;

  • Defining new segments and recognising them afterwards;

  • Designing appropriate journeys for these segments;

  • Influencing these segments with appropriate and persuasive messages.

Ezra de Bie

Ezra de Bie

CRO Consultant

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