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Useful Personalisation
- 1. Useful Personalisation By Elise Maile Twitter: @e-maile #usefulpersonalisation
- 7. Who is doing Useful Personalisation?
- 12. Ask your customers what they Like / Want / Need
- 14. “Let’s imagine how the different preferences for cast members might influence the personalisation of the artwork for the movie Pulp Fiction. A member who watches many movies featuring Uma Thurman would likely respond positively to the artwork for Pulp Fiction that contains Uma. Meanwhile, a fan of John Travolta may be more interested in watching Pulp Fiction if the artwork features John.” https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/artwork-personalization-c589f074ad76
- 15. What can you do to personalise your users experience today?
- 20. Conclusion ● Start with segmenting audiences ● Ask your customers what they want - and give it to them ● You can start personalising your website now ○ Personalise landing pages based on marketing channel ○ Surface recently viewed items ○ Use purchase history to pre-select search filters, or to highlight products the segment might be interested in. ● Recommendations need to be useful, not simply big data
- 21. Thank you By Elise Maile Twitter: @e-maile #usefulpersonalisation
Editor's Notes
- Hi. My name is Elise and I am a conversion rate optimisation specialist. Before I started working within optimisation I was web designer and developer so I’ve spent the majority of the last 15 years in front of a computer screen analysing and trying to improve the user experience online. In 5 years of A/B and user testing I’ve introduced a few companies to the idea of personalisation and it’s exciting to see how many businesses are using this as a marketing technique now. I want to show you a few examples, some of which I think are extremely effective and some of which maybe not so.
- But then my second thought is usually “quick, think of another name.” See, I’ve been burned in the past at Starbucks. I don’t have the easiest name, and they never ask how to spell it. So last time I was in Starbucks, my name was Ana. Now, if I have these concerns in real-life, how common do online users think the same? We are all already aware of how cautious users are at sharing their data. Getting something as innocuous as an email address or first name is already tricky. Relying on that data to be accurate is naive.
- Recently, the European GDPR rules came into play, and like many of you I received a bucketload of privacy policy emails from companies, some of which employed what could be called ‘personalisation’. They basically mail merged my name into their emails. Except, I hadnt given them my name, only my initials, and I know I’m not the only online user to display this behaviour. So how personalised are these e-mails really? Simply putting my name into the e-mail is not useful.
- And some water shoes as we were going to be spending some time on the beach I find that when researching what item to buy, Amazon’s recommendations do come in handy - comparing one item against another and being able to read reviews this is helpful and Amazon enables you to do this very easily with it’s ‘related products’ and social proofing on the product pages.
- However, post-purchase the recommendations I received from Amazon were simply for more of the same items I’d just bought. I only have one pair of feet - why would I need another set of flight socks? Or, another pair of water shoes? What would have been useful personalisation for me would have been suitcase recommendations, or perhaps swimwear to match my water shoes. In fact, when you look at the ‘what other customers bought’ panel, many customers who purchased water shoes appear to have also bought snorkelling gear - now that would have been helpful on our trip, but the main bulk of that panel is taken up with other water shoe brands.
- Some more example of Amazon not giving useful personalised recommendations is their ‘buy it again’. I have a whole panel on my amazon homepage which is dedicated to past purchases and encouraging me to buy an item again. The problem is that my partner & I not only try to buy in bulk, but we’ve also been trialling a zero-waste lifestyle since the beginning of the year, so many of the items I’m being told to buy again are, by design, reusable. Also, ‘Inspired by your wish list’ - thanks Amazon, but I’ve already done the research & decided that the stand mixer I want for Christmas is the one that I want. But, since you now know I might be interested in baking, why not recommend me some cookery books or piping kits instead? My point is that Amazon clearly has the data available, but they’re not sharing what is useful for the user. The algorithms do not take into account the idea that users sometimes buy multiples to find the best product & return the rubbish. It’s unfiltered big data and as a result it’s not a personalised experience.
- So, having shit all over Amazon’s attempt at personalisation, who do I think does useful personalisation? Well, again, let me first tell you an offline story. My husband & I have a favourite bar, but we’ve only been there about 4 times. So why is it our favourite? Because the first time we went in there, one of the waitresses took the time to sit with us, ask us about our favourite types of drink, she checked in regularly and, at the end of the night, recommended us other local bars to try (and, in return, we recommended our favourite nearby restaurants.) What makes them truly special though, is that this waitress remembers us and our preferences. We followed some of her recommendations and shared notes when we returned. They know our favourite drink so that when they’d run out of one of the ingredients, they were able to recommend something else. And, when we returned after a 2 month hiatus, we were welcomed with a hug and genuine excitement that they’d restocked that ingredient so we could have our favourite Bootlegger drink again. The ironic thing is that they can’t remember our names - just our preferences but that is what matters. So, online, who remembers preferences?
- An easy one that many people cite is ASOS. They recall whether on your last visit you were on the mens or womens site and redirect you accordingly. Simple, subtle but it works and it’s useful.
- Grocery stores also usually get it right. Tesco uses clubcard and previous shopping data to provide relevant coupons and offers via both post and e-mail. And up until February this year, Waitrose allowed you to pick your own favourites which then gave you 20% off those items. They’ve now scrapped that scheme and gone with a machine learned scheme similar to how Tesco works. Food shopping online is often the easiest shopping you’ll do since past purchases are visible and convenient to re-purchase. This is useful.
