Tips for Personalizing Your Ecommerce Marketing

Small retailers enjoy an edge over big-box stores: They’ve got the personal touch. They know their customers, greet them by name and suggest products that they might like. Shouldn’t your small ecommerce site use the same type of personal touch?

There are many ways to implement personalization in your ecommerce marketing strategies, and marketing automation tools to make this simple even for small companies. Here are some ideas for making your ecommerce marketing more personal—even if you never see your customers face to face.

• Offer personalized product recommendations. As customers browse your website, use personalization tools to suggest related or complementary purchases to what they’re looking at. For example, someone who’s looking at tents on your website might also see suggestions for sleeping bags or inflatable air mattresses.
• Use customers’ past purchasing history to send targeted emails. For example, you could send reminder emails when something they bought that’s consumable might need to be replenished (like dog food) or when the kind of bathing suit they regularly buy every summer goes on sale.
• Send personalized emails. Some of the most basic ways to get personal with email include making sure emails address recipients by name, and segmenting your customer lists so that different demographic groups receive different emails. For example, customers in one ZIP code might get different offers; moms of infants should receive different emails than retired single men.
• Personalize the website experience. If your customers have accounts with you, you can have the site greet them with their names when they log in, for example.

Information is key to personalizing your website and ecommerce marketing. The good news is that customers have become more open to sharing personal information if it makes for a better online experience. Gather as much data as you can—such as whether this is a new customer or a returning shopper, their location, the type of device they’re using (what platform, whether it’s mobile or not), and any demographics you can obtain. The more you know, the more you can shape your marketing message to the customer’s personal preferences.

Talk to your website developer about apps or plugins that can personalize your ecommerce website. Also ask your email marketing service provider about ways to personalize your email messaging.

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