Personalization is a primary business objective for many of our clients this year. They know they risk losing market share if they fail to personalize their site visitor experience by carefully curating the customer journey, app offers or email product recommendations. Many are unsure where to begin.
The good news is that implementing a personalization program can be simple and quick using an A/B testing tool like Adobe Target.
Adobe Target’s Category Affinity feature automatically tracks which categories a user visits on your website and calculates their interest in each one.
For instance, when a user visits a retail site, visitor-specific profile parameters are recorded in the Target database and linked to the user’s cookie. The mbox parameter user.categoryId is assigned on a product page and is especially useful. The product categories viewed are recorded as the visitor browses or returns to the site.
The category affinity algorithm works as follows:
Now that you know how it works, here are some use cases demonstrating how category affinity can help you personalize your customer experiences.
Most homepages are static, meaning the content doesn’t change based on the visitor’s site behavior. Typically, “hero spots” on the homepage are reserved for sales and special offers or an image (or video) coupled with a call to action to entice the visitor to enter the top part of the digital sales funnel.
While static content can work if done correctly, it’s not a personalized approach to digital marketing; It’s more of a one-size-fits-all approach. Determining which audiences interact with the homepage content and eventually purchase requires some heavy analytical lifting using historical site data. This can often take time, and some digital teams don’t have the proper resources to properly perform such an analysis.
Leveraging a visitor’s category affinity is an alternative approach that not only allows for personalizing the visitor experience but also reduces the level of effort on the analytics side post-campaigns.
Let’s say you own a site that sells music equipment, such as guitars, pianos, brass instruments and various accessories. When I visit your site as a piano player, it may take me some time (maybe too much time) to find what I'm looking for on the site — whether that means figuring out the site navigation or searching the site for pianos and piano-related items, such as benches, sheet music and tuners. I most likely will not easily find what I’m looking for on the homepage. Depending on the percentage of visitors who arrive at the site on the homepage, this could be very detrimental to site engagement as well as sales.
Now, let’s look at my visit to your site, assuming you’re leveraging category affinity as a personalization strategy. When I arrive at the homepage, I may be pleasantly surprised to see all of the pianos and piano-related accessories you’re showcasing there. I may even feel that the site was custom-made for me! And in reality, it is. That’s the power of category affinity.
To take the personalization strategy a step further, my second favorite category is guitars. Then, I notice some cool guitars, guitar straps and capos on the homepage. Wow, this site is right up my alley! I can’t wait to tell others about the amazing experience I had while shopping for my music items.
Let’s say roughly 20% of site visitors arrive at your site and land on the homepage. How do you leverage category affinity and create a personalized site experience if I land on a product page from search? Or on a category page that I bookmarked during a previous site visit?
With Adobe Target, selecting category affinity as the algorithm to determine which products you show me during my site visit is simple.
As I land on the product page from search, I study the product details, check out the images and then realize that this isn’t the piano I want. (Close, but not the correct size for my room.) Then, before bouncing off your site, I quickly scan the page and notice three or four other similar pianos in different sizes. I’m eager to see which one of these pianos could be the right size.
But, there’s more! As I add the piano to my cart for purchase, I notice an additional spot that includes sheet music and piano tuners. I’ve been thinking about purchasing more sheet music recently, so I add a few sheet music books to my cart.
This strategy leveraging category affinity shows the potential impact that personalizing the visitor experience can have on (1) site engagement metrics, (2) orders and (3) average order value.
Effective email marketing can be very difficult to execute successfully. The cost is increasing, consumers are easily distracted and marketing teams are losing budgets. On the consumer side, we’re inundated with emails and receive more every week. Plus, a percentage of emails are directly sent into a spam folder, sometimes either deliberately by the recipient or inadvertently by the email service provider. These two issues can make email marketing frustrating as well as underperforming.
Leveraging Category Affinity with email will help ensure that the email being sent is both personalized as well as actionable. As a site visitor, I am more inclined to open your email if I can quickly determine if it is something I am interested in or not.
Let’s say I visited your site a few days ago and spent time browsing through pianos and sheet music, but did not purchase anything. A few days later, I receive your email with pianos, sheet music and other related items and immediately see items that are of interest to me. At this point, I am more likely to open your email, visit your site again and finally purchase. One metric that should improve is “Return Visits” to your site. Return visits are an engagement metric, and personalized emails that contain items related to a visitor’s favorite categories will help drive an increase in Return Visits to your site.
Implementing Adobe Target’s category affinity feature can help you offer a helpful and satisfying experience for your site visitors each and every time they hit your site. This is huge! It can also help you position yourself or your organization as an expert in what you do by demonstrating strategic thinking and planning with more advanced ideas.
Want to learn more about Adobe Target or additional testing strategies for onsite personalization? Feel free to reach out. We’d love to help!