A real-time customer-website interaction is similar to an in-store one-on-one interaction. The initial goal in-store and online is to close the sale. Just like a salesman gathers information from customers through conversation, your website gathers information through visitor actions and behaviors. As you understand more about your potential customers, you can fine-tune your responses, engage, and better educate them on the offerings that are relevant to each person. It’s time that your website drives these conversations.
There are so many ways to utilize real-time personalization, but what does it look like? In this eBook, we will show you 25 ways to do real-time so that you can take a first time visitor from initial introduction to conversion and advocacy.
REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
VISITATION INTO CONVERSION
25 WAYS TO DOREAL-TIME WEBSITE PERSONALIZATION
REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
STAGE ONE: PREVENT BOUNCE
WELCOME A NEW VISITOR BASED ONGEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
Knowing where the visitor is coming from allows you to better understand where they may be interested in going. It enables you to share relevant information to keep the visitor engaged. In the pop-up to the right, the site recognized that the visitor is geographically based in another country. Visitors may bounce if they don’t believe an ecommerce site can ship a product to them. Gardener’s Supply Company has the ability to decrease the likelihood that an international customer will bounce whwen they see that the company can ship items to them.
IDENTIFY A VISITOR BASED ON THE KEYWORD SOURCE
The method in which a visitor reaches your site can help you identify aspects of his or her persona right away. Understanding what phrase or words a visitor searched allows you to know what relative information the visitor is looking for. For example, a visitor who searched a developer related keyword would see a version of Acquia’s webpage which emphasizes the available developer kit.
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EMPHASIZE RELEVANT CONTENT TO IDENTIFIED PERSONA!
REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
CREATE A SPECIAL OFFER BASED ONTHE VISITOR’S WEB SOURCE
Certain sources generally yield higher or lower quality traffic. For example, visitors derived from LinkedIn are higher quality for B2B companies, while Facebook yields lower quality traffic. However, B2C companies have higher conversion rates with Facebook generated visitors. If you have a source that sends you a lot of traffic, but rarely converts you can make a special offer for them. To the left is an example offer targeted to Pinterest visitors.
ENGAGE A USER WHO HAS BEEN SITTING ON YOUR LANDING PAGE
Visitors who have been on-site for up to a minute but have not clicked on anything are in limbo. You have not lost them, but you have not caught their attention either. In this instance, you can change your content offerings or bring attention to something new to keep their engagement and push for a click.
BRING ATTENTION TO SIMILAR CONTENT
The behavior of scrolling to the bottom of a content containing page displays a level of customer reading interest. If you know what topic the visitor is interested in, you can choose other relevant content to display. The goal is to ascertain a click to start the relationship.
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REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
SURVEY UPON EXIT
Visitors who have been on-site for up to a minute but have not clicked on anything are in limbo. You have not lost them, but you have not caught their attention either. In this instance, you can change your content offerings or bring attention to something new to keep their engagement and push for a click.
STAGE TWO: BUILD A RELATIONSHIP
WELCOME BACK A RETURNING VISITOR
Everyone likes to be remembered, whether online or in person. Welcoming back a returning visitor increases the visitor’s engagement and builds upon the initial introductory relationship established in their first visit. You can offer a special promotion to returning customers to illustrate their value and bring them closer to purchasing.
PROMOTE NEW CONTENT RELATED TO PAST VISITS
Your visitors may have indicated specific interests through content they have viewed in the past. You can use this data to further connect the visitor’s interests with your company. If they previously viewed past blogs on a topic, show them your new blog on that subject. The more integrated your product and services become to a visitor’s values, the closer you become to a sale or lead.
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REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
CALLOUT RELEVANT CASE STUDIES
As soon as you understand who your visitor is, you can callout case studies and testimonials from past customers who were in similar situations. Proof of customer satisfaction and success is often the strongest persuading factor in a sale or lead.
CREATE A CHAT BAR
Although real-time allows you to have virtual conversations by reacting to your visitors, don’t forget about the old school method of real conversation. Provide a chat bar for visitors to ask questions, so that you can turn any objections into opportunity.
GIVE THE VISITOR A TASK LIST OR TOUR
Now that you know a little about the user’s intent, you can create a specialized task list or guided website tour. The goal is to educate the visitor, so that at the end they will be ready to convert!
