What is Personalized Content | How to Implement [With Examples]

In this digital age, content surrounds us everywhere we look. With content being so ubiquitous, content creators find themselves in fierce competition, all striving to stand out and shine in this vast pool.

It might be tempting to take the safe and easy route by creating generic content. However, it’s essential to remember that if it’s generic, then any content creator can do the same. What will set you apart from the rest? 

Perhaps you need another solution: crafting personalized content. For those who aren’t yet familiar with this term, don’t worry; we’re going to explain everything you need to know in this article. By the end, you’ll be equipped to create personalized content in your own unique way! So let’s dive in!

What is Personalized Content?

First and foremost, let’s get into what Personalized Content really is. It’s a type of content that utilizes customer insights and data to craft unique content for each individual customer or specific customer group.

These insights and data include many aspects, such as past interactions with your website, demographic information, contextual data, and behavioral patterns – essentially, any information that’s available for your business to use.

According to statistics, approximately 91% of customers are more inclined to shop with companies that provide personalized content and recommendations.

Remember Personalized content isn’t limited to a specific type of content or any particular content element; it’s a mindset that can be applied across the board. You can incorporate it into videos, infographics, emails, target it in advertisements, and much more.

Benefits of Personalized Content

Now we know that around 90% of customers have a preference for personalized content, but what are the benefits the businesses that adopt this approach can expect? Let’s explore them in more detail.

Improved User Engagement

When you create personalized content and offer personalized recommendations, it is highly likely that customers will see more relevant content or basically more content that they find interesting.

This keeps users engaged with the content they are consuming, resulting in longer viewing times, increased interactions (such as likes, comments, and shares), and a higher overall level of engagement with the platform.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

The next benefit is, in part, a result of the first one. When consumers discover more relevant and interesting content, their online experience tends to be more enjoyable and satisfying.

However, it’s not just about relevance; personalized recommendations can also save users time and effort by reducing the need to sift through vast amounts of content.

Furthermore, they can introduce users to new and diverse perspectives. All of these things show that businesses understand their customers, which is really satisfying on the customer’s part.

Improved Conversion Rates

Lastly, this is rather intuitive. When customers discover more relevant and engaging content and are more satisfied, it benefits businesses, as customers are more likely to take desired actions—whether that involves making a purchase, subscribing, or signing up for a service. 

Ultimately, it’s not just your customers who benefit from this marketing strategy; your business can also enjoy higher conversion rates.

Methods of Personalization

At this point, you might be convinced that incorporating personalization into your marketing plan is a good idea, but the next question is: What methods should you follow?

Here are some examples of things you can do:

Segmentation

When it comes to segmentation, you’re essentially categorizing your target audience based on specific factors. These could include age, gender, job titles, languages are spoken, and the type of device they use, to name a few. 

However, since the content is personalized only at a segment level, it’s not the highest degree of personalization. That doesn’t mean it’s not effective; you just need to use it in the right context and timing.

Behavior Tracking and User Preference

Unlike segmentation, behavior tracking involves a deeper level of analysis.

This helps you understand how customers behave and interact with your brand or others. For example, you can track visited URLs, time spent on your site, traffic sources, and all previous interactions with your brand.

You might even consider asking questions and making comparisons. For instance, which type of content garners more engagement? What content leads to longer time spent on your site and higher purchase rates?

You can also determine which stage of the marketing funnel they’re currently in, allowing you to send them tailored messages.

Location

Tracking customer location data allows you to target advertisements to customers in specific areas. For example, if you’re running a ‘BUY 1 GET 1 FREE’ promotion in City A, you can specifically target previous shoppers and website visitors who reside in City A. This will make your advertisement more effective.

Another advantage of tracking location is gaining additional insights into your customers, such as the weather or season they are currently experiencing.

While these are examples of things you can use to create personalized content, there is so much more to explore, and it totally depends on you.

Examples of Personalized Content

As mentioned earlier, there are various types of personalized content you can create to meet your customers’ needs.

Luckily, we’ve compiled some content personalization examples that you can start incorporating into your marketing plan:

Product Recommendations

Product recommendations come in various forms. You can target ads to individuals’ social media accounts based on their behaviors and past searches—believe it or not, many social media platforms nowadays make it easier for business owners to create highly targeted advertisements. Alternatively, you can utilize customer insights and data to recommend similar products when they are browsing your site.

Personalized Emails

With personalized emails, you can target your subscribers with specific email campaigns, guiding them to your website. A real-world example we can look up to is Spotify; they send users a personalized Discover Weekly playlist via email to encourage them to use their app again. Other businesses also use this approach to send newsletters to their subscribers.

