[Webinar Recap] From 0 to 100: Creating Compelling Personalized Experiences

Did you miss the recent webinar, From 0 to 100: Creating Compelling Personalized Experiences, presented by Blue Acorn iCi and Adobe Commerce? We’ve got you covered. In this recap, let’s go from 0 to 100 and learn how to create personalized experiences.

Webinar hosts:

• Chase Bruch – Vice President of Customer Intelligence at Blue Acorn iCi
• Ryan Green – Principal Commerce Product Marketing at Adobe
• Rohan Bhatt – Product Marketing Manager at Adobe

Why Personalize?

Focusing on personalization efforts can help companies meet high customer expectations and improve digital touchpoints which can lead to a strong return on investment. Like other marketing initiatives or programs, personalization takes time to get it right.

Bhatt explained, “When organizations focus on personalization, we see things like acquisition costs fall as much as 50%, global revenue rise by over 15%, and marketing spend efficiency rise by over 30%. There’s a solid, measurable impact that helps you to drive business results for KPIs that matter.”

Instead of thinking about personalization as something you can quickly turn on, consider it as a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, or 0 mph, we have undifferentiated static experiences, meaning it’s the same experience for every customer. On the other end of the spectrum, at 100 mph, we have real-time one-to-one personalization at scale leveraging every omnichannel interaction of a specific customer.

During this conversation, the speakers presented a poll to gauge how attendees handle personalization efforts. From the results, most participants focus on the basics and getting the data right.

“Many companies are early in their digital maturity curve, and it’s okay to be in the infancy of that journey. We are seeing people at the 25 mph realm, but their aspirations are a lot larger than their current functionality,” stated Bruch.

With many capabilities to drive more personalized experiences, many teams aren’t maximizing their potential investment. Using the right tools will help drive the speed curve and move companies closer to 100 mph.

Starting Personalization at 0 Miles Per Hour

When starting on the personalization spectrum, lead with the business objective and ensure the team can measure it.

Here are a few questions to guide the starting point of a personalization program:

• What’s important to the organization?
• Are you focused on lead generation? Conversion rate? Other metrics?
• Are analytics tools implemented?
• Is the data accurate?
• Is the team focused on data quality and monitoring to ensure the data stays accurate?
• Do you have reporting and dashboards that point to data sets and build a picture of what happens on the website?
• Is there a hypothesis starting to form based on user behavior patterns on your website?

Bruch provided insight, “If you skip a step or don’t have comprehensive data quality monitoring in place, you could be pulling information into your analytics systems that could trigger a false positive. Be slow and calculated with your fundamentals and ensure that you really trust that data as you build up toward actionability.”

Increasing Personalization to 50 Miles Per Hour

Welcome to the test and learn part of the personalization spectrum. At this point, teams are in motion, determining what’s happening and hypothesizing how to influence it. The speakers were excited about this part of the journey because companies now have enough information to be actionable.

“What I love about personalization and optimization is that it’s based on a feedback loop. Learn, analyze, test, see what happens, and do it again,” explained Bruch.

Here are a few questions organizations should consider while at 50 mph:

• What do customers want to see on the page during the first site visit?
• Are you showing the right products to the right customer at the right moment by personalizing search results?
• Is the website delivering personalized content to drive customers from discovery to purchase?
• Do you have a big search bar at the top of the page or a small icon bubble in the corner that may be hard to find?
• Do you expect customers to search using the exact terminology or terms they want?
• Is the experience fast?

“Over 30% of commerce revenues come from product recommendations, but over 60% of firms are not doing any one-to-one personalization for product recommendations. This is a huge missed opportunity,” Bhatt explained.

Here are some common product recommendation mistakes:

• Not incorporating buyer context
• Using the same recommendations across many pages
• Not having product recommendations at all

Path to Personalization at 100 Miles Per Hour

Teams that have hit 100 mph have done their homework and are committed to a system that allows for future improvements and scaling. At this point, A/B testing is done at a higher velocity, operations are on lockdown, and teams have built a deeper understanding of micro-segments.

There’s never a finish line with personalization. Teams will continue to refine and squeeze out ROI. The strategies discussed during this webinar can be used to create better customer experiences and improve ROI. If you want to enhance your personalization efforts by taking them from 0 to 100, learn how Blue Acorn iCi can help. Contact us today.

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