Organizations are becoming more sophisticated with dynamic and personalized email programs.
So what is holding back targeting technology itself on websites?
Take delivery technology out of the equation, and one could comfortably argue that there’s not much difference between delivering someone an email and delivering someone a web page. I’ll explain why a bit later in the post.
Website customization has been around for a while and has been done with varying degrees of success. By ‘customization’ I mean the customization of certain images, text and logic within dynamically created pages for an individual. Ideally, the information that drives the logic is based on data such as:
• First time or repeat visitor?
• Reference source
• Pageviews historically
• Transaction history (for electronic commerce)
• Search terms used
• Location (country, city) by IP address
The logic follows that each user can receive a unique experience depending on any number of variables. Two users may not see the same page.
How much?
Degrees of sophistication range from automated personalization of advertising or recommended content (simple text/image changes) to complete restructuring of site design and process logic on a user-by-user basis, ie. a completely different web experience.
US Online Retailers Offering Personalization – emarketer
US Online Retailers Offering Personalization – emarketer
Additionally, some sites, such as the BBC, allow the end user to control the layout and granularity of the information/presentation they wish to access. In this sense, it is quite possible that no two users will see the same BBC home page.
Published research on personalization on leading e-commerce sites reveals that nearly three-quarters of them do not present any type of product recommendation, be it up-selling, cross-selling, or alternative product marketing.
One might wonder if this lack of personalized targeting within websites is the result of limitations in technology, priority, or imagination. Or maybe all three.
The example of Amazon
Amazon has been customizing its websites for quite some time using a combination of electronic logic guided by occasional human intervention. Amazon, however, is in the enviable position of having a vast set of transaction histories across multiple properties from which to derive some fairly sophisticated and well-informed guesses.
It makes perfect sense that Amazon, with its huge turnover and volume, would make incremental sales profits for personalized targeting.
However, Amazon is operating an enterprise-scale e-commerce model, selling finite inventory, with the goal of maximizing margins and sales.
So how can customization logic benefit other online models, with much smaller volumes, and what are the levels of sophistication one can (or should) aim for?
Email versus website
I would say that most organizations that have been sending personalized emails have already been doing some type of website customization.
Sending a user an email is simply no different than sending someone a page from your website. The difference is that the client has asked you to market to him at regular intervals of the advertisers choice.
Email Marketing: “I like your brand. Market me. Tell me what you think I need to know.”
This is one of the most compelling sales models out there and explains why email marketing offers such a high ROI.
So if marketers are smart enough to send users a single personalized page (in the form of an email), why do we still allow users to navigate multiple pages on our website without any guidance? , relevance or sophisticated personalization?
3 Things Holding Back Website Personalization and Behavioral Targeting
Number one – Technology
The truth is that behavioral targeting technology is not a simple beast. Creating dynamic, real-time or near-real-time, page-by-page or session-by-session personalization requires quite sophisticated programming, hardware, and architecture to deliver adequate results.
Very few content management systems or eCommerce platforms are capable of this.
The sheer complexity of integrating propensity-based targeting algorithms with other equally complex factors, such as server load capacity and caching, is a specialized field. This is arguably beyond the skills and experience of most technology providers.
Number two – Imagination
The concept of delivering personalized content and website experiences requires a lot of planning, thought, data, testing, and informed assumptions by experienced professionals to be effective.
Very few technology providers have the skills or experience “in-house”.
Number Three: Resources/Fruit Close at Hand/Not My Job
Personalization and targeting may require investment financially and from a resource/time perspective.
Many organizations cannot afford the particular time expenditure.
When was the last time you saw someone with the job title “Analytics & Marketing, Cross Data Source, Technical Integration Architect Manager”?
The concept of “best practice optimization” and sophisticated behavioral targeting is simply out of the scope of most people’s job letter. In short, it requires gaining experience from multiple disciplines.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that someone within the organization, ideally a CMO/CCO/CEO, needs to drive this type of initiative, aided by third-party expertise.
Summary
Brands must recognize that producing one-size-fits-all websites is indeed a blunt instrument.
Web technology, analytics and experience have come a long way and behavioral targeting as a concept, process and technology has developed to the point where it is viable.
The technology combined with the intellect behind it backed by commercially proven results are now at a stage where the concept and benefits to brands cannot be ignored.
Brands should try to implement behavioral targeting and personalization engines, even at a basic level, to improve acquisition and conversion, and ultimately to ensure a better overall user experience.
By doing so, brands will get a much better ROI on their investment in the web channel.
