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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Personalisation

Have you ever bought a musician’s autobiography on Amazon. com, and then returned to the homepage to get a suggestion to buy their latest album? This isn’t mind reading, but the power of Personalization.

Personalization uses data about users to create content that is unique and customized to each user. However, every stakeholder in this topic holds his/her own thoughts. This post looks at the advantages and disadvantages of personalisation for businesses and individual users.

Originally posted in December, 2014.

Updated in January 2018.

Let's start by looking at the digital trends, which are driving marketers in 2018.

Big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are among the top in the list. These are among the key elements of building personalised experience. Big data, together with AI technologies will enable marketers make better predictions about customer behaviour, covering more customised content, offers and marketing automation. This also results in a radical shift from traditional (static) to more dynamic content.

With personalizing content, businesses can become more efficient by displaying the relevant ads and content to the right users. This personalized content engages the customer much more and leads to a higher conversion rate, compared to generic, “one size fits all” content. For example, a 2013 Monetate/eConsultancy Study found that in-house marketers who are personalizing their web experiences (and are able to quantify the improvement) see on average a 19% uplift in sales. It also keeps the website looking fresh with relevant content. There are many options to deliver it with tools like visual Web Optimizer (read our previous blog post on A/B testing to learn more).

Positive web experience for a user is vital, as they engage with selected content that appeals to them the most. Staple examples of companies that are excellent at online personalization are Netflix and Amazon. They use previous purchases and other data to suggest products that users may find useful. The data does not have to be as complex as search history or previous purchases. Research by Capgemini shows that more than 60% of shoppers say they find it appealing when an online store remembers their personal details and payment information to speed up a purchase. Personalization can be as simple as a “Welcome Back” message with a user’s name.

A few personalization take-away’s:

[WEB]: welcome registered users by their first name and display content suggestions based on their past history; [WEB]: show multiple columns of important information to the new website visitors, and single column scroll-won for the returning visitors (read more on the digital marketing best practices of 2014); [WEB]: show content specific for user's location and language, e. g. agents in your area; [WEB]: display the most relevant HELP center Q&A’s based on past searches and browsed content; [WEB]: if a person coming from social post, customize the content they see to display what information it referred to in the post they clicked; [EMAIL]: customize email content based on the user’s history; [EMAIL]: include user’s name, company and/or relate to the past communication you held to continue the discussion.

Who did it well

Amazon has been at the top of the case studies for personalised content already for a few years. They cover a custom greeting, remember your past log in, recommend products based on your browsing history and past purchases. And it’s not just about the web experience, their email workflow is also set up for success, leading us all (consumers) to ‘unplanned purchasing decisions’.

Netflix is another great example to look after. They use very similar approach to Amazon, but then recommend shows and movies instead of real products. Check it out!

Though there are benefits of personalization, there are also some drawbacks to be named. Companies with personalized content usually have higher costs. It costs time and money to prepare content that would appeal to different segments. Instead of buying the typical banners, companies now have to spend money on tools and pay for different content and ads.

Some of the involved costs:

resources to map out the trigger-effect dimensions for personalization, monitor and optimize the performance; software and tools to collect, analyze and automate personalization factors; custom (more) creative and landing pages.

On the side of the consumer, the technology does not work a 100%. With the use of search history and cookies, there may be some failings that users find frustrating. For example, a student is searching for information about the French revolution, but he is personally interested in African history. He now gets Amazon recommendations on French revolution even though he has no longer any interest in the topic. This is just an example of how personalization may go wrong in some cases.

The Concern

The concerns on personalized content come mostly from users, where they raise privacy issues as a problem of web personalization. They feel they are being tracked, followed and watched to be sold something. Websites have responded with an opt-out option, but it can only be accessed only if asked for. This gives a Big brother vibe that is in effect right now. There is a lot of debate on web personalization and some of the privacy issues all around the world.

