Digital Personalisation - Integrate on-line and off-line

In my last article I looked at how you plot the user journey. Recent Gartner research states 80% of CMOs are not ready for the next big step in digital experience management. Digital personalisation is here. With the technology getting cheaper more and more organisations are taking note. By personalising your customers’ digital journey you can achieve better conversion rates and more leads and sales. But it’s not easy. You need not only the right technology but also the right strategy behind it. This article explores the key strategic steps you need to deliver relevant, personalised user journeys.

Integrate your systems with back office processes and track the results

In my last article on plotting the user journey, parts of it included offline follow up. It never ceases to surprise me that many business processes fail at this point, the moment you move the conversation from on on-line to off-line one.

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows a sample B2B customer journey (read more about customer journeys here); there are many stages where a customer or prospect interacts with you online. Before you even know who they are, prospects will be checking your company out. There many steps in this customer journey where the right use of digital marketing and lead nurturing can be enhanced through online experiences e.g. the stages of awareness, relevance or consideration.

Integrating your online data with CRM will help sales people get ahead of the conversation

One of the greatest features of personalisation technology is ability to track what a customer views online and pass it back to your CRM system. Most providers offer common CRM connectors (MS Dynamics, Oracle etc.). The benefit for you is that your sales people will know what products people have looked at and be able to tailor their conversation with clients.

This is where technology becomes really powerful, where you can move from simple interactions to tailored conversations with your customers. Always remember that in many instances (ITT based procurement being an exception, among others) most of the buyers decision is done before they contact you. By utilising personalisation technology effectively, giving the right data to sales you can increase your conversion rate. This will have a positive impact on your bottom line.

Thanks for reading!