Web personalization can take many forms and shapes. Let’s cover a often overlooked approach that is simple to understand and implement.
Asking the right question is just as important as knowing what to say. This is the simple principle behind more relevant site experiences – and one of the most underutilized tactics in existence. Main reason, that it is not used more frequently, is the sheer complexity of capturing the answers and responding to them in real time. This is about to change.
By systematically asking your website visitors questions, you can identify new opportunities, uncover needs and map barriers to conversion.
Asking a visitor about their industry, role and interests puts you in a much better position to deliver a relevant content experience – and that is exactly what we suggest you start doing.
With Monoloop it is very easy to capture form data from your website and use that data to trigger conditional content that match whatever the visitor responds.
The challenge is that there is a sea of different content management systems and all with a number of different ways to deliver forms on the site. The good news is that Monoloop supports them all.
Using Monoloop Form Tracker it is a point and click exercise to capture a form submit and insert that data to the visitors profile. It literally takes under a minute to configure Monoloop to capture a form on your site.
Using Monoloop Form Trackers – you can easily avoid pushing call to actions like Signup for Newsletter to visitors who have already done so. You can use forms to easily capture the customer lifecycle stage and target the experience accordingly. For each stage you can add further questions to capture deeper insight into the visitor – and the great thing you can do this for anonymous visitors as well as known and existing customers.
Lifecycle stages and drip irrigation questions
Your potential and existing customers interact with you through your website throughout their life cycle.
By mapping your visitors to the different stages in their customer lifecycle you are able to focus your questions directly to their current stage and gradually learn more about them. Key takeaway is that when you ask focused questions that are relevant to the stage of the relationship – the likelihood of response increases.
No matter what – always keep in mind to only ask questions you will use in the interaction. So if a visitor or customer answers your question – your immediate response needs to reflect whatever was answered. This is where your content personalization should be triggered. Different messages and content for different answers.
Typically we use a variation of a customer lifecycle model that reflects a sales funnel in most companies. Each stage in the model has different objectives and goals – so they also require different questions to be put forward. Let’s take a closer look.
New
The industry, role and interest questions make sense in the New stage. What would you ask in Previous visitor stage?
Well, it could be something like potential and maturity – questions enabling you to estimate the customer value and how far they are in their decision process or their use of services like yours. Simple really.
Known
Looking at the Known stage you could consider to ask questions that more directly map needs related to your solutions or products. Answers that would enable you to decide when and if to invoke any promotion tactics in order to generate the initial purchase.
Trialists
For Trialists questions would typically circle around the product purchased, if it serves its purpose and was delivered as promised. You would want to capture things like Net Promotor Score in order to differentiate your tactics to move the Trialist to the next purchase. Depending on the initial purchase experience – the journey should take very different routes to that goal. Satisfied Trialists would take one route, dissatisfied a very different route.
Customers
Customers is an entire journey of itself. One constant question is being keeping updated on the customer’s needs. Nothing is wrong with asking a customer about his needs and if the product/service still serves its purpose. The answer to this questions would trigger different messages for upgrades, resell and cross sell opportunities. Recency since last interaction is the most important factor to determine when to reach out to a customer through channels like email and retargeting. Set thresholds for interactions and purchases and reach out and ask customers what has changed when they cross them. When they respond and land on your site ask them for an update.
Typically you would consider different questions for customers with different needs and value and you would trigger different channels based on value/potential.
Re-engage
The re-engage Audience is defined as customers who has not purchased within the threshold you have set for an active customer. Basically this is a lost customer or a customer with a very high churn propensity. Natural questions to ask is what is holding him back, reasons for any dissatisfaction, changes in needs or barriers that you can help remedy.
Across your lifecycle stages – you would use the answers and Monoloop to filter your content and push personalized messages or content addressing the specific issues for each stage. Not only will this improve the relevance of your visitors site experience, but it will positively impact your business results.
Need help?
If you want to discuss how you can use questions to personalize your company’s customer journey – reach out and let’s start the conversation. We offer a free consultation to get you started.