At MPUG, Leverage Lab’s owner, AnnMarie Wills, offered insight into how publishers can improve their digital communications with personalization. Her company is a revenue growth agency specializing in helping media and information companies create a powerfully performing digital customer experience. Here, we’re sharing a brief synopsis of her presentation.

As marketers and business owners, we are constantly concerned with how our marketing and advertising efforts are performing. Whether it’s lead generation, account-based marketing or simply unknown to known conversion, we want to make sure our efforts are delivering the most value. How our prospects and customers move through their experience with us is called the “customer journey,” and it’s important to make each one as smooth and valuable as possible.

Personalization is the single most valuable aspect of the customer journey for business owners and marketers. Study after study indicates that consumers want and need a personalized experience.

• 78 percent of consumers only engage in offers, if they have been personalized to their previous engagements with a brand.
• 74 percent feel frustrated when website content is not personalized.
• 59 percent say personalization influences their shopping decisions.

As you can see, it is fast becoming a “must-have” versus a “nice to have.” In fact, it is critical to capturing and maximizing market opportunity. But, building a personalized customer journey can seem daunting. It’s hard to know where to start.

The customer journey is not a linear path, and along the way, there are different tactics and approaches that can make it feel more informed and personalized. Although it doesn’t follow a straight line, it typically is comprised of four phases: Awareness, Engagement, Conversion, and Retention. Each of these has different tactics and methods that come with them.

Every moment in the customer journey is important, but there are some that are disproportionately so. Activating personalization at those points is a win-win. The customer feels better in their experience, and the marketers win with greater conversions.

Don’t forget to engage the most important part of your digital customer journey…your own website! There are new technologies that can help companies create more personalized experiences on their websites. Many don’t require developers and months of time. These technologies utilize Java Script objects and can be used to create popups, quizzes, and other engagement elements. They even allow companies to change images and copy on the site itself based on the individual visitor and what you know about them. As you can image, this new technology is an important and new advancement in creating a personalized customer journey.

Cashing in on the benefits of personalization provides improved outcomes all along the customer journey. Drive more traffic, convert more leads, generate more add to cart, convert more sales and entice customers to buy more. Personalization is the marketers’ key to getting more for your money.