- Graze does personalisation very well - they allow you to provide dietary requirements such as gluten free or vegetarian, and also to rate the available snacks. This ensures that Graze will only ever send you snacks that you’ll actually eat & enjoy. Their personalised e-mails are also sent at relevant times (the day before your snack arrives) and included useful personal information such as the address it’s being sent to and a direct link to the boxes contents. Their website is easy to navigate with lots of shortcuts to the areas you need to manage your deliveries or to rate the snacks you last had. You have the ability to block in bulk ingredients you dislike such as bananas or spicy snacks. And all this data is feed back to the business to help them create new snacks in the future ensuring they don’t waste time creating foods that their users won’t like. From a customer perspective, these are all useful features.
- The idea of letting users curate their own personalised content is something social media is doing outstandingly well at. There’s a popular forum website called Reddit, and new visitors to Reddit start with the most popular posts on the general homepage, but as soon as you create an account and define some interests, your homepage is completely personalised to your preferences. And Reddit users grow their own communities by recommending subreddits or forums to each other when it’s relevant, for example, someone posting about an awkward work situation in a subreddit to discuss relationship problems might be redirected by another user to try posting in the legal subreddit if they need further advice. People are talking to people and passing on relevant information, it’s all personal and very useful. Instagram too is excellent at curating relevant content for their users based on previous behaviour; their likes, the people they follow & hashtags. The explore tab suggests more users and hashtags to follow and it’s all based on user preferences.
- The commonality between all these services that give you next level useful personalisation is that they ask you what you like or need or want. Graze asks you to rate your snacks. Reddit tells you to subscribe to subreddits. Instagram gets you to connect to friends and search for hashtags to find the content you like and then it learns from it. My point is, do not be afraid to ask your users questions in order to give them a better experience. They know what they want and in my experience, users are not afraid to tell you what that is. Remember their answer, not their name and give them what they asked for. But If you ask me who the Gods of recommendation and personalisation actually are, I’d say Spotify & my company crush, Netflix.
- Many of you will be aware of how effective Netflix & Spotify use your previous behaviour to recommend entertainment to consume. But Netflix is even using personalised artwork to draw you back into the service and encourage you to consume more. If you have shown interest in Stranger Things, then you’re more likely to be shown images of the Shadow Monster. If you like Robin Williams, then you’re more likely to have a photo of him in character. Here is a direct quote from Netflix regarding this new tactic
- “Let’s imagine how the different preferences for cast members might influence the personalisation of the artwork for the movie Pulp Fiction. A member who watches many movies featuring Uma Thurman would likely respond positively to the artwork for Pulp Fiction that contains Uma. Meanwhile, a fan of John Travolta may be more interested in watching Pulp Fiction if the artwork features John.” And these tactics worked. After A/B testing the personalised images, Netflix reported seeing a significant lift in their core metrics, although they dont reveal exact numbers. By the way, this is from Netflix’s TechBlog on Medium which I highly recommend browsing through, especially if you’re into optimisation, big data, A/B testing. Netflix does all this and they document it really well. So, I’ve covered a lot of brands and talked about their mostly successful attempts at personalisation and recommendations, and there’s loads more I didn’t have time to cover such as Etsy (whose recommendations are way better than Amazon), or Google who walk the line of creepy personalisation but whom I couldn’t live without.
- But, I’m aware that much of this success is dependant on technology, namely machine learning and AI, and not everyone in the room is at the stage where they have a recommendation engine setup and ready to go. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t start collecting the data you need to start personalising. Use your analytics tools to look at audience behaviour. Group your customers into similar segments, look for similarities in actions and think about how you can streamline or improve that personas experience. For example
- Many websites resurface your recently viewed items upon returning to the website. This is an easy & useful form of personalisation. Even Amazon do it, although they hide it at the bottom of the page for some reason. Here both Etsy and Thomas Cook have the recently viewed modules near the top of the home page for easy access. Users can simply pick up where they left off. It’s not intrusive but it is personal and it is useful.
- When I worked at Thomas Cook, we tested different versions of this, including recently viewed hotels, recent searches as well as abandoned sales - this is where a customer had completed part of the booking journey but not converted. We A/B tested the idea of having a slide in panel reminding customers of the holiday they almost booked, and we saw a huge uplift in engagement in the popout, and there was also uplift further along our funnel proving that this was a helpful feature for the user. Subtly reminding return users when they’ve left items in their cart is a form of personalisation that you can do today, either via a website popup or via email.
- Another method of personalising your website for your customers is by ensuring that they arrive on suitable landing pages for the campaigns that you’re running, and check tone of voice matches the source that they arrived from. For example, a facebook or twitter campaign highlighting a certain product or offer should lead directly to a landing page about the same thing. You may even want to adjust the messaging depending on which channel they come through. The V&A are running a campaign on natural fibres in fashion and links from their social media posts go directly to a web page where you can book tickets to the exhibition and find out more.
- Finally, if you know something about your customers habits or preferences, use it to your and their advantage. For example, if your customer always buys size 9 shoes, why not have that size filter pre-selected on your search pages? The same goes for clothing sizes . Maybe you work in travel and you notice a segment of your audience has been identified as a family, so use family friendly imagery on their homepage or highlight hotels with kids clubs. Or use IP addresses to personalise content or filters based on location. If the user is in London - set the departure airport to All London Airports.
- In summary. Define your audience segments and find their sticking points. Then think about how to streamline their individual experiences. Ask your customers what they like, what they want, what they need, and then follow through - show you care. Start personalising now based on preference, not name. And validate your ideas by A/B testing them. Both personalisation and recommendations need to be useful to be effective.
- You’ll see success if you give your customers something that’s useful for them. And I really hope my talk was useful for you too. Thank you.