4 Personalization Strategies to Improve CRO

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a buzzword to some. To others, it’s a well-executed strategy to turn more visitors to customers. But what, exactly, does it entail?

To put it simply, conversion rate optimization is an ongoing process of refining and optimizing an experience or service you offer your customers, in order to encourage them to take the desired action. 

For example, getting website users to submit their personal details via a form on your site. If they take this action, it’s classified as a conversion. Conversions are the gold we seek in any digital business. They are the evidence that we’re doing something right.

How do you raise your conversion rate?

Raising your conversion rate is a strategic process based on insight, careful monitoring, testing and ongoing optimization. Hence; conversion rate optimization. A properly executed CRO program will make use of analytical data to build ideas and theories around what customers want. 

Fine-tuning and tweaking your products and services based on conversion rate insights has a dual benefit. You better serve your customers in the process and once you find that sweet spot, you convert more leads or visitors into customers

When it comes to what customers want from a business or brand, being treated as an individual holds a lot of merit. Making your customer feel unique goes a long way towards securing their business. That’s why personalization can help motivate customers to make use of your services or to buy your products.

Personalization is not a new concept, but it’s still worthy of your consideration as a marketing technique. Statistics from Accenture have shown that customers are more than willing to hand over their personal information if it means that they will benefit from it with more personalized service. 

In fact, 83% of customers will happily do so. According to the same report shared by Accenture, “91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.”

Customers appreciate it when you address them personally as part of your email marketing strategy or when engaging via customer support. Personalization works. This is why a personalization strategy is an excellent tactic to employ when trying to improve your conversion rate optimization. Here are four ideas for implementing personalization strategies that can be used to help raise your conversion rate.

1. Understand what your customers want to see and show it to them

The process of monitoring, analyzing and fine-tuning gives you a great opportunity to learn everything about your customers. If you’ve engaged in any voice of the customer (VOC) or customer surveys, or used an IVR call center system, you probably also have access to deep insights about customer preferences. This is valuable information that can be used to ensure your customer gets exactly what he or she wants.

There are multiple ways to gain these priceless insights. For example, search history and past purchases can help you match up similar products that your customer might be interested in. You can also sift through customer responses that come through on your call software to glean more insight about their preferences.

Your customer can also self-segment by answering a few key questions upon entering your website or online store. This data is then added to their customer profile for use further down the line. It can be pulled into personalized communications, or even to feed them specific content based on their preferences. 

Once you know what your customer wants to see more of, show these potential matches to them. If they click on them but don’t go so far as to make a purchase, you understand what your customer might be interested in, but missed the boat in delivering exactly what they wanted. If they click and buy, you’re on the right path to optimization.  

This is where ongoing refinement comes into play. If it doesn’t work the first time, try again. Learning what your customers want to see is a continual process of trial and error. Once you get it right, your customer is happy and your CRO has proven successful.

2. Focus on assisting customers first

Start by thinking about what your customer wants and expand outwards from there. By adopting a customer-centric approach to everything you do, you’re putting your customer and their needs first.

• If you operate sales or customer service over the phone, use your cloud-based contact center as the first port of call in determining where your customer satisfaction lies

• Read customer reviews and respond to them

• Actively improve what you offer and make these changes visible

• Show your customers you are consistently working towards fixing issues

• Make sure everything you offer is simple and intuitive

• Don’t make your customers work hard to get what they need or want from you

• Put them first and align your offering to suit their preferences.

3. A/B test your ideas

Implementing a CRO program naturally comes with a lot of changing, adapting and fixing. Testing out new ideas or hypotheses is a necessary component of CRO, and one of the best ways to do this is A/B testing.

Segment your audience into separate groups (based on demographics, interests or some other defining point) to better understand a number of different factors that might affect the personalization process. 

For example, if you are sending out a holiday email to capitalize on the additional traffic during this time, send variations of your holiday communication to your separate groups. Analyze the uptake of this communication to gain a better understanding of how each group responds to the personalized content. Determine which demographics respond best to personalization, or what kind of personalization works best overall.

4. Alter your CTAs to suit specific segments

Every element of your communications needs to be created with your customer in mind. Whether you manage enterprise communications solutions or are a one-person team, it should be the core focus of what you do. A huge part of what you do is reliant on the strength of your calls to action (CTAs).

Generally speaking, a call to action will be the same for everyone across the board. Some people will respond to it and others won’t. And that’s exactly the point. Some people won’t respond to certain CTAs because the content doesn’t speak to, engage or entice them. Use your analytics to see which CTAs work for which customers and switch them up a bit.

You can create a stream of different CTAs that work together, almost like a step-by-step process. Once a customer has moved through the first call to action, the CTAs change according to where they are in the sales or conversion process. Start here; You’re almost there; This is the next step, etc.

Implementing a CRO program that comes across as intuitive makes it seem as though you are joining the customer journey, rather than simply communicating offers and promotions to them.

Conclusion

As you embark on this journey, you will discover so many new attributes to communicating with your customers that you possibly never knew existed. What is CCaaS? How can it benefit your customers? What more can you be doing to improve their experience? How else can you personalize your offering in order to make customers feel appreciated and wanted? 

All of these questions will find answers as part of the ongoing testing and improving process that comes with improving your CRO. 

Improving your CRO will naturally enhance the entire online experience offered to your customers. Over time as you start to see higher levels of traffic that converts, you will improve your website performance and streamline your user journey. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.