In 2018, Europe is also applying a new GDPR regulation, calling for much more specific consent requests when collecting personal data. With the arrival of the new legislation, double opt-in will become essential if you want to start or continue your personalisation effort in 2018. While this two-step approach will reduce the number of subscribers, you also must get a legal consent from all of your prospects (which you must be able to prove) before sending them any sort of marketing communication to avoid the regulator penalties. This might not sound overly new to some of the big corporations, but can definitely set limitations and cost extra buck for smaller businesses.

Here is what you need to keep in mind:

1. Send opt-in request to existing database

Send an email to all your existing subscribers and ask them to opt-in to keep them in your marketing communications list. You can also send a follow up email to those who do not respond to the initial opt in request, saying they will be “missing out on essential news”, if they do not opt-in to continue receive your emails.

2. Define opt-in statements for new sign ups

Set up the opt in field in your web forms before prospects can sign up and be added to your email list. Example consents: “I would like to receive future communications from COMPANY. Privacy Policy. Cookie Policy. Terms & Conditions.” or “Sign me up for personalised emails from COMPANY. By signing up, I agree to company’s Privacy & Cookie Policy, as well as their Terms and Conditions.”

The Bottom-line

So as you can see, with digital personalization there are advantages of more engaging content and higher conversions, but they also come at a higher cost. There should always be a balance between the two: a transparency from websites on the information collected and the clear power of choice for users to actually be tracked and monitored.

What are your views on Web personalization? How has it helped your business? What have been the challenges? Please leave a comment below and share your experience with the community.

30 website personalization and recommendations software tools

Product, offer and content recommendation services to help retailers and other businesses nurture prospects and increase conversion

The website personalization tools we recommend in this article enable you to segment visitors and then deliver personalized messages of the 'next best product' or 'next best content' within containers on your website as with the classic Amazon personalized recommendations (read their published methodology from this fascinating whitepaper from back in 2003). I originally wrote this post in 2010 when there were fewer personalization options. I have updated it annually since with recommendations provided via social media - do get in touch if you have a suggestion - TIA!

This is the latest 2019 update where we compare the full range of options from free personalization tools to low-cost and enterprise services across these five categories:

1. Analytics tools based personalization 2. Retail personalization 3. Content or commerce management system personalization 4. B2B website personalization as part of marketing automation 5. Personalization code libraries and modules (covers new 2018 announcement from Amazon)

Defining personalization

The opportunities for applying personalization are now much wider than the initial retail product recommendations. This definition of personalization from my Digital Business and Ecommerce management book shows the opportunities for applying personalization in all types of business.

"Digital experience personalisation is the dynamic serving of customised content, product or promotional offer recommendations to website visitors or app users based on their characteristics and intent behaviour to support conversion and long-term engagement goals".

Although many of us will have experienced personalization through retail product recommendations like those from Amazon, the definition shows the relevance of personalization to all types of businesses. For example, even B2B companies that don’t sell online can use personalization to recommend relevant 'next best content' offers to sustain prospects’ interest in a business and so nurture them towards a sale.

Access premium resource – Web Personalisation guide

This guide explains how to create a strategy and implement personalisation by showing you the options for delivering more persuasive, relevant dynamic web content at relevant points in the onsite customer journey for B2B and B2C sites.

The four categories of personalization and recommendations services

Category 1. Personalization integrated with web analytics

When web personalization services first appeared, they were part of expensive analytics solutions only available to the largest businesses, but today there are many services suitable for small businesses. These are two of the original services which are available today in a new guise and then a completely 'new kid on the block'.

Adobe Target is one of the most established personalization engines evolving from the original Touch Clarity back in 2004 and then integrated into the Omniture analytics suite as Test and Target IBM product recommendations - Coremetrics Intelligent Offer was w >The second category we review here is specifically for Ecommerce search and merchandising giving automated product placements using aggregated behavioural data (those that viewed this, also viewed that) and personal recommendations (you previously bought this and might like that).

These options can be considered the top retail personalization services that should be on your long-list for comparing if you're looking for a service which is separate from your ecommerce or content management solution.

