How to Use Personalization Marketing to Increase Conversions
When you plan a landing page campaign you instantly think of copy, design and calls-to-action. This is not wrong, just like your competitors you need to consider these elements.
However to get the edge on your competition you should also consider marketing personalization.
Leveraging the information you know about your users and website visitors will let you offer up personalized landing pages that present the most relevant information possible.
The visitors to your landing pages are not one and the same, they think differently, come from different places and want different things. They’re human pretty much.
To market to them effectively we need to understand which channels they have taken to reach your landing page and what state of mind they are in.
The visitor context is the new King in town!
Personalization Checklist: Download my free PDF checklist to learn 8 ways to personalize landing page as well as how to prioritize your conversion rate optimization activities.
Segmenting your campaign traffic and serving personalized landing pages allows you to deliver relevant messaging, that not only speaks to the customer more directly, but also to what stage they are at in the buying process.
In this article we will analyze three ways you can personalize your campaign landing pages and dig deeper into campaign case studies that show how personalization marketing can sometimes increase landing page conversions rates.
By personalizing landing pages based on incoming keyword, geolocation and self-segmentation we’ll learn how to employ one to one marketing tactics to improve your landing page results.
Personalization can increase revenue and that’s what we all want, but we can’t forget to fix the big leaks in our conversion funnel first and always remember to be testing personalization against a no personalization control.
NOTE: Scroll to the bottom or read to the end to get the bonus resource on personalization marketing
What is one to one or personalization marketing?
Personalization has been around since the advent of direct mail, like when a letter had your name on it enticing you to open the piece of junk mail!
It is about taking all the information and data you have for a customer to create a great user experience, that compels them to take a desired action.
This could be to generate a lead, get a sign up, or produce sales.
Some ways of targeting for web personalization include geolocation, incoming keywords, ad content and referring websites. There are more available with deep behavior-based targeting that take into account who the visitor is and what they have done on your website.
Personalization with Incoming keyword increases conversions by 115%
California closet hired Big Giant Conversions to conduct a test where headlines and sub headings were dynamically changed to match the PPC ad copy identically.
This is known as message match.
Message match is a measure of how closely your landing page headlines and copy matches the call to action that was clicked to arrive at the landing page.
The winning landing page changed the headline and subheading dynamically to personalize them to the visitors ad copy.
Here we learn that copy relevancy, down to a keyword level, really makes a difference. Personalized pages convert higher, in this case 115% more lead generation form submissions.
Nationwide Insurance increased conversions using Geo-Location
Here we see two versions of the same Nationwide landing page, a leading insurance provider.
The hypothesis for the test was that by serving targeted imagery they could increase the number of form completions for insurance requests.
By using geo-location to serve a personalized landing page to prospects they saw significant lift and won a gold ribbon for PPC landing pages in the WhichTestWon 2013 testing awards.
They tested the page only targeting visitors from cold regions and serving them the snow design.
Since we all want to maximise our leads and sales per dollar, this is great reminder and an example of the importance of segmentation and personalization in landing pages.
Self-segmentation vs On-page form - Which one converted 110% more leads?
Self segmentation is another form of personalization. Allowing visitors to segment themselves based on a qualifying question and then subsequently serving them different funnel content.
Here we learn that personalization does not always work and remember that it is important to test personalization against a no personalization control.
Iomega now LenovaEMC increased lead generation form completions by 110% at a 99% confidence level by removing a self segmentation step from their lead generation funnel.
The hypothesis was that as the conversion funnel was shorter, conversions would go up; even though the content would be less personalized.
Correct, again remember to test personalization against a control.
Conclusion
Now we understand three of the eight ways we can personalize our landing pages to increase conversion and more importantly, revenue!
I’ve put together a bonus resource for those who want to learn more, in it we will:
- Dip deeper into all 8 core ways you can use personalization marketing in your landing pages.
- The exact process I use to prioritize my optimization tests, taking into account test duration, ease of use, business impact and cost of advertising. This helps tremendously with the ROI of campaigns and client campaigns.
Bonus Resource: Download my free PDF checklist resource now to learn the 8 ways to personalize landing page as well as how to prioritize your conversion rate optimization activities.
And don’t forget, if you have a coworker or friend who would benefit from better landing page optimization; pass this article and the bonus material along to them.
What are some ways you plan to apply personalization marketing to your website sales funnel? Let me know in the comments.
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Author Bio
Giles Thomas writes about Conversion Rate Optimization at Acquireconvert.com. He is also the founder of ux & conversion design agency WholeDesignStudios.com. He loves helping people improve their business or startup with marketing, design and strategy tips.
Photo credit: http://www.dionlabel.com/blog-reader/items/packaging-with-your-name-on-it.html
