Many stores fail to utilize content personalization to increase conversions.

The truth is, while product recommendations are fantastic, they are just part of a comprehensive conversion optimization strategy.

This guide breaks down what content personalization is with live examples from  Alo Yoga, Drunk Elephant, Haus, and more. If you'd like to skip straight to the examples, click here. 

Content personalization is an umbrella term describing changing a user experience based on user preferences.

The personalized content can refer to offers, products, notifications, or other messaging. Content personalization is not restricted by channel. While many techniques were first developed for web experiences, today's personalization tools like Barilliance use a variety of retail omnichannel strategies.

eCommerce stores have a multitude of effective content personalization tactics available. They include:

Company: Target

Segment: Parents. Demographic segment, identified via past purchases

Offer: Target expertly uses content personalization to maximize a customer's lifetime value. 

Based on past purchases, they have segmented a customer as someone with a new baby. Therefore, the email messages they send are targeted for these staple purchases.

Target maximizes the deal in a few key ways. First, the incentive is for a Target giftcard. While it conveys a full $10 value to the customer, it costs Target less (only the cost of goods sold), ensures a repeat visit, and most likely results in a purchase beyond the $10 gifted.

Second, they introduce the customer to same-day delivery & pickup, which is part of their click and collect strategy.

Company: Ace Hardware

Segment: Loyalty members. Physical store shoppers

Offer: Ace Hardware wants to drive in-store shoppers. While in-store, Ace Hardware has less price competition and is able to drive repeat purchases. 

Above, they target in-store shoppers with bonus incentives to come back. They attach a short expiration date to help establish a customer behavior of coming to Ace for their regular needs.

Content personalization popup examples

eCommerce popups are a popular form of content personalization. 

Use cases include targeting first time visitors with welcome offers, prompting returning visitors to join loyalty programs, and providing various incentives to opt into future communication. 

Company: Alo Yoga

Segment: First time visitors, Visitors who haven't joined mailing list

Offer: Alo Yoga promises to keep you up to date on weekly styles and events. They keep the language light with a few well known yoga terms and no urgency. 

Company: Bodyrock

Segment: First time visitors, Visitors who haven't joined mailing list

Offer: In contrast, Bodyrock a combination of incentives: 15% off your next purchase, a free gift, and a promise of free workouts and fitness advice. 

Company: Doyoueven

Segment: Visitors who haven't joined mailing list

Offer: DYE doesn't offer an immediate incentive. Instead, they hint at future sales, restocks, and new releases. 

Company: Drunk Elephant

Segment: New visitors

Offer: Finally we have Drunk Elephant. The offer is a clean 15% off your first purchase. 

Creating pop-ups with Barilliance's Live Editor

Barilliance features a true front-end live editor to quickly create beautiful pop-ups. 

Below you can see a glimpse of how it works. 

Content personalization message bar examples

Message bars are another hugely popular content personalization tactic. 

However, unlike pop-ups, there are a few different types of message bars. Below we see a few. 

Company: Alo Yoga

Segment: All visitors

Offer: Alo Yoga features a dynamic message bar. 

As visitors explore the site, they message changes. Over my visit, three distinct offers were shown - from new styles to a free gift if you spent beyond a certain threshold. 

Company: Drunk Elephant

Segment: US visitors

Offer: Drunk Elephant encapsulates a few offers in one. First, they use a geographic based segmentation to provide free shipping where it is economically possible. Second, they provide a threshold for their customers with the added benefit of two day shipping if they meet it.

These offers directly address some of the most common reasons for shopping cart abandonment.  

Company: Haus

Segment: All visitors

Offer: 

Haus borders their entire site in message bars. The top highlights the current "Summer Sale" with the promise of saving up to 25%. 

The offer persists across pages. When you navigate from the home page to a category page, the promise is still front and center. 

Content personalization can (and should) be utilized across the customer journey. 

Too many sites we review only employ personalization tactics on their home page. While the home page is the entry point for many users, the truth is as visitors navigate through your store, you should constantly be gathering behavioral in-session data and using it to lead them to purchase. 

You can use content personalization across your website and other channels as part of a full eCommerce omnichannel strategy. 

Above, Altitude Sports injects a toggle for visitors who are not lifetime members on the product page. 

There are a variety of ways to implement content personalization.  The three most common are rules based, triggered messages, and machine learning.

Rule based content personalization relies on pre-defined criteria. 

Typically, a rule defines a customer segment and matches it with the merchandizing goals of the eCommerce store. 

The best segments are behavior based. We wrote a detailed guide on how to create effective behavioral segments for eCommerce stores here.

Below are some quick examples.

We've also created a more in-depth guide on triggered messages. While the article is geared towards email marketing, the principals are the same for using triggers with content personalization. 

In that article, we defined what makes a great trigger. 

Above, DYE triggers a popup based on exit intent. They offer an exclusive, 10% off discount. You can see more examples of browse abandonment content personalization here.

The machine learning content personalization approach differs from both the rules based and triggered based approach because it doesn't rely on pre-defined criteria.

Instead, whichever personalization technology you are using will employ a learning algorithm to learn what types of products are most effective given the current visitor's actions. 

If you want to learn more about the various types of machine learning algorithms, including collaborative filtering and content based filtering, you can learn more here. 

This guide covered a number of practical examples to successfully use content personalization. 

The next step is to select a capable personalization partner. There a number of important considerations. You want a partner who can unify data across devices, use behavioral data real time for behavioral segments, and have a wide array of personalization tactics to use. 

You can click here for a detailed guide on the most common challenges in selecting a personalization vendor.

Or, if you'd like to see if Barilliance is the right fit for you, request a demo here.