MAKE AN INTEREST RELATED OFFER
The data you have collected may illustrate part of your visitor’s intent. Create an offer related to what your visitor has indicated they are searching for. For example, if a customer previously looked at a pair of boots, give them a coupon for shoe wear. Giving a customer a more favorable offer if they buy now, may create urgency and allow you to close the sale.
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REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
RESPOND BASED ON INTERACTIVE TOOL USE
Interactive tools contain levers that users pull as they make adjustments. You can analyze which levers they are altering to identify areas of concern or interest. Then, you can pull up relevant content or demo offerings. For example, Evergage offers an ROI calculator. If a user is repeatedly experimenting with churn rates, we might promote our churn e-book.
INSERT AN IN-LINE MESSAGE
Personalization does not always need to be obvious to the user. You can utilize in-line messages to create dynamic content, like headlines or ordered lists, promoting the most relevant information based on the user’s profile. In-line messages can also be used to promote customer success, like in the example below.
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COMPARE A VISITOR’S PATH TO POPULAR CONVERSION PATHS
Analytics applications, such as Google Analytics, can identify popular conversion paths. Track the path your current visitors are taking with a tool like Evergage and compare. Then, you can understand where visitors are deviating and put them back on the right path with real-time campaigns.
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REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
STAGE THREE: CONVERT YOUR VISITORS
USE DYNAMIC CALL-TO-ACTIONS
Each time a customer completes a call-to-action you can alter the content. As you understand more about a visitor, the call-to-action buttons and offers on the site can become more relevant and targeted. Conversion doesn’t always mean a sale or lead, getting the visitor fully involved is half the battle. Each stage in a customer’s visit offers a different form of conversion, all valuable in the journey to the end sale or lead.
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PROVIDE A BENEFIT FOR A USER ID
If you can find a way to provide a benefit for entering in some sort of user ID, then you can merge behavior across browsers and visits. An example of a provided benefit could be that a user who creates a sign-in receives 15% off their first purchase. Once a user is signed in you can gather additional information about the visitor in order to provide him or her with the most valuable offers in future visits.
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REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
SHOW A TOUR OR TASK COMPLETION MESSAGE WITH A TARGETED OFFER
Visitors who have completed your smart tour or task list have already been fully educated. You have gathered information about them along each step or action, and the visitor has indicated a high level of interest. Now it’s time to show a tour completion message with an extremely targeted offer. Below is an example of what visitors might see if they indicated interest in cloud services throughout a tour of Acquia’s content.
ASK A QUESTION LIKE SALESPERSON
Your sales team is comprised of customer response experts. Find out what questions your sales team asks leads and ask your online visitors the same things. Then, promote content that mirrors what a sales representative would respond with based on their answers.
UTILIZE SHORT FORMS
Although short forms may not provide as much initial information, visitors who fill out forms can be tracked. This means that you can utilize shorter forms to gain more initial interaction, and then track visitor behavior to make a more targeted follow-up offer.
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REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
DRIVE VISITORS TO A THIRD PARTY REFERENCE
If you understand someone is interested in a specific feature or benefit, promote a 3rd party reference such as a review or blog article on that topic. The goal is to validate and strengthen the claims you have made about how you can help the visitor.
CREATE A POP-UP OFFER
At this stage you can pop-up an offer. Give visitors the ability to accept it or say they are not ready yet and would rather be reminded later. One thing visitors don’t like doing is giving out personal information. This is why you often get junk data in a lead if visitors are not ready to convert. To improve the accuracy of your data, only make offers to engaged users when they tell you something with a click. Then, give them something in return such as a white paper or access to a tool.
STAGE FOUR: TURN USERS INTO ADVOCATES
JUST ASK
One of the best ways to get a re-tweet or a share is to simply ask. You already know this visitor is super engaged as they have converted. Why not simply ask them to help you out by mentioning you, sharing content, or in some way promoting you?
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REAL-TIME WEB PERSONALIZATIONFor Marketers & Customer Success Professionals
Real-Time Web Personalization
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CALLOUT SOCIAL SHARING
Once successful conversion is completed, you can ask customers to promote the content you gave them in return. Online you can do this with simply a click of the button. By incorporating call-outs into these resources, you can facilitate this sharing process.
PROVIDE A SAMPLE TWEET OR PROMOTION
Make it easier for users to share content by creating a lazy tweet, like the one below, that will pop up when a user clicks on one of your callouts. The easier the process is the more likely people will follow through with it.
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