If you're looking for a structured comparison between personalization services, I recommend this table-based feature comparison of personalization services from agency Freshegg.

Category 3. Personalisation features available as part of CMS or Commerce management systems

The third category wasn’t mentioned in the original post since personalization features were limited in CMS when the post was originally written in 2010, but I have updated in line with a suggestion in the comments.

According to the comment from Damien of Digicon, Episerver, Sitecore, Kentico and Adobe with Target have built-in tools to personalize content based on various rules, such as geo-location, search terms, referrers, lead scores and also provide more advanced personalization based on user behaviour and profiles.

Episerver has an interesting approach to personalization which they describe as 'No-rules personalization: more intelligence, less-work'. Rather than traditional rules-based personalization used by many of the specialist services, this applies machine learning and statistical analysis to visitor behavioral data to tailor category and product pages without the need for rules configuration.

The open source Ecommerce solution Magento also has personalization extensions available such as Product Personalisation, Commerce Stack.

Category 4. B2B, marketing automation, and publisher website personalization tools

Evergage is recommended as a tool that fits best in this category that has a wide range of options for serving personalization for content marketing in different placements on a site. Other alternatives for B2B personalization or non-retail consumer personalization are:

In the same what that the content management systems now integrate personalization, marketing automation systems have now started to include this option. These include:

HubSpot - includes a 'Smart Content' feature to provide relevant content. They explain: ' With Smart Content you can deliver content specifically tailored to where a prospect is in the buying process, or content targeted to people the very first time they visit. Smart Content lets you target content based on anything you know about your contacts which are known as personalization tokens'. It also offers personalization of calls-to-action. Marketo - Marketo has rules to convert the majority of anonymous visitors to a site based on previous interactions with site content. It also offers account-based marketing targeting of key accounts. Salesforce - This service uses the 'Einstein' AI feature for personalization to deliver the next-best product

5. Personalization code libraries and modules

At the end of 2018 Amazon made their Amazon Personalize service freely available, as part of Amazon Web Services. It’s billed as ‘Real-Time Personalization and Recommendation for Everyone’. As part of this initiative, Amazon have made their internal Machine Learning developer courses available as have Google. Their courses cover the fundamentals of machine learning and deep learning as well.

Email personalization services

Of course, Personalized recommendations aren’t limited to websites only, as you will know from Amazons’ newsletters. To learn more, I recommend this article explaining the inner workings of email marketing recommendation engines which reportedly boost click rates by 50-400%. It shows what to look for when finding the right tool to serve the recommendations inside your newsletter.

Thanks for all the comments sharing options in the post so far, please share others you recommend to build this list via our Twitter @Smartinsights.

By Dave Chaffey

Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of marketing publisher and learning platform Smart Insights. Dave is editor of the 100+ templates, ebooks and courses in the digital marketing resource library created by our team of 25+ digital marketing experts. Our resources are used by our Premium members in more than 100 countries to Plan, Manage and Optimize their digital marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is a keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. To learn about my books, see my personal site Digital marketing books by Dr. Dave Chaffey. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.

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As a content creator, you’ve likely noticed the online world is increasingly heavy on the visuals. Think of the last time you saw an article or social media post that was text-only: pretty rare, right? These days, we’re sharing real-time snapshots on Snapchat, curating impressive images for Instagram, adding memes and emojis to our messages across channels… It’s no wonder content without graphics now feels lackluster or even incomplete.

And while you may be fully on board with the focus on photos, you may also feel there’s more you could do or learn when it comes to images. If so, this is your guide. Below, we cover all the best practices for leveraging graphics in your content: when to use them, how to choose them, where to find them, and a lot more. Enjoy!

Incorporating Images

Do you always need to add a photo? How much do things like resolution, aesthetic, relevance to the copy, and so on, matter? The answers to these questions depend a lot on your brand, but there are two basic factors you should generally consider in deciding on graphics: platform and purpose.

