Where’s the personalization survival guide?

March 12th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

5 Survival Guides

For anyone craving more information on many popular terms associated with online marketing, Oneupweb offers five free guides:

SEO Survival Guide - More than 100 terms related to natural search.
Paid Search Survival Guide - Essential information for successful PPC advertisers.
Social Media Survival Guide - Conquer the world of consumer-generated content.
Blogging Survival Guide - Discover online empowerment through corporate blogging.
Eye Tracking Survival Guide - Improve your online presence; see what your market sees.

Sadly, there’s no mention of a web personalization survival guide. But I’m not surprised because the whole concept of web personalization remains underused and misunderstood…at least for now. With any luck, e-commerce marketers will soon look for life beyond the predictable tactics of search, email, etc. And by “beyond life”, I really mean stepping up and trying new things - that’s what living is, right?

It’s not about finding new budgets either. It’s about spending existing budgets differently. For the converted (pardon the pun), the measurable impact of web personalization is significant in terms of lifts to conversion and revenue.

My moral of this post - just because everyone else keeps sinking more and more money into search and email doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Just look at your analytics and you’ll see reports that highlight the continual failures with this type of follower mentality.

Instead you should take “the norm” as a cue to be different. Consumers are being wooed in every direction. Think beyond the “woo” factor (aka acquiring new customers with a wam-bam approach - I got you here and now your mine!!! This rarely succeeds for the long term).

Now don’t get me wrong. Acquisition is important. But real customer value is earned when you factor in the “wow factor” (aka converting and retaining with a personalized approach that thinks beyond the landing page…an approach that is customer-centric, vs corporate-centric).

Who’s up for the challenge?

Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Conversion, Customer Experience, Email marketing, Personalization, Search Marketing, Social Media, Web Analytics, eCommerce |