Dynamic Landing Pages

Dynamic landing pages, in a nutshell, are pages that display different messages to different users. This could involve altering the headline or body text to add a personal touch that matches what the user has searched for, thereby increasing the chances of conversion.

Interactive Quizzes and Games

Most people love interactive quizzes and games. These activities can significantly boost engagement on your websites, or even on your sponsors’ sites. Even major brands like Coca-Cola have employed branded games to offer customers prizes and rewards, while also collecting valuable information to improve their marketing targeting. It’s a win-win for both parties!

Implementing Personalized Content

If you’re still wondering where to begin, we’ve distilled it down to three simple steps that you can easily grasp!

1. Data Collection

First and foremost, gather all the data available to you. This includes demographic, contextual, behavioral data, and so on. Since the key is understanding your customer’s persona, remember that the more data you can gather, the more helpful it will be in the next step.

2. Analysis

Once you have the data at your disposal, it’s time to analyze it. This involves digging deeper into the numbers and statistics to understand their significance. The goal of this stage is to develop a preliminary plan for what your personalized content will look like based on your analysis.

3. Content Adaptation

Finally, it’s time to create your personalized content! While it may sound straightforward, it can be quite a challenging task. This step often involves trial-and-error processes.

The result can be either satisfying or not satisfying: if the results of personalizing content aren’t as satisfying as you’d like, you may need to revisit the second step and conduct a re-analysis.

However, if your content yields satisfying results, that probably means you’re on the right track!

Measuring Personalization Success

When it comes to personalization, there are numerous key metrics available to measure key performance indicators (KPIs), and each business needs different KPIs. Now, you may be wondering which metrics are the right ones for you. Here are some useful examples:

• Average revenue per user (ARPU): Total (monthly or yearly) revenue/Total number of customers in that duration
• Click-through rate (CTR): (Number of clicks/Number of impressions) x 100
• Conversion rate: (Number of goal completion/Number of visits) x 100
• Churn rate: Number of users lost (monthly or yearly)/Number of users at the beginning of a month or a year
• Cart abandonment: Completed purchase/Shopping cart created

While the KPIs on this list might not be the most ultimate indicators, it’s still useful to know the numbers if you are determining your content’s success rates.

Most importantly, after knowing the results, business owners must be ready to adapt your content plan in order to achieve the best possible outcomes.

Tools and Technologies for Personalization

The key to personalization marketing is to have a wealth of data; without data no personalization is possible.

However, collecting and aggregating a high amount of data can be a challenging task for many business owners. Therefore, you may find it beneficial to utilize available tools and technologies out there, such as AI, machine learning, or data analytics tools.

These tools not only analyze all the data you need, but they can also analyze your competitor’s content, which can help you learn what’s right and wrong, helping when you write content of your own.

Best Practices for Successful Personalization

To sum up, here are a few tips and tricks that could guide you to create effective personalized content strategies:

• Start with Customer Segmentation
• Understand your customer’s interest and speak their language
• Analyze user’s past behaviors
• Stay current with the latest trends and industry shifts
• Experiment with various sales channels
• Build strong relationships with your customers
• Allow the UGC (user-generated content) to work its magic
• Additional tips: offer personalized discounts (everyone likes discounts!)

While most customers appreciate personalization, it’s crucial to respect your audience’s boundaries. Be mindful of privacy concerns when collecting customer data; this is one of the reasons why cookie preferences exist on websites.

Case Studies: Successful Personalization Examples

Before we wrap up, it’s worth noting that both big and small brands around the world have embraced personalization in their strategies, and the outcomes have been pretty impressive to many brands.

For instance, Amazon, known as a pioneer in utilizing personalized recommendations based on a user’s browsing and purchase history. This approach has resulted in a significant uptick in sales and greater customer satisfaction. Reports even suggest that Amazon’s recommendation engine alone contributes to as much as 35% of its total revenue.

Another noteworthy example is Airbnb. They, too, leverage personalization to display property listings that align with users’ previous search history and preferences, leading to higher conversion rates and increased bookings.

Start Your Personalization

With all this information, crafting and implementing personalized content is easy. With the right tools and technology, it is easier than ever.

Mandala AI can help you monitor social media feeds, extracting data and insights, and even identifying emerging trends before they actually blow up.

The platform is also user-friendly and easy to read, allowing you to make quick and informed decisions for your business to strive further.