Different media platforms have different norms and expectations for imagery. While a tweet or Facebook post may work fine without an image, platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are all about the photos. And while of course you set the standard for pieces on your own site, your audience is reading elsewhere, too — and forming their own standards. Be sure to “read the room” and structure your posts accordingly.

It’s also helpful to think about the purpose you want the image to serve. Should it capture attention? Evoke an emotion? Complement the copy? Break up paragraphs of text? Deciding the role you want the photo to play upfront will help you choose the best pic for the piece.

Sourcing Images

Build HTML within Associates Central: Search or browse for products in the Quick Links or Browse for Product sections of the Associates Central homepage, enter keywords or product numbers into the search box on the Product Links page, or use the search functions or Get Banner buttons on the Promotions pages to access link-building options that enable you to generate HTML-based images. Use the SiteStripe tool: Grab image code right from product pages by clicking Image in the SiteStripe toolbar. I nstall the Link Builder Plug-in for WordPress: This official plug-in allows WordPress users to source preview images (and much more) from Amazon, without having to leave the WordPress Editor. Implement the Product Advertising API: The API is an advanced option offering programmatic access to, among several other things, image URLs.

Stock Photo Websites

Optimizing Images

Much like each channel has its own norms, the optimal dimensions and composition of photos varies across platforms too. That’s not to say you need to customize every image for every post — most systems will auto-format images anyway — but it’s good to keep context in mind. A beautiful, oversized feature image in your blog post may not translate well to the small photo box of a tweet, for example. In that case, just swap in a different pic with the same vibe for Twitter.

In addition to accounting for aesthetics, you’ll also need to optimize your graphics for search engines when you use them on your own site (aka onsite SEO). Top plugins and CMSs (like WordPress) will do some of the work for you, but it’s good to know the basics — you’ll often want to adjust the default inputs. Here’s what to check:

File name: A random combo of letters and numbers (e. g., DSC2984.jpg) means nothing to a search engine. Be sure to use descriptive names (e. g., new-years-sunrise-Tokyo) to ensure Google indexes your photos appropriately. File size: Smaller files means faster load times (and faster loading means a better visitor experience). To reduce file size without compromising the quality of your images, it helps to use a good compression tool. Alt text (or alt tags): In the event that your images can’t be displayed or your web visitor is using a screen reader, you’ll want to have good alt text in place. Alt text is what will display in place of the photo; essentially it's text that describes the image, and it's helpful to users and search engines. (Most experts say alt text is more important than title text, and that getting the former right will take care of the latter.

Attributing Images

No discussion on image best practices would be complete without addressing attribution: the act of publicly crediting the source of a creative work. Depending on the photo you’ve selected and your own brand standards, you may or may not need to give credit. For example, the CC0 version of the Creative Commons license — which some free stock photos use — makes attribution optional.

Be sure to check the requirements for each of your chosen images, but note: it’s always a good idea to include attribution, required or not. It’s a respectful gesture to your fellow creators of course, but it’s also a means of mitigating usage/rights concerns.

There are a variety of ways to display photo credit, and again, it depends on both what’s required and what’s preferable — for you, for the source, and for the platform. Unfortunately, it’s all a bit of a gray area, due to the rapid change and expansion of digital media. It seems the safest bet is to let the copyright on each image be your guide. Do your best to meet the listed attribution requirements for each individual graphic, even if that means switching up your own preferred attribution style from piece to piece. (Note: this is not legal advice, and should not be interpreted as such. Always check and stay updated on attribution rules for any sources, sites, platforms, and channels you use or post to.)

For affiliate-related images obtained through the means listed above as part of the Associates program, using the provided links serves as attribution on your own site. For social media, you must additionally disclose you’re using an affiliate link.

There’s clearly a lot to know and keep up with when it comes to properly using graphics in your content. Luckily, much of it is common sense, or will at least quickly become second nature as you consistently follow image best practices. And of course, you can always come back to this article for reference!