In case of an online retail domain, personalization increases total spending, which is a function of how many users there are, how often they come and how many SKUs they buy, while having positive impact on customer experience.
Implementing all relevant use cases, added value is 5-15% revenue increase across the full customer base.
Real-time E-commerce Site personalization
Product recommendation
Definition
The personalization engine can automatically suggest relevant products or contents, based on data about the visitors, or feeds data to another application for purposes of making changes to the presentation layer. These are additional elements on the site where one or more products are displayed. The products displayed and their order are defined by the personalization engine.
Use cases
- Main page, “Special offer”
- Main page, “Have you seen these products?”
- Main category page, ”Recommended for you”
- Main category page, ”Popular”
- Subcategory page, ”Recommended for you”
- Item page, “Other products from the store”
- Item page, “Others bought this”
- Item page, ”Accessories”
- Cart page, ”Recommended for you”
- Cart page, ”Special discount”
- No result page, “Interesting”
- 404 page: … to redirect visitors to a valid site
- After purchase page
- Personalization of particular user registration and log-in campaigns
Personalized product listings
Definition
Personalized product listing means personal ordering of complete list of products displayed on the site according to the selected filtering criteria, for example, products from selected category, or all promotional products.
Search personalization
Definition
Search personalization includes the ability to customize or modify search results as search terms, either as search terms are being typed or on the search result page. The functionalities of a full-fledged search engine are supported, which will provide additional advantages for customizing and personalizing the on-site search experience.
Use cases
- Auto-complete, which means personalized search keyword recommendation based on proprietary algorithm
- Instant recommendations below the search box, aka type-ahead search based on keyword matching and personalized recommendations
- Personalized search result ordering, which means search result generated by Elasticsearch reordered by proprietary algorithm and click events on the previous search results
On-site personalization
Definition
On-site personalization includes the ability to present personalized, on-screen content or messages to a visitor based on specific data gathered about the visitors. This also includes the functionality to adjust elements of the page based on visitor characteristics, and it applies to any page of the site, whether it’s the landing page or subsequent pages.
Use cases
- Personalized carousel, which means selection of the most relevant carousel image for the given user in the main page carousel
- Personalized category ordering on the main page
- Personalized section ordering, which means modification the order of main page sections, for example, market, bestsellers, etc. based on personal preference
- Personalized behavioral pop-ups, which means to display a popup for a certain target group or it is triggered from an event, for example, exit intent popup with a promotional code, or welcome message for new visitors, or popup after a certain time of inactivity
- Personalized banners on the top or bottom of the page, which means to display banners (e.g. internal promotions) depending on user behavior
Mobile-commerce personalization
Definition
For separate mobile site and native mobile-commerce apps very similar use cases to the e-commerce site personalization can be implemented. Probably some adjustments are necessary due to the different form factor and due to differences in the UI, but the main recommendation scenarios and related logics should be the same.
Personalization of marketing campaigns
Personalized email marketing
Definition
Email marketing can include transactional emails (like order confirmations, purchase receipts, shipping notices, account creation), relational emails (like new subscriber welcome, gated content delivery, blog articles, survey / review, social update, contest announcement, referral request) and promotional emails (like promotional content, sale announcement, new product release, trial offers, upgrade offers). Personalization engine can help to increase the efficiency of several of these emails by personalizing the content, or the offer, or the sending time.
Personalization engine is capable to apply this functionality to other channels as well such as SMS or push notification.
Use cases
- Personalized product recommendation in transactional or relational emails
- Promotional product offers for promotional emails, where personalization engine selects from already discounted offers (both target product and target customer selection)
- Promotional product offers for promotional emails, where personalization engine identifies discounts for each product
- Email sending time personalization for relational or promotional e-mails based on the recipient’s response rate on past e-mails
- Email subject line personalization, which means to use the (short) title of recommended product in the e-mail subject line
Triggered emails and messages
Defnition
This functionality is a category separate from email marketing, because it requires a specific trigger to trigger the email. It enables sending marketing messages to customers in real time as response to customer activities. Messages can be triggered by any incoming events if the event is synchronized with the personalization engine. Messages can be delivered by 3rd party applications through multiple channels like email, SMS, push notification. This functionality can be combined with personalized email marketing to personalize the content of the triggered emails.
Use cases
- Triggered message sending by online events
- Triggered messages based on external events
- Personalized product recommendation in shopping cart abandonment email
Ad retargeting personalization
Definition
Personalization engine gathers data and use algorithms for recommendations and decisions, just like when provides on-site personalization. However, personalization engine takes the functionality a step further to personalize retargeting ads on third-party sites. Ad retargeting works for people (both known customers and anonymous visitors) who already visited the retailer’s website at least once and had been tagged. The display of advertisements is typically done through an integration with a 3rd party ad server or DSP.
Use cases
- Personalized product recommendation
- Promotional product offers, where personalization engine selects from already discounted offers
- Promotional product offers, where personalization engine identifies discounts for each product. The amount of discount given is specified based on business rules and customer lifetime value and running A/B tests.
